This thesis investigates how the latent contemplative and ruinous qualities of interstitial landscapes along the Schie in Rotterdam North can be spatially framed as an armature for contemplative attunement with nature. The research starts from the observation that residual infrastructural spaces are often dismissed as leftover, unsafe or illegible, while they may contain strong ecological, atmospheric and experiential value.

Through literature research, precedent analysis, repeated fieldwork, deep mapping and design experiments, the thesis examines how contemplation, ruinosity, fourth nature, succession and tree architecture can inform a landscape architectural design attitude based on restraint rather than replacement. The Schie interstitial is read not as empty ground, but as a living ruin: a landscape already shaped by water, infrastructure, spontaneous vegetation, informal use, weathering and time.

The design proposal for Stadspark-West introduces a minimal spatial armature of routes, thresholds, tree structures, steel edges, pause moments and adaptive maintenance. Rather than producing a finished park image, the design prepares conditions in which visitors may slow down, stand still and become more attentive to ongoing processes of growth, decay and care.

The thesis argues that landscape architecture can support attunement not by controlling the interstitial landscape, but by making its existing temporal, ecological and spatial qualities perceptible. ... Read more

"House of the Muses" begins with a critique of the traditional art museum and its systems of collecting, exhibiting, and archiving knowledge. In my research, I argue that museums are patriarchal, colonial, and capitalistic discursive institutions whose monumental architecture reflects these values: imposing facades and sterile interiors that make visitors feel as if they need to behave a certain way or have prior knowledge. Through architectural design, I propose an alternative logic and system: a post-museum based on intersectional feminist values of care and repair.
To achieve this, I reclaim the muse, a figure traditionally considered passive inspiration for the male artist. I argue that one can be a source of inspiration and a creator simultaneously. In the House of the Muses, everyone and everything can inspire one another. This concept is reflected in the design of the Katoenhuis renovation, where an industrial cotton storage building in the harbor of Rotterdam is transformed into a generative machine of relations and collective transformation.
My design is informed by the four textile processes of spinning, weaving, stitching, and natural dyeing. These processes have been considered secondary due to their gendered nature, but I reclaim them as a universal language and medium. Through textiles, the House of the Muses takes shape and is inspired by and inspires human and non-human agencies of the urban environment.

https://lindadelrosso.com/house-of-the-muses-1
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This project focuses on the interstitial spaces in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, asking why they should be valued and how they can be meaningfully experienced. These left-over urban spaces are often overlooked, stigmatised, and framed as meaningless, unsafe, or in need of control. At the same time, they hold aesthetic, ecological, and experiential values that remain largely unrecognised within dominant urban narratives. These spaces offer alternative readings of urban nature and prevailing ideas about who and what is considered a legitimate neighbour in our city.

The project aims to give an alternative theory and design framework on how to look and deal with the left-over spaces of the city, one that reaches beyond dominating ideas on functionality, aesthetics or ecology. Central to this framework is the notion of access, understood not only in physical terms but also as a visual and mental condition. By addressing access on these three interconnected levels - physical, visual, and mental - the project seeks to enable engagement and care with interstitial spaces while preserving their openness, ambiguity, and self-evolving character.

The research aims to understand the existing qualities of these fringe spaces from social, ecological, and experiential perspectives. The theoretical research frames the language and existing social and ecological knowledge surrounding interstitial spaces, while critically questioning the role of design and its aesthetics. It sets apart a selection of values found in interstitial spaces as well as a set of ‘designerly approaches’ to work with and access the interstitial space.

An immersive site analysis is conducted across a selection of fringe spaces in north-east Rotterdam. This analysis is based on continuous wandering, reading informal uses and entrances, and developing speculative narratives rooted in long-term observation. Through this method, detailed portraits of users, plants, and spatial affordances are produced, revealing how human and non-human actors co-inhabit and shape these landscapes.

