HangARTs museum, situated in Rotterdam Zuid at the quay of Maashaven, is the new art museum of Rotterdam. Here, the visitors are audience without needing to enter the building. The public space that the museum provides has public art for passers-by to admire. Even if your original purpose of being was not visiting the museum, you get to experience art in the absent mind.

The thesis explores the issue of art not being present in the daily life of the neighbourhood. The proposal resulting from the research aims to attract even the people that are indifferent to the art world, providing small thresholds for the audience to pass to see what the art world can offer. Starting as just a place for leisure, the design then brings the audience to public art and eventually to the exhibitions provided. Ultimately, hangARTs museum is the museum that will lay the base for people to start enjoying art. ... Read more

The research is about the new museum in Tarwewijk, Rotterdam South which aims to re-wire the city + art. The research is conducted through fieldwork observations and analytical research done in the Tarwewijk district. The MODUS Museum aims to adopt the industrial characteristics and forms of the ports of Rotterdam while integrating public life and the quotidian patterns to the museum. Through this approach, the mobility and the flexibility of the museum is reflected. The design draws upon a spontaneous world and relies on the ad-hoc elements which constitute the museum to allow the participant to detect the context and the sense of collaborating. Through a flexible design, the museum can be continuously transformed and reconfigured to accommodate variety of modes of productions and events. ... Read more

The CRAFT museum is a new concept for a de-insitutionalised art museum. Art in this museum is not limited to exclusively protected masterpiece that is out of visitors’ reach. The CRAFT museum is a public space for visitors to not only see art, but also learn, interact, and create art.

Besides protected indoor exhibition that highlights the craftsmanship of the masters, the museum also offers interactive semi-outdoor mode of exhibition. Artworks in this space also acts as urban furniture, which visitors can directly touch and interact with. This museum displays art in a diverse modes of interaction. The museum aims to empower visitors to take active participation and experience art directly while at the same time emphasising the artistic
value of the crafts expertise of master artisans.
The museum complex offers multiplicity of facilities to induce cross-interaction between visitors, creators, and the artworks itself in the form of discussions, collaborative workshops, and active interaction with the exhibited works of art. ... Read more

The fascination started with the idea that a street is a gettering place for everyone. It is an open space where everybody can come and where people can meet and interact with each other. But is the street designed as a place for interaction? Or is it intended to get from one place to the other? Is the street a logistical way of working, to structure the city and the flow of people? Research has been done about the street, what is a street, and how do we experience a street? To create a better understanding of how streets are designed different street typologies around the world are analyzed. The exciting part about the streets is that they are everywhere, they already designed in a certain way during medieval times. Everage cities exist 1/3 out of streets. Can we see the street still as a public space, or is it occupied by the car? Looking at Rotterdam, 75% of the public space exists of streets, and are mainly occupied by vehicles. So what if we can see the street again as a public space, rather than a place for movement. This research focuses on how the connection between houses and the place for social interaction can increase in the street in relation to the built environment. The research question for this paper: How can the street become a public space through the design of a building? The research question will be tested in Rotterdam city center. Rotterdam is after the bombing design in a car-oriented way, which makes the topic very interesting. Besides of urbanization the big cities becomes denser and denser, this also includes Rotterdam. So the city needs to extend to household all those people. What you can see in Rotterdam is that the centre of the city is slowly moving more to the south. The city’s municipality created a high-rise strategy that will make it possible to house 50.000 more people/houses in the future. But through so, the number of buildings in the center is increasing and the amount of public space decreases. Streets are playing a significant role in the design of the of new households, and to keep the city livable. To test the research question through the design of a building, a specific location in Rotterdam’s center is chosen, called the Kop van Zuid. Through analyzing streets around the world and researching the different aspects of the street. Three main ambitions are defined, which will play an essential role in this project: designing a place for social interaction, establishing a human scale in the city center, and creating a connection between the street and the building. ... Read more

