A guide for the landscape architectural design of an urban forest that helps create realms of experience in order to make people more aware of our connection to nature. The imbalance between how we live and how the natural world around us works leads to a disconnected relationship with nature. Because of this many people see nature that is far away as idyllic, while they see nature that is nearby as a nuisance. If people keep seeing nature as a destination it fuels the belief that real nature is separate from daily life, which creates the feeling that caring for nature is not people’s responsibility or within their power. Therefore this guide contains a method for the design of an urban forest to help people experience nature in daily life. The method is illustrated by a design example through realms of living, moving and visiting in the Hague.

This essay endeavors to unveil how the mechanisms function that are responsible for the fundamental awareness of one’s physical presence in the world. The capacity of architecture to contribute towards towards such a state of being, is a major theme. The essay does this in three consecutive parts. In the first part, the subject’s bodily experience of the world is laid out. It reveals how the body finds vibrant stimulation in the world. In the second part, the thoughtful understanding of the world is discussed. This reveals the subject’s dependency on the mind for active sensibility. In the third and last part, a synthesis between one’s active awareness and its bodily stimulation is presented. This leads to the embodiment of immanence. In this state of being, the turbulent world becomes a symphonic one. The subject may understand the felt, as well as that it may feel the understood. Clear and sharp appreciation of the world around becomes possible. As a part of this world, the subject is actively aware of its own presence too. Through this, one connects to its physical being and one is grounded inside the body and world. Architecture can help ground by revealing the relation between physical stimulation and the understanding that makes it sharp and clear. As a result, the symphony of the vibrant world is revealed, and the subject may dance along.

The protagonist of this work is the rightless, displaced person - a population of individuals in transition, hidden like a shadow in the contemporary city. Departing from the active oppression of this considerable group from the fabric of the city and the ways in which architecture contributes to enclosing or dividing populations, this work proposes a reconsideration of the role of the architect in civil society. After all, what is the current role of the architect when we talk about the socio-political tensions in the context of a marginalised existence in the contemporary city? The work proposes critical, nonmodernist and empathetic ways of thinking about the communication between the individuals at stake and their spaces of transition. The design suggests how a situated, highly visible and appropriable building in the city of Amsterdam could contribute to give meaning to the ongoing debate on Dutch immigration policy and the position of a marginalised population in society.

This report examines the role of an urban designer in a multicultural society. When an urban society is overlapped with a spatial and diverse cultural layer, a cultural community is seen as the essential unit for outreaching and interacting with this complex environment. Community design is required for an urban designer to explore the intersection of spatial design and community development methodologies, top-down and bottom-up decision-making. In this report, the author takes use of the case of Rotterdam Chinatown to develop an experimental community design methodology and apply it to the on-site practice. It aims to stimulate communication and resource links within the Chinese community in a globalization context by utilizing open spaces as a medium. This research starts with the preliminary background study, followed by creating a set of customized pattern languages as the communication, learning, and design tools to engage the Rotterdam Chinatown community and the Chinese community in Rotterdam. A live event held in public spaces of Rotterdam Chinatown is embodied as a performance to evaluate the efficiency of the vision co-created by stakeholders. The final outcome learns about the requirements of the Chinese community of Rotterdam and concludes with refined pattern language and scenario design based on the conditions of Rotterdam Chinatown. This participatory design methodology featured for the Rotterdam Chinatown community fosters a sense of ownership and empowerment among the community members and encourages active participation in shaping the future of the community in a pure bottom-up approach. Keywords: community design, cultural glocalization, Chinatown, pattern language, public space

The world is experiencing climate change. Environmental problems are substantial and it's known that economic growth contributes to them. In addition, social inequality in society has grown. As a response, the concept of sustainable development has come up, but to date businesses find this hard to implement in their ways of working. As societal pressure is increasing, a growing trend can be seen by pioneering businesses, social entrepreneurs and impact investors working towards an impact economy. In the built environment, however, the concepts of ‘impact thinking’ or ‘social entrepreneurship’ are still very much unknown. Although some institutional investors have adopted an ESG-approach for their investments and a number of developers have started to brand themselves as sustainable, to date there is barely no evidence suggesting that this actually leads to positive societal impact. Very few parties in the built environment place impact first in their corporate strategy or measure the impacts they make. As the built environment is responsible for many environmental and social problems, this is something that needs to change. This thesis therefore researches in what ways impact thinking can be implemented into (urban) development, from the perspective of the social entrepreneurial developer. The first part of the research was conducted through a literature study, the second part through a combination of qualitative and design research. A total of 16 interviews have been conducted with impact developers, impact investors and urban development experts. Based on findings, a first definition for impact development is given, its barriers an drivers are formulated and six principles for impact development are proposed. Through a collaborative research through design approach, also an example impact development was designed: a social-impact based plan for the gentrifying neighborhood Wielewaal. The research outcomes aim to inspire private parties in urban or real estate development to place impact first in their ways of working. In doing so, this thesis aims to open the dialogue about the responsibility of businesses to society and our cities and help developers and municipalities work towards more long-term sustainable and fair urban developments. For impact thinking to really take a flight in (urban) development, taxing or incentivizing impact by the government is necessary.

