Growing Social Housing

<br/>Today, the building construction sector in the European Union consumes 40% of primary materials, and the same percentage of primary energy, making it an exhaustive industry responsible for resource depletion. At the same time the Netherlands is in need of more affordable housing. Drastic change is needed to produce the necessary housing in...

Urban Nature Analysis: The first step towards nature inclusive design

Nature inclusive is a large topic that is still in its pioneering phase. There is a need for clear elaboration and ways of incorporating this new way of thinking into design. In order to have a functional nature inclusive design one must fist<br/>know the existing ecosystem to contribute to this. The research question: how can a designer analyze...

The potentials of a rooftop greenhouse for an existing mixed-use building towards energy neutrality

The importance of technology in the current architecture practice cannot be denied, as that hasn’t been possible for more than a century. Technology is ever developing and also in the current architectural practice new developments have to be implemented in buildings. In order to keep grip as an architect, of all the technology in buildings,...

Design for Life: From Built Environment to Living Environment

Design for Life underlines the key-role of the architect in contributing to life. Life meaning both the functioning of life systems as well as the quality of life. It shows that, even though architects tend to mainly focus on practical and technical solutions, contributing to the quality of life is evenly essential for it creates the opportunity...

Crown Town: Rooftop architecture for urban densification and greenification

With cities reaching their expansion borders it becomes more important to find other ways to grow like expanding within the existing core. Densification becomes more relevant, so new and creative ways of urban planning are needed. With more functions and people using the same city area, the pressure on public space and urban green increases. It...

Multi?scale allotment gardening in Q-Port

The goal of this project has been to test if urban farming can help in empty office redevelopment; if it can have an added social, architectural and functional value. The main test object was the existing Q-Port-building in the west of Amsterdam (50% empty at the moment). During the process, architectural aspects like space, form, composition,...