Building on this research, the design component addresses the question: How can interstitial spaces be accessed in ways that evoke wonder, care, and engagement, while maintaining their freedom of use and ecological autonomy? The project introduces a set of design guidelines, termed the Rules for Enchantment, which imposes actions and interventions to take in order to unlock the potentials of the in-between pockets of greenery, as well as restrains that prevent them from losing their freedom, their looseness, their Interstitiality.
the metropolitan city of Rotterdam that is able to exist through appreciation and care.

The project culminates in a city-wide vision for interstitial spaces in Rotterdam, supported by a context-specific design proposal at the neglected Spoordijk Spangen site. This intervention increases accessibility and engagement while safeguarding the site’s fragile social and ecological dynamics. Ultimately, the project reframes interstitial spaces as an unconventional form of green infrastructure, capable of fostering wonder, care, and long-term stewardship, and contributing to a more socially and ecologically inclusive public landscape for the city of Rotterdam. ... Read more

This project explores how our architectural practice can be reimagined through an ecofeminist lens. In doing so, it addresses the global climate crisis by confronting it at its core: humanity’s broken relationship with ‘nature’.

The project is rooted in an understanding of spatial design as a world-making practice, one that not only shapes material reality but also produces meaning through its storytelling capacities. It questions and critiques contemporary architectural practice, which is deeply rooted in colonial and capitalist systems, and counters this with a practice centred on connection rather than divide.

Through a method of Radical Spatial Imagination, complex theoretical and philosophical notions are translated into spatial manifestations. This process resulted in 18 insights which embody the ecofeminist lens that was developed throughout the research. It is through this lens, represented by these insights, that the design project unfolds.

The projects continues in a speculative reimagination of Amsterdam Central station. Here the station is reimagined not just as a multispecies landscape or a project on ecological continuity but as a place that fundamentally questions and reshapes our relationship with our environment.

Amsterdam Central station is transformed from a sterile, smooth and efficient transportation hub into a messy place of interconnected entanglements. Harsh, dry, dead and TL-lighted spaces are replaced with leaky wet and sun-kissed area’s full of life. By breaking boundaries and facilitating more than human agency it disrupts tempo and forces human actors to let go of control. ... Read more

‘Queer’ can be both an adjective and a verb: beyond identity, it is a force in motion dismantling systems of exclusion and challenging normativity. This thesis investigates how the queering of the architectural process can transform it from a site of oppression into one of empowerment. This is applied in the context of Istanbul, where urban renewal often serves as a tool of erasure, pushing marginalized communities to the edges of the city.

Accordingly, the project proposes an architecture that listens, brings together and resists fixity. Collaboration is engrained all throughout the project; during research, knowledge is not extracted from ‘subjects’ but constructed collectively: a process that’s messy, embodied and always in flux. By breaking down traditional research and design hierarchies, it shifts authority away from the architect and toward shared authorship, embracing transdisciplinarity and intersectionality as vital conditions, centralizing care and hospitality.

This approach unfolds through shared drawings, communal dinner nights, collective dreams and finally, a 1:1 scale spatial exploration in a queer nightclub in Istanbul. A space scavenged, assembled and transformed through improvisation and shared labor. The storyline reveals key anchor points for queering the architectural process: to value process over product, to embrace temporality, to reintroduce craft - through working hands-on, playfulness and solutions beyond cognition are invited. Very much an unfinished product, this is an inquiry of gathering and holding space, an act of resistance and care - architecture seen as part of a larger celebration. ... Read more

This project begins with a question, not an answer.
What is public space, and who is it really for?

The Anarchisphere explores how architecture might provoke awareness of invisible systems of control while creating conditions in which power relations are critically dismantled. It asks how people might reclaim the ability to shape their surroundings through self-organisation, mutual aid, and collective action.

Rather than prescribing use or behaviour, the project proposes architecture as an open framework: unfinished, unstable, and open to appropriation. Public space is treated not as neutral ground, but as a contested terrain shaped by power, regulation, and design decisions that often go unquestioned.