Scientists observe changes in the registers of our earth, rising Co² levels, changes in methane concentration, acidification of the oceans, and the degradation of soil. These changes in the registers of our earth proliferate environmental catastrophes that destabilize intricate webs of life. The human in the Anthropocene, and with it its dominant narratives of growth and economization is currently destabilizing this web to a point where scientists warn that we are currently entering the sixth extinction event. Being entangled in this status quo through the economization of land, extractive practices, and greenwashing narratives, the architecture practice has become complicit in the destruction of our live support systems. To stop or at least attenuate the suffering that results in the destabilized ecologies necessitates a fundamental repositioning of the architectural practice in the face of the looming catastrophe. In the last decade a new force has emerged, that challenges the dominant social, economic, and political paradigms. Climate activist movements like Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion The Last Generation, and Ende Gelände are using a multitude of protest tactics, to de-territorialize the axiology of values and reterritorialize new values of life, survival, and collaboration. The project ‚towards an architecture activist practice‘, researches these activist assemblages to understand the interrelation of its components and transpose the obtained knowledge to a design practice. Through action research I emerged myself in Extinction Rebellion Netherlands where I participated in the planning and execution of the Spring Rebellion 22. During this process I made maps and cartographies to analyze and visualize the interaction between the interwoven codes, groups, happenings, individuals, and spaces that made the movement during that period.

This project tries to, inspired by the heavily quantified and confined ways of assessing "liveability" in policy documents, come up with a different way of reading the city. In this project, I aimed to explore this reading within the unit of the street, to see how focusing on a single street, a section of the city, could result in valuable broad insight into the neighborhood, the city and beyond. For the reading of this street, a socio-spatial approach was adopted, seeing space as a social product and focusing on how it is perceived and lived by its users in everyday socio-spatial practices. This is researched by walking and talking with ten individuals living and/or working on the this street. From this I tried to read the street through different eyes, the eyes of the people that are in a way experts of the street and see what lessons can be learned from this.

A graduation based on evidence based long-term design principles, translated into contemporary context and beyond. The design principles are used to create a neighbourhood in a gentle way: letting people participate in the design and development proces, keep housing (forever) affordable, to think beyond short-term effect by creating social impact.

In recent years, overtourism has become a big problem for many European cities. In Amsterdam, tourism is changing the experience of place of its city centre, which negatively affects resident’s quality of life by causing feelings of alienation. As a result, more and more residents seem to retreat or move away from Amsterdam’s city centre, jeopardizing the livability and residential function of the city. The aim of this research is to add architectural interventions in the city centre of Amsterdam, which will evoke new connections with the places overwhelmed by tourists, by mitigating feelings of alienation between residents and tourists. These connections must both be social, as well as to place, in order to introduce a new, more social, sustainable and liveable way of tourism. In this research, the embodied experiences of Amsterdam's overwelming places such as the Jordaan, the Canal Belt, the Oudezijdse Burgwallen and the Lastage have been studied by means of narratives. These narratives were created from both the resident’s and the tourist’s perspective, in order to find out which (spacial) qualities of place evoke a sense of identification, belonging or connection among the residents and tourists. Ultimately, from the collection of narratives the users, activity, experience of place, structure and architectural atmosphere of the overwelmed places are defined, and together form a concept for the architectural interventions that will mitigate the feelings of alienation.

