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.

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.

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.

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.

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.