· · · Institutional Repository

Urban Tomato is a systemathic analysis of urban agriculture in Havana, Cuba. The proposal of a lightweight infrastructure shaped by the built existing environment, aims at breaking the constrictions of the rigid orthogonal city planning by offering a new layer of walkable and productive public space. The socio-spatial characteristics of the city of Havana are materialized into the design of a system, potentially appliable to a large share of the city.

The project of my graduation is situated in Oswiecim, Poland. Basically it started with a mapping of the heating system pipes network concentrated on use, perception and rhythm. This first research lead me to my design : a horse-riding infrastructure composed of 3 sequences : the hippodrome, the promenade, and the public facilities. The whole design is based on the folding method.

The periphery of Rome in its chaotic sprawl created a condition of extremes. Trough time the distinction between private and public space, between low density and high density became blurred generating a condition where different scales of space and time cross each other. This thesis develops a process where this condition of constant limit is premise. Through the understanding how an architectural object can mediate and transform the periphery, 6 disciplines are extrapolated in the research to be used as design tools. Zooming from top-down to bottom-up, the tools are continuously used to frame architectural space which is transformed and materialized with a an architectural language. Scale/Frame/Language is an abstract machine that emerges from the context to become a-contextual, it is a finite set of instructions that has infinite outcomes.

Creating a Picasso The graduation project has been a part of the studio Border Conditions at the Technical University in Delft with the function of a museum in the city Odessa, Ukraine. The main objective of the studio is to translate an observation in the city into a mapping. This mapping subsequently needed to be translated into architectural space. The survey took place in the city Odessa. In this city I was struck by the different viewpoints and speeds when moving given by the different modes of transport. I compared this fragmented way of experiencing the space with the Cubism of Picasso. In his paintings multiple viewpoints are composed to one painting. The focus is not on a static experience of space, as with the perspective, instead he focusses on time and movement. Movement through space was the key of this design. Both in the dealing with the context as in the organization of the building itself. From inside the building several fragments of the context are framed, some more close up, some more as an overview. Some framed from a high point of view, some from a low point of view. With architectural elements the speed of the visitor is guided. For instance a steep stairs or a gentle slope. The space is made by the intersection of different frames. The more frames are added, the more complex the space gets.

Research Booklet Studio Border Conditions

On the grid of Manhattan, a lot of skyscrapers had competitively built before 1916 New York Zoning Law was established and it made possible 'culture of congestion' which speaks for today's Manhattan. Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself. Nowadays, the inside area of skyscrapers is extremly expanded to gain the maximum profit toward the large-scale investment in real estate which pursues the effect of size; the outside is standardized by the legal restriction. The flexibility of the shape of buildings decreases and it is gradually getting uniform in the shape of maximum density.

A long-lasting tradition of buildings that deal with the visibility of the urban environment exists. Starting from this tradition, by means of scripting an urban observatory for the city of São Paulo is designed. The spiral/helix was used as a spatial form. Central research questions in this graduation project are: - What does the urban observatory of the 21st century look like? - How can scripting be used as a tool for dealing with optics?

Graduation Project at studio Border Conditions. A research on the human perception towards the awareness to its surrounding. In direct combination with the informal (post-Soviet) commercial developments and Western influences of commerce. This results to a complex shopping center in Odessa, Ukraine. Creating unique spaces for informal, commercial adoptions and more 'Western' shopping principles.

The graduation thesis project seeks to develop a design methodology that could function in a sustainable way within the constraints of the context of overpopulated and heavily decayed building stock of Centro Habana, in the city of Havana, Cuba. The intention of the project is to generate transformation in the stagnated built environment. The possibilities for such transformation are explored through the experimentation of designing small-scale, self-sufficient, sustainable, architectural interventions that can be constructed within and in-between the existing buildings. The methodology proposes these “literal” interventions on the basis of an analysis of the diverse informal collective practices and initiatives that emerged within the physical context of the Spanish Colonial architecture in Centro Habana, during the years following the Socialist revolution of 1959. The thesis suggests that these practices are evident manifestations of how space can influence the transformation of a society beyond the desires, or control, of an effective authority, and aims to explore the potential of them with respect to architectural practice.

Spatial Collage is an investigation of the Collage as a 2 dimensional form of art and an exploration of the potential of Collage in an architectural framework. Several keywords describe the characteristics of a collage: recomposition; deconstruction; scalejump; mismatch; multiple readings. Words that can have an architectural meaning as well. Studio Border Conditions Ruhr tries to grasp the complex urban conditions in an area by doing bottom-up investigation, makes visible what remains invisible on a map. In the Ruhr area everything can go with everything, like someone shuffeled the elements around after which they end up in wrong places; with as result mistakes; mismatches; non-functional conditions; brutal combinations of old and new materials; a perfect environment to base the project Spatial Collage. A set of photographs and drawings illustrating collage conditions were the inspiration for the project.