The skyscraper has since its invention shaped modern cities all over the world. More than any other architectural typologie it embodies the social-economic tendencies of the context in which it arises. As our urban ideals shift away from a corporate towards a community oriented built environment, aided by the process of densification, the skyscraper will consequently have to change with it. However, its vertical orientation poses serious challenges when it comes to sustaining the social interactive character at the heart of these densification strategies. Therefore the project proposes a rethinking of the standardized elements in tower design, shaping a continuous system of publicly accessible plazas throughout the vertical organization. Plazas that form unique activity spaces that serve both the in-building community as the wider urban neighborhood of the Rotterdam Central District. ... Read more

In the 20th century, the notion of logistics migrated from the military sphere to trade, from Europe to the Americas. This shift in the theory of transport, accompanied by developments in transport and communication technologies, has revolutionized the way we buy, leading to the digitalization and "logisticalization" of trade. E-commerce is effectively eliminating the functional necessity for urban commercial space and replacing traditional stores with suburban distribution centers and virtual platforms. However, commercial space has long since held an important role in the public and social life of cities, a role which is only amplified by urbanization and the densification of cities worldwide. As the online market is becoming saturated, online brands are increasingly turning to physical space as an effective means of promotion. A new typology emerges: The Experience Space, aiming not to distribute but to advertise through experience. Through a particular focus on the human experience, this typology presents a new alignment of public interests and private funds, and an opportunity for corporate funded urban recreation space. The city of Rotterdam is facing rapid densification in the upcoming years and demonstrating a need for new types of public amenities. In the context of an exceptionally fragmented and competitive online market, the Dutch city creates an opportunity for the success of an architectural strategy in brand promotion. The project materializes in the design of a new landmark and leisure resource for Rotterdam: the Coolblue E-Experience Centre, a building which addresses local and national interests. ... Read more

Human activities are speeding up normal climate fluctuations on the planet, while this is taking away the time to adapt to new living conditions, for the whole biosphere. Climate influences human activities, which influences again the climate. It is a loop that will never stop if humans do not change their way of living. To slow down climate change, mankind has to change the way they think and behave: they need an ecocentric mindset. Humans need to live in symbiosis with ecosystems to let the biosphere grow, instead of depleting it. With the build environment we can influence the users and passers-by. Therefore, ecocentric architecture has a key role in working towards the ecocentric mindset. ... Read more

People share a deep-seated need for a 'sense of home'. It is an intangible, psychological and sociological need that is projected on, and connected to the Built Environment (Rennels & Purnell, 2017; Dovey, 1985). Many people in western societies meet their 'sense of home' through traditional housing. Yet, there is a small marginalized group of homeless people whom are unable to do so. Many suffer from severe physical and mental health diseases, which makes it even more challenging to maintain a stable life. Dutch policymakers provide shelters to assist those in need, but these accommodations do not positively affect the well-being of the homeless. In addition, many shelters fail to facilitate the wish of homeless people of dying in the shelter (Klop et al., 2018).

Therefore, the aim of this research is to redefine shelter design so to improve the mental well-being of homeless people. This, by learning lessons from psycho-supportive design approaches in the healthcare environment. Hence, the main question in this research is: ‘Which architectural elements in the care environment have a positive effect on the (mental) well-being of homeless (terminal) people with chronic mental health problems?’.
The above question is answered by means of literature studies, case study analysis and fieldwork. From the results, several spatial-design components have been extracted and categorized into problems and solutions concerning the theoretical themes of: stigma; security; sensorial stimulation and environmental experience.

The results showed that privacy, daylight entrance, access to nature and social integration are the four main elements that positively improve one’s (mental or physical) well-being. Additional spatial-design components have been summarized into four conclusive Evidence-Based-Design guidelines and crucial design factors which may be applied on both urban and building scale. When all four guidelines are considered in the architectural design of shelters, the best mental health outcomes are achieved.
As the issue of homelessness is not yet solved and the number of people with complex care needs increase, the Netherlands is in desperate need of more assisted and affordable housing. With this research architects, urban planners and developers are encouraged to enter the discourse of homelessness. Moreover, they are stimulated to use the Evidence-Based Toolkit into the design process of new homeless shelters. ... Read more

