This graduation project investigates the transformation potential of the Bellevue office building in The Hague, a post-1965 office building currently threatened by demolition and redevelopment. The research addresses the question: Through what interventions can the Bellevue office building be transformed while preserving its distinctive characteristics and responding to current location specific challenges?

The study is based on a research by design methodology and combines architectural, urban, historical, and spatial analyses. The research identifies Bellevue’s most distinctive quality as its role as an urban transition between low rise and high rise scales. Additional analyses focused on the façade composition, programmatic expression, and spatial organization of the building, particularly its circulation and office layout.

The resulting transformation proposal reinterprets Bellevue as a public university building centered around political engagement and democratic participation. The design introduces new stepped volumes containing student housing, educational functions and public programs. A central public atrium and vertical circulation route connect the program components inspire, explore, and express, culminating in the student’s rostrum: a public platform for political expression. Through these interventions, Bellevue regains urban, architectural and societal relevance. ... Read more

This graduation project investigates the adaptive reuse of the SFF Bosch Gebouw in Strijp-S, Eindhoven, as a strategy for transforming a vacant post-war office building into a hybrid environment for living, working and collective occupation. Constructed during the industrial expansion of Philips, the building is characterized by its repetitive prefabricated concrete facade system, deep structural grid and large-span floor plates, reflecting the technological optimism and industrial logic of post-war modernism.
Rather than approaching the building’s current limitations as justification for demolition, the project explores how its existing structural framework can accommodate new forms of occupation through spatial interventions. The proposal is based on three interconnected design themes: reprogramming for hybrid occupation, daylight as a spatial driver, and the reintegration of the building within its surrounding landscape.

Programmatically, the project responds to the new residential developments introduced through the ongoing Redevelopment Phase 4 of Strijp-S. As the surrounding area shifts from an industrial district to a mixed urban neighborhood, the proposal transforms the former mono-functional office building into a hybrid environment that accommodates living, working and collective activities. Structured through different degrees of publicness, the project creates a gradual transition between public, semi-private and private environments.

At its center, the hybrid core acts as a social condenser that connects residential, working and collective programs while maintaining clear spatial thresholds between them. Beyond programmatic transformation, the project addresses the environmental limitations of the existing deep-plan building. The research identifies the deep floor plate and limited daylight penetration as key architectural challenges. In response, the project develops a combined daylight strategy that includes facade subtractions, sectional voids, skylights and stepped massing interventions. These operations reveal the depth of the existing structure and transform previously underutilized interior areas into collective spaces organized around a hybrid core.

Finally, the transformation extends beyond the building envelope through the integration of landscape interventions and the reuse of removed prefabricated facade elements as planting and public-space components. By working within the existing structural logic rather than replacing it, the project demonstrates how the SFF Bosch Gebouw can be reactivated as a contemporary urban environment while preserving the spatial and material qualities
embedded within its industrial heritage. ... Read more

Many buildings from the Dutch post-1965 stock are judged through their deterioration rather than through their transformative potential. This project proposes another perspective.

Blakeburg is approached as a collection of deposits: physical and immaterial traces that have accumulated over time.

Rather than treating these conditions as problems to be corrected, they become starting points for design. By curating existing deposits and creating space for future ones, the project explores how ageing can become a design driver for the transformation of post-1965 architecture. ... Read more

This thesis investigates how adaptive reuse can establish architectural continuity in post-1965 concrete office buildings. Using the Sijthoff Building in Rijswijk, widely known as the “Eierdoos,” as a case study, it addresses the contested status of late-modern concrete architecture, which is often regarded as obsolete and therefore vulnerable to demolition. Through a combined analysis of perception, material condition, and spatial typology, the building is understood as part of a continuous process in which past identity, present conditions of vacancy, and future potential, coexist.

Vacancy is interpreted not as failure, but as a transitional state that reveals latent architectural, cultural, and urban capacities. Based on this, a reuse strategy is developed through three interrelated dimensions: urban, material, and spatial continuity. Urban continuity is established by reconnecting the building to the public realm through greater accessibility, permeability, and programmatic activation. Material continuity is achieved through the reinterpretation, damage analysis, repair, reuse, and recycling of the existing prefabricated façade system, transforming the building’s own materials and elements into an internal circular system in which components are disassembled, restored, and reassembled into new architectural configurations. Spatial continuity is pursued through the reconfiguration of the interior by introducing voids, clarifying circulation and movement, and creating flexible and sustainable spaces that follow both function and form.