Land prices and rents are constantly increasing in core cities around the globe. They are becoming an object of speculation and investment. Current progressions suggest a development in the outskirts through a process of post-urbanisation. While the suburbs and adjoining villages in the satellite sprawl experienced popularity among young families rather early, the core city remained as the main habitat for professional utilisations. People commuted for that purpose to the centre. However, with rising land prices: industry, education, and cultural facilities move to the suburbs. New centres outside of the core city arise. The planned and rapidly constructed extensions seem to lack in qualities of traditional core cities like their diverse supply or compared to their individual characteristics. Moreover, the density of cities in combination with their anonymity causes social stress. Architecture becomes a commodity in the suburbs. Although a trend of people moving to the space outside of the city, or as commonly referred to as the countryside, can be observed, the majority of the population lives and moves towards the city. This attraction may be routed in the diversity of the city. Nevertheless, the countryside needs to be maintained for the function of the city and still, it lacks qualities and is out of the scope of most spatial practitioners. Opposing the uneven living conditions, considering the necessity of maintaining the hinterland, and recognising the countryside’s potential, this research raises the question: How can rural life patterns be adapted to substitute qualities of urban density in the countryside?

The project aims to research how Trans people are impacted by architectural space and to transform to buildings into Trans residencies in Nairobi and Den Haag

As of the 31st of January 2020, the United Kingdom separated from the European Union. This event caused an uproar in the preceding years throughout the Union, forcing everyone to consider what the benefits are (or not) of taking part in the European project. For us the benefits are clear. We can easily cross borders to experience and learn from others with whom we share many of the same historical, geographical and cultural values, yet have differences we can appreciate. We simply believe that the sum of the parts is bigger than the whole. So, the uproar made us wonder how we, as future architects, could contribute to the European project in a positive manner. Although we know the scope is ambitious, we have aimed for a project which works through scale by touching local places, while also setting out new lines for a route at the European level that connects the different places. By working from the local to the European scale we aim to expose how the European Union can be a home for its vast range of inhabitants. To execute our research, we organized a field trip over a period of 5 weeks that covered the ground from the Netherlands to Romania.

Buildings, spaces, objects - architectural things, everything is of a temporal nature, but this can be hard to grasp. However, we are capable of understanding time as a part of architecture. Not just as a concept, but as something that manifests itself as intrinsic characteristics in the architecture we create and experience. Temporal empathy is about understanding the temporal nature of things around you not only through thinking, but through feeling. Likewise, a complete understanding of temporal empathy as a subject itself can only be achieved by both thinking and feeling.

Kan je architectuur vermenselijken door een gevoel tot ontwerpopgave te maken? Dit is de vraag waarmee ik mijn afstudeerproject startte. Thuis is een begrip dat veel wordt gebruikt en wat sterk gekoppeld is aan de architectonische typologie huis. Zijn deze echter onlosmakelijk met elkaar verbonden en wanneer voel je je thuis? Door middel van film ben ik thuis vanuit een menselijk perspectief gaan onderzoeken. ‘Mijn Afrikaanderwijk’ is de eerste onderzoeksfilm en bevraagt de verhouding van mens en buurt als deze dreigt te veranderen door gentrificatie. De tweede en derde onderzoeksfilm, samengevoegd in de film ’t huis’, analyseren of het begrip hiervan veranderd als je daadwerkelijk je huis hebt moeten verlaten aan de hand van de ervaringen van mensen met een migratieachtergrond. Uit het onderzoek bleek dat de thema’s toe-eigening, ontmoeting en belichaming sterk verbonden zijn met het thuisgevoel. Deze begrippen zijn zo generiek en de individuele invulling hiervan zo specifiek dat ze niet op de volledige groep van mensen met een migratieachtergrond van toepassing zijn of dat ik mijzelf en mijn omgeving in Amsterdam ook kon herkennen in hun zoektocht naar thuis als je huis dit niet is. Met mijn afstudeerproject wil ik het belang van permanente plekken in de stad benadrukken die onafhankelijk van inkomen, weer of tijd toegankelijk zijn. In de laatste film komen daarom de mensen met een migratieachtergrond samen met mensen in mijn directe omgeving in het gebruik van een specifiek ontwerp voor een ankerpunt in Amsterdam. Een ankerpunt is een intieme publieke buitenruimte met binnenruimte die georiënteerd is op de elementen. Door verloederde en vrijkomende kavels als zodanig te transformeren, kan een netwerk van ankerpunten in de stad worden gecreëerd.

This thesis explores the possibilities for semi-spontaeneous forest succession as the solution for creating a healthy living environment in the formerly industrial area of Schieoevers, Delft. The thesis describes what measurements are needed in order to make the uncertainties of feralisation acceptable for the larger public, as well as the opportunities and benefits that feralisation, the understudied counterpoint to domestication, could bring to the post-industrial landscape.