While technological development and the rising Second Machine Age are already firmly affecting the notion of labour and the consequent disposition of our cities and territories, the remote island of Hammerfest, in the Arctic regions of Finnmark, prefigures the conditions for a radical rebirth. The full extents of automation, resulting in a post-labour organisation of economy, envisions the return of the homo ludens and enhances play as fundamental base of the new society. The explosive decentralisation of production and distribution suddenly wipes out the city, the core centre of our consumerist lives, and promotes the return to the landscape, where new pillars of society are established. On this island of utopian playground, individuals are now fully capable of engendering the shape of their existence, clustering around the ludic elements and interacting with each other in playful activities, while machines take care of their fundamental needs. Among the elements, the Theatre represents the highest form of play and, therefore, the most essential component of public life. Facing the growing automated port and the perished city, the machine of the theatre is a bridge between land and sea, on the particular conditions of a site that constantly changes under the cyclical variations of the tide. In front of the spectacle of automation, what humans stare at is the activity that has been taken away from them, the agency of their actions. A new kind of theatricality is therefore needed. Since the demise of labour invests anyone with the possibility of becoming actors of the play, the sense of spectatorship itself is questioned. Far from the optical relation of the theatron (sight), that has so far embodied its cornerstone, the theatre has now to be subjected to another relation, suggested by the word drama (action), thus endowing the becoming performative of production. The Theatre of Automation is therefore a social endeavour, aiming at bringing the theatrical performance to the level of a collective form of life, where the role of the spectator merges with the one of the actor. In other terms, the machine of the theatre takes active part in the transformation of the site, unfolding and accelerating the artificial manipulation of the territory at the hand of technology. As an act of formation, first, of physical, cultural and ultimately of political nature, the Theatre measures the pace of changes, interpolating the urgency of human artifex with the rhythm of natural systems. When climate change and sea level rise will set the eventual limit of the Machine, interrupting its floating dance on the tides, the Theatre will come to its final act. Rich with the collective memory of the site, it will close its stage and set sail towards new destinations, bearing the paradigm of a new society, on the threshold between human, machine and nature. ... Read more

Globalisation and global urbanisation are reshaping our world. Life in Central Places is expanding; life in remote territories is vanishing. For centuries, subsistence agriculture sustained rural communities the world over; that raison d’être has now largely vanished. Cities mine the territory for fuel, material resources, food and even population. Simultaneously, our globalised world faces serious challenges as we try to move beyond oil and to a circular economy. The remote island of Flotta in the Orkney archipelago exemplifies these themes, and offers possible visions for a future world in which the remote territory exists in symbiosis with the centralised city. In the coming decade, the Flotta Oil Terminal will close. Flotta’s population is aging, and its vital services are gradually vanishing. There is a small but significant influx of people fleeing the city- looking for an old, but now-vanished way of life in the remote territory. Friction on Flotta is rising as these few, new romantics interact with the pragmatically-minded last generation of Flottarians. Community is not always rosy. The closure of the oil terminal will likely be the nail in the coffin of human habitation of Flotta. Orkney also has a waste management problem- shipping scrap metal to distant, central locations. Simultaneously the Orkney archipelago is ‘the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy’. It already generates much more electricity than it needs, but struggles to export the surplus via a subsea cable designed to transfer power to and not from the islands. Renewable energy is not best suited to central cities- it is Energy at the End of the World. Traversing the island, the Bruck-Mining Saga forms a connection between the point where the Flotta subsea electricity cable lands and the remote edge of a ruined, wartime landscape facing out to sea. It pragmatically mines metal bruck at infrastructural scale, creating new material for export and thus a new economy by using the locally generated renewable electricity surplus. The metal recycling plant occupies the site of an abandoned airfield from the early days of the oil terminal- which constitutes a form of spatial bruck. In time, the oil terminal will also become bruck. The creation of ‘new metal’ in turn facilitates the embellishment/ establishment of a craft metal working/ jewellery making tradition on the island. This draws Flotta into the existent Creative Orkney Trail and brings bruck metal mining to the scale of the human, and indeed even to that of the wearer. These workshops inhabit a series of wartime ruins, which are of course a form of architectural bruck. They preserve and embellish the romantic attraction of this story to visitors of Orkney. Such stories of the remote are vital to humanity: ‘Once upon a time in a land far, far away…’ Where does the community fit in- complete with all its beauty and imperfections? It occupies a point of transition between these two spheres of production, where a series of spaces house the rich tapestry of Flotta stories past, present and future. These subterranean spaces form a modern monument which both record and enable the telling of stories that are crucial to the plural identities of the evolving Flotta community, and which in turn reflect our broader humanity. In doing so, they become simultaneously a museum, community arts space and landmark. More permanent than any infrastructure can or ever should be, they cement a part of our humanity in the remote island territory. They say: ‘We’re still here.’ ... Read more

