Metropolitan Park Development: A Sustainable Development Strategy for the In-Between Cities Area in Hsinchu Metropolis

This thesis is a specific design and research project of the in-between cities area in Hsinchu metropolitan area, Taiwan. The aim is looking for a sustainable development strategy for the metropolitan area where is under highly urbanization and conurbation process. The main approach is using the analysis of governmental plans, regional contexts...

Shifting Gravity

The aim of this research is to find an answer on the question of how we should deal with situations where there has been a very large expansion -which results in a shifting gravity point- and we have to search for densification opportunities within existing urban areas. In these situations the new basis of the housing area at the edge of the...

The Wall: Preparing for China's urban billion

In an age of ever increasing urbanization with massive migrations from the countryside to the city, Asia is at a cross roads. 'The Wall' is a masterplan for the city Chengdu in the West of China. It is based on public transport. It is an urban strategy which densifies the existing city edge, thereby re-establishing the contrast between city and...

Urban Shelter Proposal: Design of an Adaptable Community Center as an urban base for empowerment

Research | Guidelines for an Adaptable Community Center The research focuses on the transition of a so-called community center that has to adapt to several conditions in several chosen phases. Since the transitional community shelter is an entire separate structure that should function as an education and community center, and is designed and...

Towards a socially inclusive Addis Ababa: Articulating a new urban renewal strategy

The studio of Global Housing engages with pressing dwelling issues in developing territories dealing with the rapid growth in urbanized areas. For this subject the studio aims to investigate design methods and strategies to provide housing for the urban poor in the developing territory of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Within the research...

Burkinabé Domesticity: A contextualized response to rapid urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa

Burkina Faso is a developing country that is in a demographic transition. Its diverse population with dozens of ethnic groups, each with its own values and traditions, is growing at an extreme rate and exemplifies the phenomenon of rapid urbanization. However, the current social housing programs exclude more than 50% of the population, living...

The influence of Low Impact Development on rainfall-runoff relationships at catchment scale

With rapid urbanization, Low Impact Development (LID) is promoted as an alternative to Conventional Drainage (CD), seeking a natural solution for current urban water problems. The positive effects of LID were the main theme of recent LID researches, but this project aims to deeply explore the hidden troubles about the extreme peak runoffs...

Extremely mute and incredibly intelligible

The rapid development of the ‘New Silk Road’ involves Tashkent – the site of where the graduation studio BT operates– and simultaneously affects the socio-political context of architecture. In fact, in the case of Tashkent interesting urban scenarios emerges from this process of urbanization. Tashkent is no longer a historical centric city from...

Transitional Temporalities: Latent Potentials of the Reterritorialized Extra-Statecrafts

The paper investigates the power-relations that define the urbanization of an Extra-Statecraft zone, process them in a phenomenological view of the indigenous people in the case-study of Gwadar, Pakistan. Criticizing the monotonous manner with which the zone Deterritorializes and diminishes existing practices within a context, to argue for the...

hinterland in transition

This project explores the ways of thinking about hinterlands – territories of production supporting urbanisation processes. It analyses the area of West Macedonia, Greece, which today exists as an energetic landscape. Profit-oriented schemes of capitalism through subordination and functionalization has led to the marginalization of hinterlands...

Reservoirs Beneath: Groundwater sustainability in India's Ramganga river basin

This research studies groundwater sustainability in the Ramganga river basin of northern India. This region experiences a trifecta of hydrological stressors from groundwater over-extraction, frequent flooding during wet seasons, and agricultural droughts during dry seasons. There is a growing body of interventions known as...