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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.

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.

Archaeological museum situated underneath raised motorway in Cairo.

The project investigates a unique socio-economic phenomenon taking place in Cairo. Towers build on roof terraces are used by the locals to engage in a city wide game of pigeon catching. A system of vertical circulations and public spaces, opening certain strategic roof terraces to the public is proposed as further development of what could be called the invisible arena of the game.

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?

Visiting places one has never seen before, which in my case Cairo at that time, renders the experience of it into a limited number of isolated moments that are pushed into a sequence of narration. A city experience is reduced to a number of words, images or stills that together create a mental context that collapses reality into a collage of singular biased perspectives. This episodic view of space is transformed and reshaped, reviewing the existing spatial field. A single view subsequently creates several new narratives. Every new perspective retraces previous steps. Within the limitations of personal perspective, space is sensorially presented from singular points at certain moments in time. From the collection of views, smells, sounds etc. we remember certain fragments and ascribe them with a personal value within a spatial context. Portrayed in memory these shreds of space leaves one switching back and forth between perceiving and projecting space. A Coptic Christian minority in Moqattam (garbage city) are Cairo’s informal waste collectors. Because there is no religious objection, they keep pigs that in turn are key in waste processing. Although this social and economic system is counteracted by the city to sanitise the area, these waste streams comprise a high potential. Apart from their financial value they have spatial implications on both an architectural and urban scale, considering the process from dumping to reselling. Similar to a bottle of wine recalling a specific event, the personal value of waste deteriorates when it’s discarded. Being part of a waste stream it ‘decomposes’ into smaller generic pieces, leaving only traces of memory. Spatially analogous to the waste process, these traces elaborate on past events to the point where it’s original shape has become unrecognizable. Retracing their origin allows for personal and speculative interpretations. This design for a waste processing plant in Cairo offers space for the Zabballeen to maintain the current waste system, also taking benefit from it on spatial level. While currently waste is stored within the domestic area, this plant allows families to dump, process, store and sell it again elsewhere.

The one-on-one field research in Odessa, Ukraine, resulted in the development of the jump-cut in space. The jump-cut is originally a film editing tool to (un)relate multiple events in a scene, whereas the notion of re-orientation plays an important role. In space it has been interpreted as the movement form one point to the other, being cut by different (un)related scenes programmatically, geometrically and visually. The gridded city centre of Odessa contains two urban phenomena. One is the top-down urban preservation of classical, western-European facades. This type of façadism creates ornamental and symbolic boulevards in the linear network of the grid, being completely detached from its interior and back side. The other phenomena is, a Soviet-period driven, development of the courtyards on the inner side of the grid blocks. Expropriation, intensification of program and people, and deterioration followed each other towards a complex geometrical situation, a loss of façades diminishing the border between interior and exterior, and unexpected visual relationships. The design for the EU-consulate, is based on discussing the surface which divides two spaces, either interior and exterior, or both. The jump-cut takes place by the act of making the dividing surface spatial and programmatically relating and un-relating scenes. The operation which has been used is voronoi on an individual cell-based logic. The operation shifts the six surfaces of a volume (one cell), according to the position the central point. The difference of the minimum shift and maximum shift causes the interior space (the minimum cell) and the in-between space (the edge). Because the operation takes place on all individual volumes, some volumes are shifting away from each other, others are interwoven. This procedure makes it possible to adjust the shift according to the necessary relationships with the neighboring volumes. Besides a geometrical relation, the operation also generates visual relations by the making of openings. Because it works in three dimensions, the language in section and plan is identical. The EU-consulate, a test case for the EEAS (European External Action Service), has been exploited in its diversity of types of program and participants; diplomatic and ceremonial, providing, controlling and personal. The project gives a reading of this programmatic complexity through its architecture.

Through mapping the social behavior of the hitchhikers as a speculation tool, it reveals a contradiction in Havana of its socialistic system. The project hence is a proposal to bring this tension visible by suggesting a Fish Auction Market.

Topography and excavation

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.

