Real estate is one of the highest expenditures in almost every business. External disruptions, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, created a significant shift in business operations. This disruption accentuated the importance of resilience as a fundamental operational factor against uncertainties. Corporate real estate (CRE) industries need to be resilient in their processes to respond to the inevitable disruptions and anticipate future opportunities. Nevertheless, in recent years, resilience is becoming a rather broad and ambiguous concept that has been used repeatedly in different contexts. This research was aimed to address and advance resilience in various CRE asset classes to overcome external problems and increase preparedness during uncertainties. This study attempted to re-conceptualise resilience, by exploring the current definitions of resilience. The redefined concept of resilience was then reflected to different asset classes of CRE. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to provide the contextual definition and features of resilience, as well as to assess the value of resilient CRE to an organisation. Subsequently, a resilience framework was composed based on the findings from both theoretical and empirical studies. The framework was then utilised to assess resilience in within-class and across-class analyses. The within-class analysis evaluated the extent of resilient approaches in an asset class, whereas cross-class analysis attempted to explore how resilience can be achieved and optimised in a particular asset class. Furthermore, additional synthesis between theoretical and empirical findings was conducted to further maintain resilience in a longer time span. Here, continuous improvement was identified as a determining factor for the sustenance of resilience. The output of this research provided a theoretical basis for resilient CRE and applicable suggestions to improve and maintain resilience capability in an organisational CRE.

The circular economy transition requires companies to implement innovative supply chains and business models. However, the number of available solutions for the application in the circular built environment is limited. These solutions could be developed through the co-creation between companies aiming for circular transition. However, it is unclear how the co-creation process would look like in the context of the circular build environment. One such case is the REHAB project where stakeholders develop circular building components for housing renovation. Based on the example of one of the components — circular extension — this research develops three process maps of co-creation to help stakeholders organize the co-creation process for the development and implementation of the service loops of the product. This is done by reviewing the academic literature and identifying the requirements and parameters of co-creation for the case for the circular extension, as well as identifying the co-creation designs already available in the literature. Based on this, further process maps were synthesized. The developed process maps consist of six phases: engaging actor, co-conception, co-design, co-production, co-maintenance and co-disposal. Each phase is subdivided into a number of sub-steps for which the best solutions and/or options are mapped. The developed process maps contribute to the circular co-creation literature by showing a clear picture of the co-creation process that practitioners could follow. Additionally, this research evaluates the developed designs with the project stakeholders and derives six lessons learned that could be applicable for circular building components: 1) Cost efficiency is the main aspect influencing implementation of circular building components, 2) Organizing circular co-creation process requires involvement of a human interaction specialist and circular economy consultant, 3) Circularity is largely dependent of the party that initiates the process and becomes the problem owner, 4) Circularity of circular building components in the current reality depends on the formation of secondhand markets, 5) The co-creation process structure is similar for different circular building components, change only network composition and activities/options that could be considered, 6) Sell and buy-back business model and take-back agreements have the most potential for the circular building components, compared to other solution.

An explorative study on the stakeholder interest and potentials of a new type of lease in office buildings in the Netherlands, the healthy lease.

Capitalism is under siege. As the famous economist and business strategist Michael Porter note. Business practice is overflown with an increasing number of societal and environmental concerns, trumping economic activity and trapping businesses in a vicious cycle in which taking responsibility is repaid with taking even more responsibility. On the other hand, these societal concerns cannot be ignored and need to be addressed. As shelter, water, food, and welfare must be provided to a growing population in a durable and future proof manner.
Urban development practice is burdened with this same complex problem. Businesses are confronted by an increasing number of public sustainability regulations and with neo-liberal influences shifting more responsibilities towards the market. Scholars raised their concerns if the public social value can be safeguarded by the market. However, business practice proofed to be capable of taking their social responsibility and even found a way to contribute to both society and their business performance, linking their social behavior towards their corporate reputation. This phenomenon is called CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) benchmarking, in which social reporting and labeling are used to enhance their client base. The danger, however, is that these activities are often better displayed in these reports than performed. Besides, these reports primarily enhance the environmental concerns and leave the ‘softer’ aspects of sustainability ill addressed. These limits of the CSR-benchmarking concept are mainly caused by the intrinsic perception of businesses towards these social activities. Social activities are seen as a costly practice and with the ‘enterprise culture’ still present many businesses today. These activities are not likely to be performed. This problem became the starting point of this research. Can this intrinsic perception of businesses towards social activities be changed?
The Shared Value Creation (SVC) concept fitted this question with its aim to turn corporate social activities from a costly practice into a value-creating activity. By exploring the concept of SVC this study aims to change this business perception towards social activities and eventually contribute to creating sustainable urban areas.

Companies need a competitive advantage within the ‘war for talent’ in order to attract their employee target group. Now the amount of jobs and job vacancies keeps growing, companies started a battle to attract talented knowledge workers to gain the best organisational market position in the current knowledge-driven economy. There is assumed that work environments can be used strategically to attract employees, wherefore companies invest in their work environments. However, it has not been proven that work environments –involving characteristics on location, service & facilities, building, and workplace level– may lead to increased employee attraction. Therefore the main research question is: “What is the influence of work environments on attracting employees to enhance competitive advantage within the war for talent?”. A literature review in combination with structured interviews and an online survey resulted in information on the influence that work environment characteristics have on the attraction of knowledge workers. The data on the influence of work environment characteristics is generated by implementing the value tree method in combination with the constant sum method within the survey. Subsequently, the data is statistically analysed in SPSS by mainly using a Repeated Measures ANOVA in combination with a Paired Samples T-Test or a Games-Howell Test. From the results can be concluded that the work environment is comparable influential as other, more general, employee attraction factors, but is not perceived as one of the most influential factors. Mainly the location-related factors, geographical location and accessibility, appeared to be high influential on people’s choice for a job. In addition, significant differences between groups from different socio-demographic perspectives were found for almost all tested variables. Remarkable is that no significant differences were found between groups on the value that the influence of the work environment perceived when comparing to the general employee attraction factors. This indicates that there can be assumed that the survey respondents have a comparable opinion on the influence of the work environment on their choice for a new job. Besides, 74% of the respondents indicated that they are willing to give up a certain percentage of their (future) salary in exchange for their ideal work environment. However, as most of the variables did indicate significant mean differences concerning their influence of the work environment characteristics between different groups, the ideal work environment is different for each (socio-demographic) group and even for each individual. The advice for companies is to define their target group and link their target group to the employee profiles as presented in this thesis in order to increase the chance of attracting their employee target group, and thereby enhancing their competitive advantage within the ‘war for talent’.

Through the perspective of Urban Metabolism, that focuses on the design of flows, this project researches the flow of energy in regards to the Paris climate agreement of 2015. The energy transition towards renewable resources is considered in the terms of spatial impact and public acceptance. The energy landscape is used as a design concept that comprises the various aspects of all three of these occurrencies. Through a layer-approach the research builds towards a strategy for the energy landscapes of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area.

Throughout the long history of architecture, the effect of gravity is always present in any structures. Surprisingly in tensegrity composition, this primary law of nature seems to be absent. This is because the discontinuous set of struts in the continuous network of proportionally thin cables makes the structures look like floating in the air. However, there has not been much application of tensegrity principle in the construction field due to the lack of design methods and its complexity. By developing a large-span structure using tensegrity systems, a design method and an analysis technique are introduced along to define double-surface tensegrity systems. The design approach explores an innovative way to determine the structural topology and geometry of such the systems. The form-finding process and structural analysis are conducted to discover an appropriate way of analyzing tensegrity and ensuring that the systems are stable.