The City of New York is a stage that invites everyday people to become active, to play in it or to misbehave. The streets and its public transportation network are the stage, artificial light, special sound qualities in certain spaces and the presence of a potential audience the specific qualities of these urban stages among others. The audience is meant to be manipulated, to be intrigued into interaction. In the setting of Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a sequence of public spaces is created by experimentally folded traces of acts. The generated spaces are designed as stages with specific, enhanced qualities. Their architecture is a skin of an encountered act in NYC that was the inspiration for this space. The architectural result of this experiment is a landscape of pavilions that invites to experience space with all senses.

As attachment: A0 poster. My research deals with translations of sounds into notations which are then used to design spatial experiences. During the spring of 2006 I recorded sounds with a digital photo camera (CANON Powershot A85) in the old city centre of Kaliningrad, a former Prussian city in a Russian exclave. The research location is based on a stretched lake which is dividing the area in two parts with four bridges. I made a 24h sound recording session on these bridges at points which are parallel and perpendicular to these bridges. For the first abstraction of the sounds I used a basic music software program called Wavesurfer 1.8.5 which visualises sound into a traditional notation based on pitch on the vertical axis versus time on the horizontal axis. To highlight the most clear frequencies on the recordings I replaced the dark spots of the first abstraction with lines and rectangles in the second abstraction. Because the recordings of the digital camera where attached to pictures it was simple to relocate the sounds to their points in the location and to visualise the exact time and duration of each recording. After several experiments of setting out the most evident characteristics of sound such as pitch, time, duration and range in space I developed three main notations which are representing all sounds in three sequences; morning, afternoon and evening. These notations could be seen as visualisations of spatial qualities within its specific location and are exploring the traditional field of architectural notations. WORKING METHOD: Sounds_1 > Notations ------- Notations > Sounds_2--------Notations > Space--------space > Sounds_3. I see my building as a Concerto, seemingly fragmented, (only) understandable by listening. Navigation through the museum is sound related. Perception of time in all scale levels (lifetime/years/seasons/months/weeks/days/hours/min/sec) most fundamental element in experiencing the museum. The museum is a soundboard of reality, containing the inevitability of change. Developing the building has been a result of interpretation combined with the various translations of the notations. The shape of the museum consists of 37 boxes which are floating on various heights and angles in the location. All 37 boxes have their walls perpendicular to its roof and floor surface but are rotated on 2 different angles. No hierarchy in corners, horizontal and vertical are of the same order. Goal of this is to disorient the visitors and to strengthen the awareness of the senses. The spaces in between these intersecting boxes becomes a filter (opens up) so it can be used to go from one space to the other. Every plane in space which is intersecting another box is used to design lighting and other additional elements which I call extension lines. These lines can be used as orientation lines, every line is corresponding to a plane in space parallel and perpendicular to the viewer.

Met als bijlage: A0 poster. Graduation project combined with the mapping methode. The form of the project is based on the combinations of the perspectives and textures of the city.

Investigation and exploration on a city that cannot escape the pull of global media towards it because of its heavily loaded history. Using multiple experiments to abandon veiled perceptions in order to get in a state of continuity, without preconceptions.

The city of Oswiecim is essentially known for its history, but next to this there is also the present city, what is remarkably seems just like any other small city in Poland. At first it seems that there is a strict border between the present and the past, but remarkably is that these two meet each other in the uncultivated or unknown history of the city: people live in a formal woman’s camp, have train tracts in there backyard and huge plots of empty, wasted land cross through the city. It is clear that there is more history to remember in Oswiciem then is done at the moment. In this city remembering is either putting a big wall or fens around a place, or doing nothing at all. In my project I investigated this history remembrance and tried to view it from a different angle. Also I aimed to combine the past and the present, to include the present city in a commemoration of history.

The main focus of my MSc3 was based upon an interest in a subject I couldn’t specify at the beginning of my project. It was an abstract subject to research, a lot became clear during the process of research in Odessa. The phenomena of the infrastructural lines in between the city and its harbor and the actual encounters of the city towards the harbor gave an more actualized subject to research. The actual routes at the level of approach, transition, crossing and a parallel projection formed the basic elements of my mappings. The relations in these areas reflected upon the routes were mapped each by a different approach. These mappings related to my theoretical essay by subscribing a way of thinking towards new architectural space and a technique to create these spaces by the act of folding and an iterative process. By pointing out new ‘set of virtual movements’ by using 4 existing precedent locations. The set of virtual movements became limited to one act, the act of folding. This act became the act of actualizing abstract thoughts and interests into architectural space. During an iterative process of folding, relating unrelated elements, order and disorder a program brief full of tension and complexity, the program – dog shelter, hotel, wellness, rabies clinic – were combined into a mixture of new programmatic and social interactions. By the use of a digitalized act of folding, a feedback loop within the iterative process and even more at the level of connecting sections the complexity of the building and its program became at a level where I was able to design architectural space.