Cities of the Future: Towards Sustainable City Economies

It goes without saying that cities of tomorrow face numerous challenges that will change their appearance drastically. We only now begin to notice a gradual change towards climate-adaptive cities, inner-city renewable energy production, and more healthy urban environments by re-naturing our public realm and buildings as well as accommodating...

Cities of the Future: Control in Times of Acceleration

'The architect who proposes to run with technology knows now that he [sic] will be in fast company, and that, in order to keep up, he may have to emulate the Futurists and discard his whole cultural load, including the professional garments by which he is recognized as an architect. If, on the other hand, he decides not to do this, he may find...

Cities of the Future: On Nature and the Grammar of Design

In his book, 'The sense of style', the cognitive scientist Steven Pinker argues that the categories of grammar reflect the four building blocks of thought: time, space, causality, and matter. Coincidentally, these building blocks are the same ones that dictate the grammar of spatial design. In them being absolute categories, they describe well...

Cities of the Future: A Mobile and Sustainable Society

My research career started with a publication about externalities of mass motorization. Academic researchers are producing an endless stream of paper. Unfortunately, only a few of these publications have practical relevance. Even if they do, their recommendations are frequently butchered, mitigated or ignored in the political arena. Such...

Façades-as-a-Service: The Role of Technology in the Circular Servitisation of the Building Envelope

The servitisation of the built environment, through the implementation of product–service systems, is considered a promising business strategy to achieve a circular economy transition. This servitisation faces a number of practical challenges, among them the technological readiness and effective integration and application of existing and...

Parametric Massing Optimization Tools

The separation between architect and engineer is a relatively recent event, in comparison to the long history of human constructions. In modern times the separation of the two professions and the involvement of engineers in later design stages has proved problematic, because of the large effort needed to make changes in later design stages. On...

Implementing Sustainability in the Built Environment

There is a growing desire for sustainable design, both with firms and their clients in the built environment. However sustainability is not always integrated into designs in the same uniform manner, or at the same level. Barriers and carriers exist that influence the design and its level of sustainability for consulting engineering firms....