Knowledge Updating Strategies for Cumulative Learning of Markov Logic Networks

Learning new concepts is a difficult task for autonomous robots. These robots can adapt to changes in the situations. To adapt to a situation, they should be able to determine the usefulness of objects around them. The usefulness of objects is highly dependent on situational context, making pre-programming of adaptation behaviour to all possible...

Growing Residency: Towards a multi-species design practice in architecture based on affordances

The research of the thesis explores to what extent a multi-species design practice in architecture based on affordances informed by the act of human and non-human space-making in abandoned ruins helps to achieve a symbiotic relation between architecture and biodiversity. For this purpose, a theoretical framework triangulating affordances, multi...

Interior designers’ strategies for creating social office space

The rise of remote working has highlighted the importance of office spaces that support employees’ social well-being. However, there is a lack of explicit knowledge on how to design such spaces. In order to address this gap, this study explored the strategies employed by practitioners in designing social office spaces. In-depth interviews...

Who Owns the City?: A Response to Privatised Public Space

The following research discusses the changing nature of public space and how ownership has become an inevitable part of it. The aim of this research has been to discuss the complexity of the grey area between privately owned public space and public space, as well as the emerging issues related to POPS within the City of London. In which my...

A Novel Data-Driven Approach to Examine Children’s Movements and Social Behaviour in Schoolyard Environments

Social participation at schoolyards is crucial for children’s development. Yet, schoolyard environments contain features that can hinder children’s social participation. In this paper, we empirically examine schoolyards to identify existing obstacles. Traditionally, this type of study requires huge amounts of detailed information about...

Workplace affordances of social well-being: a conceptual framework

The prolonged working from home during the recent pandemic has increased awareness of the social function of the office: employees missed informal social interaction with co-workers, face-to-face meetings, and spontaneous encounters. If the trend of hybrid working persists, one of the main functions of the physical office will be to support face...

Making and embedding humane technologies: can artistic practices provide normative guidance?

In this commentary, I raise one question and one critical comment about Rietveld’s normative claim that ‘artistic practices afford embedding technologies better in society’ (2019, p. 5). In what exact sense is this the case? It seems that Rietveld offers two interconnected but conceptually distinct answers to this question. The first focuses on...

Folding: From the desire of the city to the city of desire

Athens is a city that has grown immensely after its establishment as a capital, from around 7.000 inhabitants in 1834 to around 3,1 million in 2019. After 2006, due to various economic and political reasons, mainly through the implementation of additional taxation in the building sector and in property ownership, building activities have...

On Norms and Bodies: How Architecture Can Empower - A Design for the Zelfregiehuis in Rotterdam

This project aims to explore ways of being considerate—as architects—with regards to the sites (and the bodies related to these sites) in which we intervene through our practice. Architecture is often meant as a mediator between bodies and their surroundings, however, actually realising this aspiration is rather difficult. In the research it is...

Designing for Coexistence: Or how to overcome the speciesistic bias in spatial design

Due to increasing human land use, the world’s biodiversity is declining. These losses of biodiversity in many places create problems for the resilience of the ecosystems in which we live. How we design our spaces has an impact on all the species that live in them. In order to protect and improve the biodiversity, spatial designers should change...

An introduction in the ecology of spatio-temporal affordances in airspace