Land and Sea are of a very different kind. One roots people to their contexts, tying them to its borders, properties and complex systems of relations; the other suggests the possibility for limit-less, unconditional wandering, an overwhelming experience of movement, in both space and time. This ancient tension between the anthropic process of colonizing Land – as the space of exploitation for collective survival – and the unseizable wilderness of the Sea – the realm of individual bravery – is the founding act of western societies. However, this delicate balance – or perpetual confrontation – is now endangered by its own premises. Land, as intrinsically limited, is reaching its maximum capacity: to ensure our survival and growth, the Sea is being identified as the new frontline for the rationalizing logics of territorialization. The Sea-as-a-territory is a political imposition: it is the tool for the collectivity – or the state – to enforce its hegemony on the sea-scape. Being the Sea a context-less space, dynamic, free from roots and limitations, the logics of colonization and exploitation are projected with even more harshness and strength. The Sea is facing the risk to lose its original role as memory of individual freedom – beyond the state; nevertheless, its exploitation is crucial to the survival of the collectivity and cannot be avoided. Therefore, the notion of the Sea-as-a-territory needs to be mitigated, in order to re-establish a coexistence of opposites, or at least to create awareness of the dualistic relation between the two paradigms of Land and Sea. The North Sea is urbanizing quickly and violently; such trends appear to be most visible in the Flemish Coast, a region which is deeply struggling to rule on its waters – groundwater and sea – while planning further expansions towards the sea, to protect the coast from storm waves. To meet the needs of the region – and of the collectivity – while mitigating the territorialization processes towards the Sea, the construction of an island is proposed, to be realized in four phases: the formation (I) or the act of imposing order with the definition of a protective wall; the accommodation (II) or the territorial reclamation using natural conditions; the production (III) or the desalination of seawater as act of exploitation; and the colonization (IV) or the human element, through the construction of a system of pools. The constant confrontation of these four elements – the wall, the landscape-in-formation, the desalination plant, the baths – constitutes the possibility for a different interpretation to the Sea-as-a-territory. Their relation – spatial and temporal – might become the trigger for a new consciousness on the mitigated narrative of territorialization, this time ruled by the intrinsic condition of ephemerality of the process itself. The island-as-an-outpost – or the island-machine – is a fortress; and fortresses are always doomed to surrender. ... Read more

Over the past hundred years, advancements in technology have determined the way we work and interact. Research shows that a shift will occur within the coming decades. The contrast between working and everyday life will become blurry, and the workplace shifts from a formal setting towards an informal one. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), one can state that this shift is already happening. People all over the world are abruptly forced to work from home. NEW Office is a two-hundred-eighty meter tall tower that is located on the block between 47th and 48th Street and Lexington Avenue and Third Avenue. The building offers more than a hundred-and-twenty-thousand square meter of adaptable space that consists of living units, office space, and amenities based on daily-activities. With adaptability as the key concept to the design, changes to the program can happen independently to its structure, period, and context. With this, the hybrid mixed-use project has the opportunity to adjust to the changing demands in society, where the program gradually shifts from a collective work environment to an individual and community-based residential tower supporting a new type of work. ... Read more