A direct result of the clash between two opposing economical systems, the garage cooperatives were created from a traditionally communist practice of shared management in order to accommodate an ever increasing number of privately owned vehicles. These collectives of individual units, well organized into compact, hermetic structures appear all over the city, almost identical regardless of location or environment. Within their borders, rules of time and space are redefined to suit this particular type of urban organism. These atemporal and aspatial qualities, combined with their status as in-between structures of two different urban states, defined them as Kyievan heterotopias.

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.

Research Booklet Studio Border Conditions

The project is an attempt to recognize, map and interpret complex self-organized spatial relations, on the example of the Seventh kilometer market in Odessa, Ukraine. These interpretations are then used as tools for architectural design of a complex public building, resembling the rhizomatic model, developed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to achieve surprising spatial relations of connectivity and separation.

In the Msc3 semester the relation between spatial experience and navigation is being investigated. The new technology like GPS, smartphones and interactive maps (Google, Bing etc.) effects the way we move trough space and how we experience the space. We are directed trough space with a GPS instead of analyzing the space by our self and decide de route based on what is seen and experienced. The Interactive maps allow us to perceive a space from multiple perspectives and scales. At the same time a group research was done about the periphery of Madrid. A 15 kilometre strip of illegal housing along a historic cattle trail was found and investigated in the theme of accessibility. The individual research about navigation is reflected on the group work. An investigation is done about the meaning of navigation in the specific area of the Cañada Real. The focus is pointed at the infrastructural intersections with the Cañada Real. Mappings are being made of the multiple perspective experience of three infrastructural intersections with the Cañada Real. In the Msc4 semester the relation between the top down and the bottom up perspective and the spatial experience is being investigated by a further spatial analysis of one of the three intersections. From the route which is taken several spatial conditions are isolated and analysed. By the isolation of the spatial conditions a spatial lexicon is developed as a tool for design. The spatial elements are being studied by reconfiguration and exaggeration. The proposed site is an area where different infrastructural systems and with this different navigation systems meet. The existing systems and territories in this are being mapped. Based on this map focus points are being discovered where two ore more systems meet or intersect. As a design concept interventions are being created on three of these points to reconnect the Cañada Real with the existing infrastructure and neighbourhoods. These interventions are built up from the spatial elements which were investigated. One of these interventions is picked to work out further on an architectural scale. With these interventions the Cañada Real gets more connected with its surrounding in a physical and visual manner. These connections can be the start of the acceptance and integration of this exceptional area in the periphery of Madrid.

The Coptic cemetery in Manshiyet Nasser, is the final result of a process that includes mapping, "transcription" of these diagrams and design according to certain principles defined during the process. The site for the mapping was Manshiyet Nasser /Garbage city, where the garbage collectors of Cairo are settled. The reason behind the choice, is that this place offers an opportunity to study how the garbage occupies public space in different configurations and what kind of space is created between the elements that are part of. The final product of mapping is a series of diagrams that depict a deformed grid. The degree of deformation varies, according to the voids created between the elements on the picture /the front view of stacks. The quality on which the interest is focused, are the dense and sparse areas that are created by deformation. The sucession of dense and sparse areas is becoming the main principle of the design. Other key words of the design are :altered landscape and bridging of different levels. The last ones were influential so as the cliff to be the site of intervention. The program is related to the notions of : layered structure, repetition of units, connections-disconnections. At the same time, the cemetery as proposal, might be a solution for the current problematic situation; the Coptics that live in the Garbage City have to travel even for 55km for visiting the cemeteries. The final design concerns a structure that creates a new border between the cliff and the public space. It may be described as a building-landscape (or landscape building?) for the reason that there is no interior or exterior in the common sense -which is the case for a building, however is formed by elements that are common in buildings such as slabs and walls. The structure consists of precast concrete elements. The graves are developed verticaly, in combination with plants on top of each volume. The solid parts of the structure -that are the graves, are filled with soil, which is also a necessary condition according to the Coptics' tradition, but also plays a role in the decomposition process. Thus, this design proposal preserves the positive qualities of the traditional cemetery setting-which is outside the city and at the same time has a closer relation to urban life.

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.