BIND BY WATER: building a community amongst solo dwellers through water infrastructure

The design of BIND BY WATER promotes a new way of living in which we rethink the integration of living and bathing into one building. By reimagining the bath as a shared space, the unique timbre of the project offers a space of synthesis, vulnerability, and reconciliation, where the armor of everyday life is abandoned together with one’s clothes...

Reconstructing Territorial Identities: The case of the refugee settlements in Nicosia, Cyprus

One of the main results of Cyprus’s contemporary conflict is the Cypriot refugee identity creation. The thesis focuses on the Cypriot refugee settlements created from 1976 to 1991, unraveling the formation of the Greek Cypriot refugee community through space. The thesis project questions how community-led spatial planning allows the Cypriot...

A Community Art Centre for Nijmegen

The Molenpoort shopping mall represents both a problem and a solution. Its concept is outdated, and its shops are for the majority vacant. Though being centrally located within the city, next to a heritage site and at a pedestrian gateway to the town centre, it is underused and hidden, and even though its mass is vast, it serves one purpose only...

The power of stories: A framework to orchestrate reflection in urban storytelling to form stronger communities

This paper focuses on the particular power of storytelling to foster reflection and connections between people in urban life. In fact, the core principles and mechanisms for public storytelling to achieve this have yet to be made explicit. This gap is addressed by introducing a novel reflective storytelling framework that unveils the underlying...

Prosumerism in Oosterwold: Designing a Transitional Practice of Food Growing

Imagine a neighborhood where almost all of the decisions are left to its inhabitants; a neighborhood where all of the inhabitants cultivate soil to grow their food for their own consumption, in other words prosumerism*. This newly established neighborhood is Oosterwold which is located in the intersection of Dutch cities Almere and Zeewolde....

Sparking Stories: Turning an abandoned coal mine into a culture mine to help a community find its future

An investigation into how our world is shaped by narratives and storytelling, the design results in the re-imagining of a mining community. Having no story for their future, the design is an exploration of potential and how the community can be nudged into creating the stories they need to think positively about the future.

LEVERAGING SOCIO-CULTURAL NETWORKS: Local adaptation strategies to bring about flood resilience in Chennai Metropolitan Area, India

This project is set in the Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA) in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. Currently spanning 1189 sq. km, the region forms a unique delta with three rivers, namely, the Koshashtalaiyar, Coovum and Adyar, which eventually drain into the Bay of Bengal. With an estimated population of 10 million and a population density of...

Mess is More: Iterating Dwelling Design Processes For The Urban Poor In New Delhi, India

The architectural discipline has always maintained a safe distance from the ‘informal’ settlements by positioning itself as objective outsiders. However, in the case of India’s capital city of Delhi with 73% of its population living in these settlements, the discipline has been forced to re-position itself. Forming outside the claims of...

Development of a knowledge sharing game to design collaborations in a hierarchical organisation: How innovation strategies can be implemented at the working floor throughout organisations

Background: There is an increasing need for structured methods that encourage effective knowledge sharing and collaborations at the working floor to implement innovation strategies, especially in case of employer - employee relationships. <br/><br/>Objective: This research (master thesis) focused on knowledge sharing on the work floor during...

Join the PRIDE: Offering intrapreneurs working in internal corporate ventures at ING a career perspective

In the ever changing world we live in, companies have to constantly adapt to stay relevant. More and more large organizations do this by starting up innovation hubs next to their established business. ING is one such company that has started up an hub which they call their innovation studio. ING sees this as a necessity due to developments of...

Bridging Communities

Hunters Point, a vacant naval yard in San Francisco has potential to be developed as a community and research hub that focusses on water related challenges. For socio-economical challenged neighbourhoods that surround this area, the community and hub can provide jobs and an identity. Within the studio Delta Interentions, water is a central theme...

#WomenSpatialActivism: An urban designer's approach towards re-appropriation of spaces by women in New Delhi, India

Women inequality is a common practice in today’s world which is global in nature. Focusing on a developing country like India, violence against women, needless to say, is a grave concern. Crime in the form of rapes, molestation, and eve-teasing, has made public spaces fearful, and women have developed the fear of being a part of these places....

Another Shenzhen: Towards an Urban Regeneration Model for Intercultural Integration

Shenzhen has long been seen as the ‘World Factory’ and a ‘Cultural Desert’. However in the era of knowledge based development, it is urgent to explore new strategies on urban regeneration in the perspective of intercultural integration. The migration of multiple sub ethic groups in the history as well as the migrant workers from nationwide since...

The Bridge, (a) community building

The societal issue that this project tries to address is the increasing anonymity in residential urban neighborhoods. The increasing anonymity is caused by a decrease of social interaction between citizens that share the same living environment. The government used to subsidize community facilities like sports clubs and cultural institutions to...