The proposed market aim to serve both the local community and the tourists. For local residents, the market provides a variety of fresh grocery that is now in shortage in this area. The market also functions as a place for social interactions, where residents meet each other. This helps to develop and reinforce a sense of community. For tourists, the market offers an alternative kind of shopping experience that show them the local food and local culture. The market provides them opportunities to experience the life of local people, a different experience from buying international brands on the Fifth Avenue. Except for market and retails, the project also featured with hotel to attract more tourists, affordable housings as new addition to the local community, as well as public space with greenery feature. The ambition is to create an indoor marketplace that is used by both the tourists and local community, which increase the pedestrian flow and market value of Third Avenue and the surrounding area. It challenges the consumerism society by promoting necessary shopping over the recreational, a more sustainable lifestyle for both the tourists and the local residents. ... Read more

We’re living in an era where spaces of logistics are further being detached from cities and urbanization to avoid choke points. But as these spaces migrate they leave traces of spaces permeating the city. What might be the impact of these logistical residual spaces whether large or very small on the expanding urban environment creating a clash, chaos and wastelands. The Port of Rotterdam is going under change concerning the petrochemical part. The reasons of decrease of oil in the last decade for the aim to shift to more sustainable energy production and for the increase of toxic spills on the ground and atmosphere. What would be the use of the abandoned toxic land of the petrochemical part of the Port, that once was storing oil, one of natures most needed source of for human survival, and refining it through burning. ... Read more

This project is based on 2 issues, the degradation of the ecosystem in North Sea and the decommission of offshore platforms. ... Read more

Material possession has become our objective for existence. Capital surrounds and defines us. The high dynamics of global flows dominate the planetary web of connectivity. Consumption, production and assembly have become the holy trinity of the neo-liberal realm we live in. It is a manifestation of the global dynamics, neglecting distances, identity and time, yet celebrating purpose, capital and proliferation. Meanwhile, the aftermaths of these actions remain concealed. The Zone of Disassembly reacts to this imbalance and aims to track, unveil and transform one of the consumption’s tangible outcomes: the e-waste.

Currently, the e-waste is the fastest-growing stream of waste. The contradicting nature of this matter has defined the dualistic nature of this type of waste: value and toxicity have become fundamental terms when mentioning e-waste. Yet both of them could easily exist in unison when the issue is being tackled carefully. This project resembles a critique toward the current policies regarding e-waste: incompetent formulation of recycling practises and lack of contemporary, adequate methodology results in the conscious exclusion of these so-called ore-streams results in huge economic, natural and ecological loses. ‘The Zone of Disassembly’ derives from the question of territory and formulates a spatial intervention which has the potential to unveil the North Sea hidden e-flows. It is articulated via two interconnected spatial agencies, which establish an infrastructural threshold: the waste archipelago and the waste plant.

The waste archipelago resembles a spatial switch whose aim is to reshuffle the existing network of flows within the North Sea and unveiled the hidden such. This artificial set of islands aims to navigate between the territorial waste and material flows. It establishing a flexible framework defined by multipliable spatial syntax which could easily be translated in various contexts. Furthermore, it acts as a catalyst for a productive landscape fostered by the premises of absolute technology and omnipotent densification.

The on-shore part of the project aims to manifest the momentum of the territorial intervention, by emphasising the physical metamorphosis of waste into matter. While the offshore port establishes a vital node handling the global streams of electronic dumping, the disassembly plant resembles a spatial medium; a threshold between global and local, human and machine, manual and automated. The Zone of Disassembly addresses the various social actors ,by exposing the physical acts disassembling. The building act as political infrastructure which transparency agitates the public and exposes the sensibility of the e-waste polemic. Neither utopian nor dystopian, 'The Zone of Disassembly' is a surreal endeavour, which challenges our perception of e-waste and points towards the manifold possibilities veiled under the act of ignorance. ... Read more

The North is a dense space of connectivity, where submarine cables span between the population centers and economic hubs of Europe. Within this web of relations, the Netherlands play an important role as the gateway to continental Europe on the one hand and the United States and United Kingdom on the other hand. At the same time, the stable political conditions, reliable energy supply and friendly business atmosphere, have given rise to an intense economy of data centres within the Netherlands. The hierarchy of these networks is determined by other territorial factors such as economic relevance, national borders and existing infrastructural ecologies.

