Degrees of Encounter

Degrees of Encounter: Densification Strategies to Alleviate Urban Loneliness in Post-War Neighbourhoods

Hendi, Alaa (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Mooij, H.A.F. (mentor)
Guis, R.S. (mentor)
Eckardt, H.F. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Advanced Housing Design

2024-01-17

The growing concern about a mental health crisis and a looming threat of the loneliness epidemic worldwide that was further escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic forced people into isolation and created a new form of ‘work from home’ lifestyle. Nonetheless, the loneliness epidemic can be traced back to the 19th-century design principles that designed our current cities with reference to industrial tools such as the car instead of the ‘human scale’. Many of these modernist ideals had negative implications on the mental health of the residents in post-war districts. Moreover, with the need to build more homes, the current housing market values densification strategies that are primarily for profit and not for the needs of the people, which continues the pattern of ‘living together apart’. Consequently, there is an urgency to tackle isolation among the inhabitants of Groot-IJsselmonde, specifically Thamerdijk and post-war neighbourhoods being primarily targeted for future densification schemes. Interventions are therefore required to encourage degrees of social encounter. A research-based approach explored within five different lenses, sociological, historical, urban, building and dwelling scale is translated into a design project that could potentially allow for more positive densification for both current and future residents.

Loneliness
Densification
Housing Crisis
Post-war Architecture
Urban Loneliness
Psychology
Transformation
Co-Housing
Social Housing
Modernism

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Student theses

master thesis

© 2024 Alaa Hendi