What If?: Thinking Through/Confronting Our Relation with Food

The relations between us and food have become distorted, deviated from their origin and meaning in our daily lives. Where solutions are sought in consciousness, this research focuses on the subconscious level of our relation with food. By changing our perception of food, using architecture as a medium between us, the subject, and food, the...

Built for the solo dweller: An antidote to urban loneliness

<br/>Loneliness has become a growing problem in the city of Amsterdam. It is<br/>not a new phenomenon, but due to better understanding of the topic and therefore knowing it’s dangers better, the urge to do something about it grows. Nevertheless, loneliness is a complex issue. This is because feeling lonely is<br/>a subjective feeling. In...

Het nabestaandenhuis: Het nabestaandenhuis offers practical, emotional and social support to nabestaanden/relatives and their family and friends.

Death is universal, but the way we deal with it is diverse and ever changing. For a period of time there was a taboo around death in the Netherlands. Nowadays we live in an accelerating individualistic society which means that there is no space/ time to reflect on loss. Gradually, specialists as well as nabestaanden discover that this can lead...

An LT- ready and economically feasible renovation façade design

The refurbishment of the Dutch post- war residential building stock provides a great potential for energy and CO2 emissions savings, since a large number of buildings were built before 1975 and under low or no energy standards. However, their refurbishment and especially zero-on-the-meter, is too expensive and it is not possible to find the...

An integrated approach towards energy performance and circularity in buildings

The built environment consumes 50% of all raw materials, 40% of the total energy and 30% of the total water, in the Netherlands. As climate change looms over and threatens our physical environment, the EU and consequently the Dutch government has proposed multiple stringent regulations to curb our unsustainable resource consumption habits and...

Energy flat Buiksloterham: On how to design energy flat multifunctional urban blocks

This research focusses on providing guidelines on how energy flat multifunctionalurban blocks can be designed, including governance components.   First of all, architectural design can play a significant role in reducing themismatch over time. With architectural design the space heating demand can...

Playscapes: An investigation into games as generative interfaces for architecture

This projects aims to understand architectural entities present in Blaak Market, Rotterdam systematically and map their relation to a geometric game. Doing so would enable the inhabitants to voice their concern by play ing an intuitive game. Beside the new approach to participatory design, the methodology adopted in this project has made the...

Living in a world with(out) oil: Turning oil tanks into dwellings in a post oil world

We are getting close to the so called peak of oil and this will result in a shortage of oil and therefore oil products. We can assume that the oil industry will get in decline, therefore we should think about the heritage that the oil industry will leave behind. An iconic element of the petrol industry is the oil storage tank. We can knock these...

Positive vibe[r]s for Parkstad: Strategies for implementing, processing and producing Miscanthus x Giganteus

This paper gives an insight in strategies for implementing, processing and producing Miscanthus x Giganteus, or Elephant grass as it is mistakenly called, on a mid-large scale in the Parkstad Region. The area is rooted in agriculture because of fertile löss soil. There have always been a tight bond between the villages and surrounding land. This...

Urban building energy modeling using a 3D city model and minimizing uncertainty through Bayesian inference: A case study focuses on Amsterdam residential heating demand simulation

To cut down immense greenhouse gases emission and energy consumption in the rapidly urbanizing world, a holistic understanding and rethinking of our dynamic urban energy system are inevitable. Performing bottom-up building energy modelings at urban scale based on Geographic Information System (GIS) and semantic 3D city models could be a...

Rivierbakens: Post-Industrieel Rivierlandschap: Steenfabrieken in de uiterwaarden van de Waal

Steenfabrieken en uiterwaarden, ze zijn onlosmakelijk met elkaar verbonden. Op zoek naar klei paradeerden ze langs de rivier, waardoor het landschap gevormd werd voor de rivier. Door een samengaan van natuurlijke processen en menselijk handelen bleef bijzondere flora en fauna achter, maar ook ovenlichamen en hoge schoorsteen die herinneren aan...