Situated along the railway corridor between Rotterdam Centraal and Rotterdam Blaak, the project intervenes in a landscape defined by speed, infrastructure, and surveillance. A rigid triangular grid establishes an imposed order, which is disrupted by a new anarchic axis. Along this axis unfolds a system of mobile units, climbable towers, and wild ecologies. These elements resist a fixed program and invite misuse, transformation, and collective negotiation.

The Anarchisphere is not a singular object, but a lived condition. It is both an actual place and a theoretical understanding of space and its function. It is a desire for more: for freedom, autonomy, and comfort within the public realm. Through exposure, friction, and disruption, the project challenges preconceived notions of publicity and freedom within existing structures of hierarchy and power.

Architecture is turned inside out: a host rather than a master, a provocation rather than a solution. By giving people the means to create, occupy, and redefine space, the project asks what public space could become when authorship is collective and authority is no longer fixed. Ultimately, The Anarchisphere positions architecture not as a tool for control but as a catalyst for awareness, creativity, and freedom within the urban public realm.
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Kathmandu is aching, its border neighborhoods stretching out, moving up to the rim of the valley. The city is soon reaching its limits for urban expansion, and perhaps it already has: most agricultural land has been replaced by urban settlements, and the city’s population keeps surging. The architecture is changing rapidly and houses are being replaced one after another, every house a bit more slender and a bit taller than before. The turnover rate is so high that Kathmandu’s streets feel like perpetual construction sites, tirelessly building and constructing and demolishing again. Open spaces are disappearing, as well as the rich cultural qualities of Nepal's urbanism from before. These changes seem to happen without a greater plan in sight, and many say the city is become worse, not better.

Perhaps these issues are just part of a city in development: a Kathmandu that is struggling with its growing pains and the inevitable effects of urban boom. But to move forward from these pains, a couple of things are crucial: experimentation with alternative ways of building, closely working together with craftspeople and inhabitants, documenting and archiving the past architectures, and telling stories about a different city: one that is not pestered by pollution, built smartly to house everyone safely, and one that can resist the earthquakes to come.
These four ideas are the starting point for the design phase: the People’s Earthquake Museum of Kathmandu. This initiative was started after 2015 by a small community in Nepal, but has sadly been discontinued due to a lack of resources. The building aims to connect tradition with modernity: vernacular techniques with the modern needs of Kathmandu’s residents. At the same time, the building, located inside the commercial block in Gongabu Bus Park, is giving space to exhibit stories about the earthquakes, architectures that have been lost, and to showcase ways of moving forward. With museum spaces, an archive and library, auditorium and workspaces, the building revolves around reflection, mitigation, and experimentation.

This thesis is divided in four chapters:
1. Stories from KTM - photographic travelogue of Kathmandu and the Nepali rural
2. The architect, the builder, the researcher- a documentary of three interviews
3. Growing Pains - a short essay connecting the findings in Nepal with existing literature
4. The People's Earthquake Museum - a design proposal that visualizes the research results ... Read more

This project stems from a critical reflection on the urban processes of growth that trigger the construction of new cities in Egypt, in particular the development of the New Administrative Capital (NAC) that sits 45 km to the East of Cairo.

Over the last 50 years, Cairo’s built environment has exploded onto its agricultural land, both formally and informally, within its urban fabric, and into the desert around it, in the shape of desert archipelagoes. This is clearly visible when comparing satellite imagery from 1985 and 2020. Egypt’s government promotes the new capital as the key to reducing Cairo’s urban load as a result of its explosive metropolitan population, currently at 21.3 million projected to over 40 million by 2050. The NAC is well underway with ongoing construction clearly visible on site and from neighboring cities such as New Cairo.

What is striking about the NAC, besides the scale of the development, is its architectural and urban narrative. The narrative here entails not only the discourse through which the government presents the project to the public, but also the spatial experience, architectural expression and organization of space. The city from scratch departs from its predecessor taking seemingly little to no reference from it. The government seems to have been eager to move away from Cairo altogether and start with a blank canvas in the desert, focusing on grand gestures of power reflecting notions of modernity and progress and not the needs and everyday lives of the people.

