From the concept of buildings as materials banks to establishing local materials’ processing centers at neighborhood scale: The example of the western garden cities post-war area

Large amounts of material waste resulting from the renovation of post-war housings pose a great challenge for managing waste through destruction. Applying the concept of the circular economy may allow the opportunity to reuse these materials that would otherwise be thrown away due to renovation. The article explores the possibility of embedding...

Controlled Environment Agriculture to Renovation: Bio-base Materials from Element to Global Scale

In the global shift towards decarbonization of the built environment, the nearly Zero Energy Building (nZEB) goals in the Directive 2010/31/EU had been set as an achievable goal for the EU. By requiring all future constructions to utilize the integration of energy efficient services into the building as well as emphasize the reduction of...

A House For Cheerful Living: an exploration of architectural representation in post-war housing competitions

Post-war housing competitions were held during the second World War to provide solution for the housing shortage. Looking at the drawings made for these competitions we can see that a similar style is used.<br/>Through analysis and comparison of a drawing made by Jean Bodman and one made by Don Knorr, this thesis explores the similarities in...

Self-Management of Housing and Urban Commons: New Belgrade and Reflections on Commons Today

The concepts of collective management of housing and urban spaces are being revisited within the contemporary discussions about community-driven approaches and practices and, in particular, related to the revitalization of residential neighbourhoods. This research identifies the concepts of self-management and social ownership of housing in the...

Local Community Centre as Utilitarian, Governing and Social Space: The Case of New Belgrade CMZ

The paper studies local community centres (Serbian: centar mesne zajednice - CMZ) of post-war mass housing neighbourhoods in New Belgrade. Those were designed and built in 1970s as multifunctional centres with facilities and programmes complementary to the housing blocks: socio-cultural, commercial (grocery stores), daily services (post...

Nieuwenhuysenbuurt Futureproof: Minimizing the construction waste released by the demolition of Dutch post-war social housing

Moving towards the Dutch circularity goals of 2050, this project aims to diminish the amount of construction waste released by the demolition of 282 post-war dwellings in the Nieuwenhuysenbuurt in Amsterdam West (1954). Through the use of a flexible and demountable building system, construction waste is diminished now and in the future.

Post-War Refurbishment: Making post-war era houses sustainable

The Netherlands faces climate change due to global warming and earthquakes due to gas production. To decrease both earthquakes and CO2 production, the government aims to half the gas production in the coming four years and aims for an entire stop by 2030. Over 80% of Dutch houses are heated with gas; 20% were built in the late post-war era (1960...

Towards urban energy transition: How climate-responsive and energy-active urban design can facilitate the transition

The subject of this graduation project is the energy transition within urban environments. This is pursued through, firstly, gaining an understanding of the fossil dependency and how this has affected our cities and practices. In order to overturn this effect and open the way for the urban energy transition, urban design needs to become more...

Gelukszoekers Welkom: Door omdenken draagvlak creeëren voor het huisvesten van statushouders

De vluchtelingencrisis zorgt voor een grotere druk op de sociale huurwoning markt, mede hierdoor heerst er een negatief sentiment tegen het opnemen van vluchtelingen. Door de behoeften op verschillende schalen te inventariseren en te handelen in gemeenschappelijke belang kan er gezorgd worden voor het omvormen van deze negatieve sentiment naar...

Regenerating post-war residential block by additional greenhouse

This Project primarily focused on two theme topics, elderly adapted housing and energy refurbishment in order to make an integrated design with the existing Intervam flats in Utrecht. The whole graduation project is consisted of two part, research and design. In the research part, the greenhouse was studied as an integrated approach, its value...

Transition towards Sustainable City

Location for graduation project – Kaunas, Lithuania. Lithuania is one of the countries that have been for 50years a part of the communist bloc. 50 years of central planning and plan economy highly influenced the form of cities, the traditions of spatial planning and the habits of people to use space. After becoming independent, cities went...

Post-war duplex housing in courtyard configuration: Transformation towards adaptive neighborhoods: Cas Roland Holstbuurt

The graduation studio ‘Housing as heritage’, within the chair of Restoration, Modification, Intervention and Transformation (®MIT), deals with complex social issues and degeneration processes of post-war housing neighborhoods. This graduation project in particular aims at a strategy for phased revitalization of post-war ground bound duplex...

Possible future role for architects and developers in reuse

Since the economic crisis in 2008 there is a common impression that things are about to change. No more large scale newly built neighbourhoods, growth is no longer a keyword. More transformation, reuse and redevelopment within the existing city boundaries is. New building assignments like increasing number of 1- and 2 person households and...

City, catch the time! Rediscovering socialist neighbourhoods in a new capitalist society: Case in Vilnius Lithuania

The graduation project is called “City, catch the time! Rediscovering socialist neighbourhoods in a new capitalist society”. The study case is Vilnius, capital of Lithuania. Focus of the project is socialist housing estates, known as microdistricts. In the beginning of the year I have stated that those housing estates constructed until 1990s in...

Performance agreements for sustainable building in the renewal of post-war housing areas

The search for the most eco-efficient strategies for sustainable housing transformations