Designed Self-Help: Producing Closed Forms for Open Buildings

Designing Self-help sounds like a contradiction in terms. Indeed, a great deal of the scholarly accounts on self-help housing excludes the agency of the designer, stressing instead the roles of the policy maker and the owner-builder. In the architecture discipline, from the late 1950s through the 1980s the notions of open form, group form and...

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

Architectural engineering of FRP bridges

This paper deals with the use of Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP's) in architectural and structural bridge design. The challenges and opportunities that come with this relatively new material are discussed. An inventory is made of recent engineers' solutions in FRP, followed by a discussion on architectural application of FRP's derived from the...

Designerly Visualisation: Conceptions, Methods, Models, Perceptions

If we wish to reach a deeper, more objective understanding of the phenomena of Architectural and Environmental Design, we need to develop and apply working methods that allow us to imaginatively analyse and consequently envision the formal issues which are at (inter)play: demonstrating their workings and effects in the ‘Real World’. First of all...

Model & scale as conceptual devices in architectural representation

This year we celebrate the tenth anniversary of our Computer Aided Manufacturing laboratory (CAMlab, http://www.camlab-bk.nl). From the start we provide laser cutting, CNC-milling and 3D-print facilities for the students and the researchers at the Faculty of Architecture in Delft. Over the past ten years we have delivered uncountable amounts of...

Engagement and Estrangement: Participation and Disciplinary Autonomy in Álvaro Siza’s S. Victor Neighbourhood

Citizens’ participation in the design process has been discussed since the aftermath of World War II as an instrument to promote a more humanist approach to habitat. However, it has been also accused of fostering populist outcomes where the designer is merely the hand of the people, challenging the traditional limits of architecture’s...