In 2001 Elma van Boxel (1975) and Kristian Koreman (1978) founded ZUS [Zones Urbaines Sensibles]. In their Rotterdam office they lead an international team of architects, urban planners, designers and landscape architects. ZUS takes on solicited and unsolicited designs and research studies in the fields of architecture, urbanism and landscape design.

Realized projects include the landscape design of the Dutch Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo 2010, the Central Park on the World Expo, the Printemps park at Grand Bigard Brussels and the exhibition pavilion Spiegelzee on the Dutch coast. Also ZUS is involved with a number of large-scale urban plans, such as Almere Duin, a multi use coastal district in the Netherlands that is about to go under construction. A typical result of their pro-active working methods is the Schieblock, a vacant office block in the middle of Rotterdam turned into an urban laboratory.

Their critical research focusing on urban politics of the contemporary city has resulted in books and articles such as Laboratory Rotterdam: Decode Space (AIR publishers 2007), Re-public, Towards a new spatial politics (NAi Publishers 2007). ZUS curates exhibitions like My Public Space for the Netherlands Architecture Institute (2008) and Unbuilt Rotterdam (2010) for the Historical Museum Rotterdam. Their work has been exhibited at architecture biennials in Venice, São Paulo, Rotterdam and Christchurch and urban design exhibitions in Mumbai and Moscow, and it is part of the traveling exhibition Architecture of Consequence curated by the Netherlands Architecture institute (NAi). Van Boxel and Koreman are members of the curatorial team for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012. Also they have been selected as team members for the BMW Guggenheim Lab New York. From August till October 2011 Van Boxel and Koreman run workshops, experiments and dialogues in collaboration with i.e, Columbia University, Poiesis fellowship New York University, MIT and THNK.

Van Boxel en Koreman teach and lecture at universities and schools worldwide, such as the Berlage Institute, TU Delft, Film Academy Amsterdam, Hong Kong University and Ghent University. In 2011 they cofounded Inside, a new master course for interior architecture at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Van Boxel and Koreman were both members of the Rotterdam Board for Spatial Quality. For their cross-disciplinary approach and their constant reflection on the fine line between private and public space the duo received the prestigious Maaskant Prize for Young Architects 2007.