Street-level desires, Discovering the city on foot: Pedestrian mobility and the regeneration of the European city centre

Pedestrian mobility and the regeneration of the European city centre. Cities can be chaotic and confusing places at the best of times – even for local people! Spatial Metro, a project largely funded by the EU, aims to make city visits more enjoyable for pedestrians by making cities easier to navigate, easier to walk around and easier to...

Deconstructing Rotterdam's modern city centre

In the 20th century, the Dutch city of Rotterdam was radically transformed from a historic town into a modern city, becoming the selfacclaimed 'city of architecture', home to international architectural design offices, publishers and institutions. Although it is already 60 years after the destruction of the Rotterdam inner city, the city still...

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

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,...

Domestication Will Shape Future Public Spaces: A Report from Rotterdam

This commentary aims to provide a window on the future by studying actions, taken to control the spreading of the corona virus, while obviously affecting public space over a year. What has been the effects on public space directly linked to these actions during the pandemic; what values play a role, and what can we expect for the future? We have...

Transit Stations: Sub-centers in Rotterdam Zuid

The book is the result of the course ‘City of Innovations Project’ at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, led by the group of Complex Projects at the Department of Architecture. ‘Transit stations: sub-centres in Rotterdam Zuid’ is the theme of the course running in spring 2022. It is connected to the research project Walk...

Chinese Notions of Public Space: Transculturation in Urban Design and Architecture after the ‘Reform and Opening-up’ in 1978

This doctoral research investigates the understanding and implementation of public space in the reformed Chinese context, particularly from the perspectives of urban design and architecture, by referring to the complex process and result of transculturation (transculturación). It delineates how public space as a Greco-Roman originated concept...

Cities of the Future: Societal by Nature

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...

Hoogbouw vraagt om interieurstedebouw

Al decennia staren beleidsmakers en stedebouwkundigen zich blind op hoogbouwbeleid door middel van hoogteregulering. Ook al blijft dit vanuit gezondheid en welstand verstandig, dit is een eenzijdige benadering. Zeker nu er steeds meer openbare ruimtes binnen de hoogbouwprojecten ontworpen en gerealiseerd worden, rijst de vraag hoe we voorbij de...

Extending the Material Biography of Byblos through Understanding Ancient Common Commodity Spaces and Human Artifacts