Sustainable renewal in Colonies of Benevolence: Cultural heritage as a vector for sustainable agricultural development in the Netherlands

The Colonies of Benevolence, founded in the early 19th century, were a groundbreaking social experiment aimed at addressing poverty and fostering self-sufficiency in the Netherlands. These colonies, comprising agricultural lands and settlements, were designed to provide employment opportunities and housing for the impoverished population while...

Betweenness: Tangible & Intangible boundaries for formulating a complex estate landscape in Gelders Arcadie

Connection and separation, or synthesis and dissolution, to draw on Georg Simmel’s expression, are each the precondition of the other. It lightens me to rethink the core of boundary. In the estate landscape of Veluwe Zoom, the elites and noble use flowing water, shrubs, walls, fences to declare their own territory and maintain bridge, passage to...

Watering the Semiarid: Designing a Wetness Retention Landscape in Jaguaribara, Brazil

Since the earliest records, the Brazilian semiarid, in the northeast of the country, has suffered from water scarcity and recurrent droughts. To mitigate the effects of high variability and low availability of water in the region, governments have been investing, since the 1960s, in the construction of dams to stop the loss of water to the ocean...

Mediating Waterscapes: [Re]activating the flood vulnerable kampung communities along the Ciliwung river through “Adaptable landscape and water management strategies and design”

The phase “water, water everywhere but too much or too little” aptly explains the current situation of many global cities. Within the numerous challenges due to Climate change and Urbanisation, water ranks the highest as a risk to the society. This risk ranges from water related catastrophes like floods to availability of portable water to the...

Land can sometimes be water: Bridging the dichotomy between land and water through amphibious landscapes

In an excerpt from the fictional work “Waterland” (Swift, 1992), the narrator labels water as “Nothing,” implying land and humans as “Something.” This was more of a philosophical expression that can alternatively be inferred from the real-world processes like land reclamation. Land was always associated with value, stability, certainty and...

Urban Forest Movement(s): Movement as design method for experiencing nature and its beneficial effects in the city of Den Haag

Currently cities are becoming more densified, resulting in overpopulated areas with fewer green spaces. Together with this rising health care expenses caused by mental health and current environmental design questions such as water nuisance, heath island effect, densification demands and creating a healthy living environment, leads to...

Landscapes In-Flux: Journey through the dynamic floodplains of holy river Ganga at Prayagraj, India

River Ganga flows through one of the most sacred pilgrimage spots in the city of Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh where it meets its largest tributary Yamuna. The site at the confluence of these rivers hosts the Hindu festival – “Kumbh Mela” where myriads of pilgrims’ bathe in river Ganga. <br/><br/>The festival acts as an external force of human...

A New Watery Balance: Redefine The Scenic and Circular Waterscape in The Villages In Wuyuan, China

Wuyuan is located in Jiangxi province, south-east China, which is famous for its unique ancient village identity. The long-existing villages in the Wuyuan area have been running in a balance that people living and working with the water. This identity of living and working with water attracts millions of tourists. However, these vulnerable...

New Natural Landscape:Restoring biodiversity in post-industrial region,Parkstad-Limburg

Parkstad Limburg is a conurbation of eight municipalities in South-Limburg in the Netherlands. It’s a typical post-industrial city on the coal mine belt which crosses Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. Due to the stop of coal mining this region lost its pillar industry and now is facing a series of problems of shrinkage in economy and population....

Re-connecting Mostar: Rethinking the East-West Axis by using the Neretva's water as natural catalyser

This graduation thesis aims to reactivate an old axis connecting two different parts of the city of Mostar. The choice of this particular corridor has been adopted not just because of its strategic location - it crosses the city from East to West, two sides that have been rebuilt after the Bosnian war without a coherent urban strategy - but also...

Safe Lives: Dealing with Earthquakes by open space in Taipei, Taiwan


Taiwan is located in the Circum-Pacific Seismic Zone; therefore, this island nation is destined to encounter recurrent cataclysmic earthquakes as what has been witnessed in the previous centuries. Taipei City, which is recognized as the most populous and densest city of Taiwan, has a series of push factors which lead herself standing with...

Stitches: Blending landscape fabric through the golden threads of spatial identity in San Riku coastline, Otsuchi, Iwate, Japan

Disaster prevention and coastal protection of Otsuchi have affected the livelihood and the daily pattern of lifestyle of the regular Otsuchian. This work represents the alternative to a typical top down prefectural level demand for a line based infrastructural solution to disaster prevention and creates the required importance of livelihood,...

Mosaic Garden City: redefining the relation between people and nature by structuring water management through landscape infrastructure in an informal settlement, Kampung Tamansari in Bandung

Slum population has increased continuously in global south. It expands onto precarious land such as floodplains, lagoon areas and so on leading to deficiency of basic facilities. Bandung is the third most populous city in Indonesia with around 26,000 slum dwellings. Kampung Tamansari in Bandung is the densest informal settlement located along...

Dordrecht Floodscapes: Towards the Amphibious City

The aim of this project is to explore the possibilities of establishing a new relationship between water and the city of Dordrecht, aiming towards a sustainable future. In one of the lowest parts of the Netherlands, increasingly threatened by climate change and cloudburst flooding, the feasibility of a stormwater management plan is explored,...

Towards Resilient Delta: Integration of natural dynamics as water safety and climate adaptation measures within the urbanised delta city of Dordrecht

As the landscape of the south western river delta in the Netherlands is increasingly urbanised, the processes of urbanisation and the dynamics of nature can no longer go in their separate ways. Measures for water safety, that over the course of recent history has been diverting, regulating, and controlling natural dynamics away from the urban...

Kintsugi: Revitalizing the expressway zone of Tokyo

Though often successful in geopolitical and economical terms, the tendency to engineer infrastructures for ‘single purpose’ often resulted in disrupted landscapes and erasure of cultural and natural values (Strang 1996). Besides this, Tokyo deals with a wide range of problematiques, from the threat of earthquakes destroying its expressways and...

Foodbanism: Strategy of healthy green future for Rotterdam Zuid

The project seeks a strategic planning of integrating urban agriculture into part of the green infrastructure for Rotterdam Zuid, which hopes to open up the possibilities of urban agriculture to inspire people like planners, decision makers and residents. The proposal based on the collaborative communication combining the supportive policy,...

Mixscapes: improving landscape qualities around Boxtel by introducing alternative agricultural functions

What is the relationship between landscape and agriculture? How can agriculture contibute to the development of the landscape? This research aims to investigate the power of agriculture over landscape form. The research goals are the creation of a diverse landscape structure with sustainable principals and strong identity. The hypothesis is that...