Tracing Shadows and Shaping Futures: Exploring the Legacy and Future of Soviet-Era Housing in Riga

Despite nearly three decades having passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet-era housing remains a significant component of major cities’ housing stocks. Often perceived as outdated and socially stigmatized, these housing estates surpass their intended lifespan, leading to difficulties in maintenance and renovation. In this study,...

Preserving Historic Catholic Churches: The Case for Adaptive Reuse in Future Conservation

This thesis discusses the heritage approach of adaptive reuse as a way to preserve and protect abandoned churches in Limburg. For this, a discussion is had on the social and cultural dynamic and history of Limburg. This is a province in the Netherlands with a deep historical connection to the Catholic religion. This paper explores the province’s...

Effects of adaptive vernacular reuse on historic industrial districts in densifying Dutch cities: Adaptive vernacular reuse deployed as design strategy to redevelop dilapidated Dutch heritage sites

This research studies the effects of adaptive vernacular reuse on industrial heritage sites. Hereby the studied effects are focused on industrial sites in Dutch cities. Within the Netherlands a trend can be seen of cities trying to densify the urban environment. This trend is the consequence of a housing shortage and a low availability of...

The Reuse of Church Buildings: The history and possibilities in the Netherlands and Belgium

Churches are one of the most important features of the Dutch townscape. They were the cultural hub of the town for a long time. The 20th century marked the start of a societal change: ontkerkelijking. More and more churches are becoming vacant in the Netherlands and Belgium. These buildings can be reused, and the past can help us. The research...

Lessons From Yazd: Rethinking Iranian Traditional Courtyard Houses for Indoor Climate Comfort in Educational Buildings

In current times sustainability is a major priority in the building industry which contributes largely to country’s total energy consumption. Additionally, educational buildings make up a large part of building stocks around the world and these buildings are responsible for large part of energy consumption especially by heating, cooling, and...

Second Life Shelter: Freetown of Christiania as an Example of Affordable, Circular Housing

This thesis investigates the squatting community Freetown of Christiania as a case of self-built housing that is both affordable and circular. Affordability of housing has been an existing problem in Europe, followed by a relatively recently identified need for transition from a linear to a circular economy. Squatting communities have emerged in...

Framework for Reuse of Secondary Products in New Constructions

Reuse of building material is an integral part of making the product circular. However, there is lack of working frameworks and practical tools which can quantify the feasibility of reuse over other choices such as virgin material use or recycling for that matter. Therefore, this research focuses on the development of such a working framework...