Neville Mars is a Dutch architect, urban planner, and researcher renowned for his work in sustainable city design. As the founder of MARS Architects, an award-winning firm with over two decades of expertise, Mars has been at the forefront of integrating data-driven design, green infrastructure, and adaptive architecture into urban planning.
His work addresses the critical challenges of climate change, overpopulation, and resource scarcity, with a focus on creating sustainable, livable cities in rapidly urbanizing regions like China and India.
He designed China’s first China-Dutch Ecocity and Asia’s first large-scale carbon-negative, land-use positive community-centered retreat in Bali. This ambitious project led to the creation of prefab sustainable villas tailored for construction in even the most remote and challenging environments.
Mars’s innovative approach proves that sustainable living is possible in the most difficult locations.
Mars is a lecturer at Diponegoro University. His writings, including the critical exploration “The Chinese Dream: A Society Under Construction”, delve into the complexities of urban expansion in China. He also published, “A Manifesto of Mistakes”, an exploration of evolutionary planning principles for pressured urban landscapes. Mars also leads The Dynamic City Foundation (DCF), a non-profit research platform dedicated to studying the impact of rapid urbanization in Asia and exploring innovative solutions to its many challenges.