As of the 31st of January 2020, the United Kingdom separated from the European Union. This event caused an uproar in the preceding years throughout the Union, forcing everyone to consider what the benefits are (or not) of taking part in the European project. For us the benefits are clear. We can easily cross borders to experience and learn from others with whom we share many of the same historical, geographical and cultural values, yet have differences we can appreciate. We simply believe that the sum of the parts is bigger than the whole. So, the uproar made us wonder how we, as future architects, could contribute to the European project in a positive manner. Although we know the scope is ambitious, we have aimed for a project which works through scale by touching local places, while also setting out new lines for a route at the European level that connects the different places. By working from the local to the European scale we aim to expose how the European Union can be a home for its vast range of inhabitants. To execute our research, we organized a field trip over a period of 5 weeks that covered the ground from the Netherlands to Romania.

The way people have different views on how people should love, value, consume, produce, believe and every other aspect of life is something which is still not accepted by the majority of society. The idea of these different views, described as parallel truths, scare most people that feel the comfort of the truths of the Dominant Culture which could be dangerous when unconsciously accepted. This thesis is meant to shed a light on an old problem which still has not been resolved, Alienation. Equally important is to create a common awareness of our current state, not to abolish everything existing but to have a moment of reflection to be able to consciously choose to stay or search for a better alternative.

"Arctic Symphony" is an exploration into the intersection of architecture, music, dance, and the temporal dimensions of the Arctic landscape. This project, originally started as a graduation project, transcends traditional architecture by embracing the ever-changing dynamics of the Arctic environment and human interaction. At the core of the project is the concept of 'time', investigated through physics, poetry, and neuroscience. Based on this research a series of 'graphic scores' was made as a visual representation of the seasonal rhythms of the Arctic landscape. These scores further inspire the design of the architecture later referred to as a 'living structure, an architectural entity that evolves in with the natural elements, accommodating human interaction while simultaneously undergoing a cycle of deterioration and rejuvenation. The graduation was complemented by a performance, brought to life by dance, music, and a narrative that echoes the architecture's journey through the Arctic seasons. The performance is an interpretation of the scores and offers an experience of the Arctic's temporal reality. This part of the project has gotten its own legs and is accessible through the 'Arctic Symphony' YouTube channel. The essence of 'Arctic Symphony'-project lies in the temporal aspect of the architecture. Just as music and dance is not static, frozen in time, neither should architecture be. Architecture should be dynamic and ever-changing, echoing the ebbs and flows of the Arctic landscape itself. The project signifies a dance with time, where the architecture, the landscape, and human activity are all performers on the stage of the Arctic Symphony.

How can an open relation between bodies, movement and architecture lead to new ways of bodily attunement in space? Dancing weaves Bodies and Space with the World. Social and (anatomo-)political conventions compose a foundational understanding of how I experience my former dancer body in architectural space. In my research, the moving body weaves threads between art, architecture, performance, philosophy, body politics, and everyday practices. As a designer, I perceive our bodies as intertwined actors within the spheres of art, architecture, and urbanism. As a former classical and contemporary dancer, I bring a certain sensibility to surrounding spaces, with a high resonance towards rhythms, materialities, and interventions in the built environment. Assembling both aspects, I use the moving body in the city as a tool to design. The reciprocity between the body, movement, and architecture is historically solidified in well-established systems of power by the repressive state apparatus. (Wark, McKenzie. 2019. Capital is Dead.p.154). Differences in power, entitlement, and access to being accepted as human (bodies) make us all different from each other. The project liberates the body from the state of oppression of social, political, and reproductive regulative systems. Essentially, we are made of the same flesh – we are all bodies that express how we sense space through actions and emissions of our physical energy. The research explores the relation between the body as a subject and its mirage in space, thus creating endless shapes of being (within) a human body. The aim is to open up a creative dialogue between architecture and bodily resonance ,paging body in space and space in body.’ (Diller, E. Scofidio, R. 1994. Flesh – Architectural Probes. p.23.) I walk, move, dance, and think with my own body as extended matter to absorb the space around me in its energies. By translating these experiences into notational drawings, collages, physical models, poetry and chronophotographic images, the moments of reciprocal attunement between body, dance and space come forth. Design Brief
: The floating water theater beats like a heart to the rhythm of Rotterdam’s waves. The desired design will allow new encounters between water and land, bodies and space, spectators and actors. It is a space to make you aware of your bodily potential to climb, rise, hide, run, scream, and dream. It is a manifestation of what it means to move your body in this journey of space.