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 Elegance of Vertical Farming: Architectural Design of Building Integrated Plant Factories with Artificial Lighting

With phenomena such as population growth and urbanisation, expanding cities no longer derive their food supply from their hinterlands but rely on the global food trade which includes vast greenhouse and open-field agriculture. Given the limited availability of land, water and nutrients together with the uncertainty of a changing climate, the...

Reconstructing vaults 2.0: The potential of cast glass for reconstructing historical buildings

This thesis is about reconstructing historical vaults with cast glass. The vision is to design a complete dry-assembly cast glass arch vault where the Notre Dame de Paris is the chosen case study. The main question is: To what extent can a historical masonry arch vault be reconstructed by using cast glass components? The method is based on...

Transformation Structuralism: 21st century university in a 70's structuralist building

The goal of the project is to find out to what extent it is possible to adapt the Faculty of Humanities in Leiden to meet the requirements of a 21st century university. The Faculty of Humanities is a university designed in the 70’s. Although it will remain the same institute, the program of the 21st century version consists of different types of...

Photovoltaic and Heritage: Towards the energy transition of the building environment

Reaching a neutral use of energy in the building environment is challenging. That is because, as the population expands, so does the energy consumption. Considering that the building environment is accountable for 40 percent of energy consumption and 36 percent of total CO2 emissions, the building sector has to conform with specific guidelines...

Sun shading of the future: A next generation workflow for applying the performative computational architecture framework to sun shading design, based on an example sun shading system for high-rise office buildings with all-glass exteriors in tropical climates optimised on visual and thermal comfort

This thesis is about improving the workflow for applying the Performative Computational Architecture (PCA) framework to sun shading design. The PCA framework is a design approach consisting of three phases; form-finding, performance evaluation and optimisation. The conventional workflow in regard to sun shading design is defined as a combination...

Sustainable Water management scheme for the Negin Safari Park

Though the perils of climate change on our environment are common knowledge its mitigation through informed planning is widely absent. This research project aims to aid the architect in developing a design which has a comparatively lower ecological footprint and focuses on opportunistic utilization of renewable resources readily available in the...

Integrated computational approach for the generation and preliminary structural analysis of woven structures during the early design stage

The role of the architect as a “master builder”, or someone who possessed a deep knowledge about the materials and ways to use them, has recently disappeared in favour of technical specialisation. The distancing of the architect from the actual construction site coincides with the emergence of digital design environments that provide seemingly...

The Future Building Envelope: Circular and Adaptive: A strategy for designing demountable unitized curtain walls, with an application on 4 adaptive concepts

This report includes all the research conducted during the last phase of the Master of Science Building Engineering within the faculty of Civil Engineering. The main aim is to form a strategy for designing demountable unitized curtain walls; one that could actually be used in practice by future engineers and architects. This is why this...

The energy and Comfort Performance of a Lightweight Translucent Adaptable Trombe Wall in Different Buildings and Climates: A numerical study

A traditional Trombe wall is known as a high thermal-mass wall, situated behind a window of a room and separated by an air cavity. The idea behind using a Trombe wall is that heat, ventilation and comfort can be passively generated by using the ‘free’ energy of the sun. The surface of the wall absorbs solar radiation when the sun shines, stores...

Climate responsive facade system with translucent PCM

The European Union has approved the Energy Performance of Building Directive, requesting all new building to be near Zero Energy by 2020. This has created challenges and opportunities in the building sector, encouraging the creation of new solutions, which are both energy efficient and environmental friendly. Between many possible explored...

Relink: Leiden University: Rising above the existent

The Project is located in Leiden University’s Humanities Campus (Leiden, Netherlands). Specifically, this project is about intervening on two Structuralist buildings, PN van Eyckhof and Matthias de Vrieshof designed by Joop van Stigt in 1982; the brief calls for their regeneration and adaptation in today’s society, while focusing on one of the...

Redesigning Waste: The Change of perception and implementation of (plastic) waste into the built environment.

The way the western society currently treats waste is hazardous and can threaten not only the public health but also (very delicate) eco systems. Annually over 87 million tonnes of plastic are being produced. Only 2 % is reintroduced into the original purpose. The rest of this plastic is downcycled, landfilled, burned or leaked into the...