Architecture and Safety: Safe social housing for the inhabitants of the periphery of São Paulo

In São Paulo, Brazil, the urbanization of workers without education or a steady income has caused a large demand for social housing, with 800,000 families forced to live in settlements and slums without a legal basis. At the same time, the crime rates of the past decades brought forth a standard of ‘enclavement’ of urban blocks, with fences...

Changing Minds: Towards Water-Based Architecture and Public Space for the Future Urban Archipelago

This blog contribution supports the Urban Archipelago expo at Nieuwe Instituut (NI) in Rotterdam, designed to consist of four elements: a map, a view, a model, and a series of films that depicted a future of living with water, as well as a booklet that documented student work. The expo has been part of the Water Cities Rotterdam, which opened...

Cities of the Future: Towards Sustainable City Economies

It goes without saying that cities of tomorrow face numerous challenges that will change their appearance drastically. We only now begin to notice a gradual change towards climate-adaptive cities, inner-city renewable energy production, and more healthy urban environments by re-naturing our public realm and buildings as well as accommodating...

Cities of the Future: Control in Times of Acceleration

'The architect who proposes to run with technology knows now that he [sic] will be in fast company, and that, in order to keep up, he may have to emulate the Futurists and discard his whole cultural load, including the professional garments by which he is recognized as an architect. If, on the other hand, he decides not to do this, he may find...

Cities of the Future: On Nature and the Grammar of Design

In his book, 'The sense of style', the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker argues that the categories of grammar reflect the four building blocks of thought: time, space, causality, and matter. Coincidentally, these building blocks are the same ones that dictate the grammar of spatial design. In them being absolute categories, they describe well...

Cities of the Future: A Mobile and Sustainable Society

My research career started with a publication about externalities of mass motorization. Academic researchers are producing an endless stream of paper. Unfortunately, only a few of these publications have practical relevance. Even if they do, their recommendations are frequently butchered, mitigated or ignored in the political arena. Such...

Cities of the Future: Societal by Nature

Keeper of Knowledge: Public library of Beirut

The ambition of the project for the new public library in Beirut is one that explores how architectural space can facilitate this synergy between digital information and books. Through the integration of digital media in architecture and its interactive aspects, information can become more accessible to users. Beirut is historically known for...

In the Minds of People: Port-City Perspectives, The Case of Rotterdam

Following the geographical ‘Any-Port Model’, urban design has stipulated and enforced the disunion of port and city over the recent decades. In conjunction with other disciplines, the emphasis has laid at dislocation of production activities in favor of logistic-productive dynamics. At the same time, professional focus was on the urban areas...

The Port-City Portrayed in its Public Spaces: Introducing Micro Biographies of Places

This article aims to extent the notion of port-cities and counter the mainstream narrative that port and city, in cases like Rotterdam, have become disunited by reviewing its public spaces in their unique port-city characteristics. These characteristics can be found by systematic approaching and describing public spaces as biographies of place,...

Architecture & Urban Design—Amsterdam and Boston: MSc 2 Elective Design Studio AR0067 Spring 2018–2019

At TU Delft, in the interdisciplinary MSc II Design Studio Architecture & Urban Design, students of the master tracks Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment work closely together. The integrative approach of this graduate course setting allows the students to examine urban...

Introduction: Continuously changing urban conditions

Flowscapes: Designing infrastructure as landscape

Social, cultural and technological developments of our society are demanding a fundamental review of the planning and design of its landscapes and infrastructures, in particular in relation to environmental issues and sustainability. Transportation, green and water infrastructures are important agents that facilitate processes that shape the...

European high speed railway, understanding design contradictions for long-term urban architecture strategy

Guided self-organization for Vilnius

Exploring alternative urban planning models and policies. Designing a strategic model of self-organization for context specific neighborhoods and districts. The study case is Vilnius, capital of Lithuania and it’s district Newtown. Focal points of the project: political agenda behind spatial design implementation in Vilnius, financial streams of...

De stad als architectonische constructie: Het architectonisch discours van de stad (Duitsland 1871-1914)

The city as an architectural construction: The architectural discours on the city At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century a paradigm shift took place within German architectural thinking that can be identified as a turn to the city. Whereas throughout the 19th century architectural knowledge was primarily directed to questions of style of...