Equally, the typology of data centres is focused around three main parameters that determine the location and architectural design. Firstly, the proximity to high capacity fibre networks is a determinant factor for the geographic location of data centres. In many cases this also implies a proximity to the sea and the global connection this warrants. Secondly, as they require sizeable and stable energy supply, they are either located close to energy sources or transmission cables. Thirdly, they usually require a lot of space to fit as much server space as possible, which results in a backcountry location. Hence, data centres are usually planned in a remote location, consuming a lot of space while not returning any spatial quality.

My project challenges these paradigms in a number of ways, while adhering to the underlying network logics. Currently, the two system edges are usually separated in such that data networks are located close to the global network but far from the actual user. Therefore, my project proposes to collapse the geographic proximity of global connections and local user by bringing the data centres into the cities. The resultant urban network is able to benefit from a number of network effects and agglomeration benefits. These include the reduced latencies that are needed for the Internet of Things and the integration of energy infrastructure, allowing energy storage and dissipation on an urban scale. To achieve this integration the project distribution is based on a variety of urban parameters, which include the existing infrastructure networks and morphological analyses such as space syntax and isovists.

On an architectural scale the project proposes a typological understanding of the urban data centres, which respond to a number of different parameters and organisational modes. In consequence, the project proposes three types that are responding to three different site conditions. Furthermore, the types vary according to their socio-economic organisation, their structural independence and most importantly size. The three types or architectural artefacts range from a ‘large’ publicly maintained building, via a medium sized civic centre to small miniature private buildings. The resultant architecture proposes to redefine the standard type for data centres making them an outstanding part of the urban fabric.

While the project proposes a specific infrastructure in a specific place it is structured to be replicable in other sites. At the same time, it carries a number of important messages. Firstly, it shows quite clearly the scale and impact of society’s use of data by bringing it closer to the user and making it palpable in our daily lives. At the same time this presence also liberates the ‘world exterior’ from another predatory infrastructure allowing us to read the functional dependencies of our cities more clearly. Secondly, the project also questions the territorial dependence of data flows by illustrating the possibility of local data. In times of data scandals and increased political awareness, the vision of keeping your data close allows us to challenge the way we currently deal with this abstract matter. Finally, the project also illustrates the scale of our data use. It warns us of the impact it can have on our lives.

While the project takes place on the urban scale of the city of Scheveningen and is developed as an architectural proposal that reaches the detail scale it is part of a larger project. The project and its scale are determined by the site, the architectural proposals are specific to a location and their detailing is adjusted to local circumstances. Nonetheless, the project also proposes a territorial shift, where decentralisation and ownership are challenged. The urban component of this thesis is a case study for a larger project, a project that takes place on the personal and territorial scale simultaneously.
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The Netherlands is often depicted as a battleground, with the Dutch in a constant struggle against the water that surrounds them. This project examines this tradition in the context of the Wadden Sea and the island of Schiermonnikoog, where this battle between the land and the sea is at its most extreme.

This project traces the myth of ‘making new land’ by investigating the four major themes from the recent publication ‘Sweet and Salt: The Water and The Dutch’: conflict, concord, profit and pleasure. These themes are adapted and used to analyse the Dutch waterscapes of the Wadden Sea and the island of Schiermonnikoog. The scenario method is then used to project the outcome of this analysis into a future where West Frisian island of Schiermonnikoog is left to nature and risks slowly disappears into the currents of the North Sea. The design intervention narrates a new myth: ‘guarding the water’ by using the typology of a fort. The scenario has four chapters and each of them narrates a different time period of the island’s future. Thus the project derives its name from the heraldic motto of Zeeland: ‘Luctor et Emergo' - ‘I struggle and Emerge’.
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