Brutalist Institutions in transition

Embarking on a thesis exploring the transition of Brutalist university institutions in the Netherlands is a compelling endeavor driven by the intersection of architectural evolution, academic environments, and societal transformations. Brutalism, with its robust aesthetics and functionalist principles, has left an indelible mark on university...

Westergasfabriek: A Case Study Into Adaptive Reuse of post-industrial Heritage

Adaptive reuse can be defined in a multitude of ways, but in this case it refers to the renovation and revitalisation of a building or site into a new purpose brought forth by societal and urban needs. This concerns many different projects, yet this paper aims to explore the nature of post-industrial designs and how they may be developed into...

Sarakshit Ghar: A Safe Home: Documenting the changes in earthquake-resistant construction elements in the housing of the Kathmandu Valley in the period of 1769 - 2023

Being a highly earthquake-prone country, Nepal gets hit by a major earthquake roughly every 80-100 years. The recent major tremor in 2015 showed how the houses in the Kathmandu Valley were not ready: 9000 lives and half a million houses were lost. <br/>This thesis describes the changes in earthquake-resistant elements in the residential...

Versions of brutalism: A comparison of Marcel Breuer’s St. John’s Abbey and Van Den Broek & Bakema’s Auditorium

During the post-war period in the 1950s, brutalist architecture originated in Great-Britain as a reaction to previous architectural movements. It derived from an architectural style of building with exposed concrete called ‘béton brut’. It later became more popular when a new generation of modernist architects started using this exposed concrete...

The Architect That Did Not Build: A historical evaluation of the experimental architectural profession through the work of architect Lebbeus Woods and its implications for the practice of architecture

Lebbeus Woods was an experimental architect best known for his visionary drawings. His entry into the field of experimental architecture was enabled by the conditions in which the field found itself in the 1970s. Through drawing, Woods explored ideas and hypotheses which were unbound from conventional limitations. The field of architecture has...

Theory and Reality - An elaboration of the overall implementations of Aldo Rossi’s architecture

When looking into the delicate relationship between Aldo Rossi’s theoretical drawings and their implementations in reality, one would always find it fascinating that his projects that were expressive and vibrant on paper oftentimes were built and perceived in a completely different way. For all kinds of reasons, his projects were sometimes not...

The architecture of markets: Comparing the organization of street markets to the market building

Market structures have taken many forms. To understand the organization and architecture of markets, the research will question to which extent markets require the architecture of market buildings by studying the markets of the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The street markets of Rotterdam have advanced at a steady pace and proved that...