A walled garden in Brussels: Ambiguity as the foundation for coexistence in the European quarter in Brussels

"Brussels was never destroyed by the wars, but rather by its own people" these words of Victor Bourgouis show the destructive vision of social and cultural spaces in Brussels. The city's vision of urban development is based on top-down politics, fed by the desire to be modern. This affection leads to the non-identification and displacement of...

The inclusive community hub: A feminist approach towards architecture

Within architecture, design is not always inclusive. This research looks at how a safe space can be developed in Rotterdam, in the neighborhood Coolhaven. To achieve this, a feminist community-based design approach is applied. In this method one designs together with the community, looking at the residents of the neighborhood and what their...

MUSIC MARVEL: The playground of unconsciousness

The final conception of my music marvel is to create a binary musical community center with auditorium and rooms for music therapy/school purposes but also creating a space for urban “flaneur” the wanderer of the city that can visit accidently and still have memorable experiences through seasonal exhibitions and pop up shows. The space will be...

Creating the Community: An investigation of ‘t Karregat and the basis and limits of user involvement in the Dutch multifunctional experiment

This paper aims to analyse the participatory processes involved in the creation and running of community centre ‘t Karregat in Eindhoven using tools and theoretical models on participatory design from the time of the centre’s creation as well as off today. The goal is to understand the limits and shortcomings of the user involvement processes...

Communal Center: A Project on the Redefinition of Urban Rituals

The project, while focusing solely on the example of the Nadodrze district in Wroclaw, is trying to call attention to a much bigger problem present in a plethora of other cities. The deprivation caused by long years of imposition of a new order, a new architectural identity and a plan to unify the individual in a collective are still distinctly...

An 'Offline' Virtual Community: To Design a Public Condenser as a 'System'

The virtual world, existing in parallel with the physical one, has reshaped our life. Nowadays as people rely increasingly on social media for mutal interactions, ‘the virtual community actually becomes the real form of community today’ (Clark, A.). Such reliance owes to the ‘customizing system with hirarchy’ of virtual community to a large...

Thuis in Hillesluis: leven in de Ambachtsschool

A vacant former school building in Hillesluis, Rotterdam-South, is transformed into dwellings specifically designed for residents of this area who are moving upward the ladder of social mobility (“sociale stijgers”). In order to enable them to climb up (or start on) the property ladder, research is conducted on their housing preferences. Three...

'KNIL' MAGAZIJNEN Community Center: Community based transformation towards a resilient future.

In the context of the H&A Shared Heritage Lab, which I am part of, crucial built heritage issues are investigated in the city of Bandung, Indonesia. Bandung has many Indonesian-Dutch heritage sites and buildings as a result of the long period of colonization by the Dutch. They are part of both Dutch and Indonesian history and have become...

Ockenburgh Community Hotel

Research abstract:The world steel demand and production are constantly growing parallelly to the world economic<br/>growth. Even though steel is fully recyclable, there is still a vast amount of virgin production which put<br/>tremendous pressure on the natural scarcity of natural resources. Steel recycling only mitigates the<br/>impacts since...

Innovation Campus Zuidas: A New Public Interior

The Innovation Campus at Zuidas is a contemporary, flexible public interior designated for all present and future audiences. It occupies a former secondary street which is located on an embankment. This site can be considered a fringe zone between very heterogeneous parts and concepts of city tissue. In this situation, the newly introduced...

Building a better Cittaslow: Bringing the Slow City to its Inhabitants

This master thesis takes a look at the Slow City applications in Turkey - a top-down international certification organization based on sustainable development for towns, and how to bring it down to the level of their locals, making the concept socially more sustainable (as opposed to depending on the policies of the administration). The thesis...

American Madrassah

This graduation project is a design for an Islamic community centre and prayerspace in New York City, called Park51. The design is an 80 meter high complex surrounded by buildings on three sides. The front facade is situated at a small street in downtown Manhattan (Park Place 51), two blocks remote from Ground Zero. It houses various rooms for...

Education, Recreation and Sports Transversely Through Transvaal

The district of Transvaal in The Hague city is suffering a lack of sports and play facilities. In order to do something about this I designed a building for sports and play. This building gives new meaning to a poorly facilitated area of Transvaal. The building design together with the design of the public realm establish a connection with the...

Belo Horizonte, to create a beautiful horizon for the inhabitants of the favela Pedreira Prado Lopes

This book contains a research, made during my graduation at the faculty of Architecture on the university of Delft. This graduation is done in the Explorelab, a research driven graduation-laboratory for exploration of fascinations in the profession of building sciences, in a broad sense. Subject Slums are noncities in big cities. They are...