Not only within the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, but throughout Delft University of Technology, the City of the Future Graduation Lab proves to have a truly unique position. It is a laboratory where students are challenged to think beyond their own discipline, creating an interdisciplinary synergy between different fields of expertise in order to find solutions for the City of the Future. ... Read more

Chinese cities have been expanding since the early 1980s under trends of rapid modernization, urbanization and globalization. Since then they have changed dramatically, and have in the process lost many of their traditional environments and spatial characteristics. Urban planners and designers have been and are facing unprecedented challenges in China. They not only have to learn to understand the constantly emerging new urban mechanisms, and seek balance among stakeholders, but they also need to cope with the political pressures and the changing context under often extreme time pressure. In such circumstances, future- and design-oriented analysis based on a ‘designerly’ way of thinking is useful—if not indispensable—for understanding the existing city and deciding on its transformations in a responsible and accountable way that is communicable among designers and with the public. This is especially so, in light of the growing awareness—also in China—of the value and importance of local urban identity, that is always—at least partially—based on history. In this ATLAS the Delft method of historical morphological analysis is applied to the city of Wuhan, valuing the importance of and finding meaning in the local urban identity of a city with a population over 11 million with a floating population of 14 million. The series of maps show the urban development, covering a century and a half. ... Read more

Maps represent reality in a consciously filtered and scaled way. We—not only designers but anyone who wants to interfere with the built environment—need maps to get a clutter-free overview of space. Moreover, we can project and infer very specific data of a location on a map creating a model and providing information that could never be perceived from a real-life visit. Nevertheless, we cannot perceive a space and its identity without experiencing it. ... Read more

Public libraries want to contribute to an inclusive and innovative society and aim to enable their patrons to acquire the necessary 21st century skills. Dutch public libraries are therefore gradually adding more and more activities to their curriculum, teaching these different types of skills, such as ‘invention literacy’. They also often provide a ‘performative space’ (i.e. a makerspace) for their patrons. This means library spaces are no longer dominated by books, but rather reflect the current development in libraries’ core business, moving from collections to connections in order to serve their local communities. The KB, the National Library of The Netherlands, participated in the KIEM1 project Performative Spaces in Dutch Public Libraries. Stepping Stones of Inclusive Innovation, researching the development of performative spaces in libraries. This project, a collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology, fits the KBs strategic interests in providing an innovative and socially aware library system. Important research questions included how public libraries create these so-called performative spaces for inventing and creating, what modifications are needed in terms of interior design and safety, and in terms of programmatic and spatial organization? As well as how do makerspaces connect to particular maker communities? The project results provided insight into spatial and design aspects of performative spaces, which helps public libraries, and ultimately its patrons, to benefit from this new development. This book, the Atlas, presents the results of the research projects with illustrations of the different types of makerspaces as well as providing state-of-the-art information about performative spaces, focusing on the spatial characteristics. It has been an honour and a pleasure to work with experts from Delft University of Technology and we hope and expect the KIEM project has sown the seeds for a sustainable collaboration on the subject of performative spaces in present and future library research. We see the Atlas as a joint starting point for a shared agenda on the performative library space of the future for librarians, designers, patrons and other stakeholders. ... Read more

This paper presents the partial results of a historical morphological research of the urban form of the Chinese middle size city of Wuhan. The city with over 12 million inhabitants is a regional centre for the Yangtze River basin, located centrally in China, and according to national planning transforming from a monofunctional into a multifunctional economy, while retaining its basic industries based on steel manufacturing. The research uses the method of the Delft School of morphological analysis, applying the reductive mapping technique of homogeneous areas, and adding secondary connections as the middle scale of the city. The mapping is done in QGIS, using the Georeferencer software plugin to deform historical maps to fit the contemporary base map. By way of a conclusion, an indication is given of how the results are applicable in the daily urban design and planning of the municipality for the urban transformation and expansion. ... Read more

The Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS), the Delft Deltas, Infrastructures & Mobility Initiative (DIMI), University of Paris-Est and ARENA architectural research network join Delft University of Technology in the organization of the inter - disciplinary 2018 Summer School: ‘Integrated Mobility Challenges in Future Metropolitan Areas’. The Summer School is a follow up of ‘Making the Metropolis’ edition held in Amsterdam in August 2017 and the ‘Stations of the Future’ event held in Paris in March 2018. By participating to this summer school, 42 graduate students, young professional and researchers have explored interdisciplinary ap - proaches towards a sustainable integration of stations here defined as intermodal nodes. [...] ... Read more

At the main point of intersection between the railway and the city, stations are key elements in the organization of the intermodal transport as well as catalysts of urban developments in metropolises, medium and small cities. The focus of this publication is to explore the enrichment of a renewed approach of railway stations as intermodal nodes, therefore acting as breeding grounds for both urban and social developments. [...] ... Read more

How can we design and develop a transformation area in anintegral way into an attractive and future-proof urban environment?This is the the central question of the research projectStad van de Toekomst (City of the Future). ... Read more

EAAE Poster Exhibition: 60 Institutional profiles of architectural education & Faculty Posters ... Read more