The proposal demonstrates how a vacant, mono-functional office building can become an active urban actor while preserving and transforming its architectural identity.
Ultimately, the project positions adaptive reuse as a process of continuity, arguing that post-war concrete buildings should be understood not as expendable relics, but as integral components of the contemporary city capable of accommodating change over time. ... Read more

The youth of Amsterdam-North face pressing socioeconomic challenges, including poverty, social exclusion and limited access to education and recreational facilities. These conditions contribute to stress, loneliness and a weakened sense of community, exacerbated by gentrification and stigmatization. This research examines how a youth center can serve as a supportive space for empowerment, social interaction and mental well-being among vulnerable youth. Central to this research is the role of architecture in creating such a center. The research introduces a three-part framework - social, social and spatial dimensions - to analyze how architecture can respond to these complex needs. A set of architectural parameters, including transparency, flexibility and appropriation, guides the assessment of the case studies. The findings are intended to inform architectural strategies that promote empowerment and inclusion through youth-focused design in Amsterdam-North. ... Read more

Molenwijk is part of the Dutch heritage of post-WWII urban planning. Built in 1968, the plan consists of 1,256 dwellings in 15 slabs, each cluster of four centered around a parking garage that once promised social interaction. Nearly 60 years later, the garages are inaccessible and dilapidated. This design seeks to fulfill the social promise of the Molenwijk Plan by reimagining one garage as the civic heart of the neighbourhood. It is treated as if it were a monument, preserving half its original function while transforming the rest into a civic center facing a market square. By layering new programmes onto the structure, the project honours the memory of the car without erasing it. Step-downs in scale reintroduce the human dimension. A modern interpretation of the classical Greek temple offers orientation within the abstract plan, while appropriable surfaces and adaptable features invite future users to shape the space as their own. ... Read more

The project explores how an alternative narrative of monumental heritage can be proposed. As part of a broader discourse on the renovation of 20th-century heritage, the project focuses on the Zonnehuis — a civic monument located in Amsterdam North.

The renovation addresses the tension between authorized heritage and everyday experience. The new intervention introduces elements of daily life into a structure that historically symbolizes authority, while preserving its monumental significance. This negotiation takes place in the spatial interface where authority and everyday life intersect. These tensions are articulated across both tangible and intangible layers.

By proposing the narrative themes of Deliberative Democracy, Creative Emancipation, and Civic Ritual, the project introduces a range of creative and communal spaces on either side of the building. These spaces enable civic issues and histories to be actively negotiated, while the renovated event hall and gallery spaces serve to present them to the wider public. The overall aim is to reclaim the building as a platform for democratic civic participation.

In addition, drawing from Stewart Brand’s Shearing Layers theory and Rigel’s Heritage Value Set, the project introduces a new evaluation framework to guide design decisions. This framework acts as an experimental tool for optimizing renovation strategies by intentionally evaluating both the original and transformed values within a clear theoretical structure. ... Read more

This graduation project, "Layers of Belonging," addresses the challenge of designing a civic center in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam-Noord, an area experiencing rapid gentrification and socio-economic shifts. It critically examines contemporary practices of historical representation and community expression in architecture, introducing a layered design strategy that intertwines historical narratives with present and future narratives. The intervention preserves and emphasizes historically significant architectural features and spatial qualities of the existing building, "De Ruimte," and integrates them with new architectural additions, allowing past and present to coexist dynamically. Central to the design is the concept of 'unification,' fostering interaction between the diverse, dividing users groups of Buiksloterham, makers and residents, through strategically placed communal and overlapping, interactive spaces. Moreover, the project balances architectural control and user appropriation, empowering users to personalize and take ownership of their spaces within defined architectural boundaries. Ultimately, "Layers of Belonging" proposes a nuanced, resilient model for integrating heritage, historical symbolism, social cohesion, and flexible design in rapidly transforming urban settings, aiming to protect both the tangible and intangible legacies of Amsterdam-Noord’s industrial communities. ... Read more

This research rethinks spatial development in shrinking urban-rural regions through the lens of post-growth. Departing from conventional planning logics grounded in expansion and densification, the paper explores how theoretical concepts—such as Zwischenstadt, Stadtlandschaft, and the Horizontal Metropolis—can be reinterpreted within a degrowth paradigm. By critically contrasting growth-oriented and sufficiency-driven models of the circular economy, it highlights the need to shift from technocratic efficiency to communal, localised practices of care, maintenance and material reuse. These insights are synthesised into a spatial design framework, culminating in a territorial network model where urban and rural nodes are reconnected through soft infrastructure, shared institutions, and bioregional cycles. This network, situated between the logics of the urban and the rural, challenges hierarchical spatial planning and offers an alternative vision of territorial resilience, interdependence, and sufficiency in post-growth contexts.

The design project applies the design framework in the context of the small German town of Stadtroda. It emphasises the necessity for the maintenance and repair of regions like this, specifically by implementing a circular design strategy to foster a communal environment centred around repair and maintenance. ... Read more