The aim of the research is to observe, analyze and reflect on the social, cultural, economic, urban, architectural, (in)-formal, and political layers of Cairo to examine the need to return to the vernacular in search for a local identity. It asks the question, how can vernacular architecture be redefined to reflect and regenerate the built environment and spatial practices of Cairo and its future urban development? The city offers an opportunity to dig deeper into its fabric and extract narratives of how people live their everyday lives and adapt their built environment to their needs. It focuses on the relationship between people, spatial practices and the built environment, from its urban core and historic centers to its desert cities and extensions.

The design proposal lends itself as an experimental and incremental process that reimagines the process of production of space as a series of vernacular spatial practices. It offers a counter program that challenges the notion of architecture that is fixed in space and time that allows for multiple possibilities within its lifetime responding to people’s changing needs allowing for a process of growth and appropriation. This approach constantly questioned the role of the architect, local materials, spatial configurations and architectural language and expression, in a forum ensuring the design stays true to the redefined vernacular architecture to find the balance between design and appropriation. The project is left open-ended, signaling a sense of incompleteness and a challenge to further pursue vernacular architecture as spatial practices in the search for Cairo’s urban identity. ... Read more

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
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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. ... Read more

Linking Worlds – Rewilding the Netherlands represents an ecological approach towards the architectural design practice. By utilizing interdisciplinary methods, the project proposes an architecture that is concerned with the relation of all living organisms to one another and their environment. Therefore, the focus shifts away from a mainly human benefit to an inclusive life-promoting purpose at its core.

Building upon conservation biology theory of rewilding it addresses urgent matters such as population management issues and species extinction to accomplish a resilient and self-sustaining ecology within the Netherlands. Proposing habitat expansion and connection spanning from the Oostvaardersplassen, over the Horsterwold up to the Veluwe the goal is to create a diverse range of unmanaged land that facilitates natural migratory flows and behavior. The wolf as keystone umbrella species is granted access to new territories, where the carnivore can serve as natural manager through predation on large grazers.

The central architectural structure is an ecoduct or wildlife crossing bridging the A28 highway located between Ermelo and Putten, where the travelling human becomes a witness of architectures agency serving non-human needs. For a moment animal mobility becomes the main actor and therefore center of attention in a place that was claimed for exclusively human activity. A place of danger and potential death for all species is transformed into a place and symbol for concession that connects worlds. The project reveals that coexistence can be solved in a way of overlapping worlds for different species designing a path of less resistance. Beneficiaries are all the participating parties. The architectural result of this project can be seen as a metaphor. A human-made structure to facilitate animal movement. An inanimate object facilitating life on it and across it. A living bridge that promotes life.

The basis and underlaying motivation for this project was the quest for a newly gained attitude towards design, through an exploration of personal spirituality. Linking Worlds advocates for a new worldview. A worldview that demands a shift in perspective, lifts the value of life above all, is inclusive rather than exclusive, fosters a feeling of kinship amongst all species, welcomes diversity and facilitates coexistence. ... Read more

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
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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. ... Read more

My master’s graduation project entitled “Philanthropie?” stems from concerns regarding the increasing denial of one’s “Right to the City”, processes of gentrification and segregation through expanding hyper-commercialisation and the commodification of the Western neoliberal city itself, including most of its constituent parts. These concerns thus extend beyond matters of physical access, to the suppression of social life and the consequent growing isolation and inequality. Brussels, among other comparable cities, is a context where a housing crisis coexists with extreme rates of vacancy, where the right to private property is valued over one’s fundamental human right to housing. The problem of housing does not seem to be so much a lack of space as a lack of access.

While a much larger and growing portion of the population is subject to these conditions to various extents, these issues may be most evident in cases such as social housing. Brussels currently counts more than 50,000 families waiting for social housing, while its presence in the centre is decreasing. Many complexes find themselves in precarious conditions, often threatened by demolition, and their inhabitants by displacement—such as in the site “Rue Haute”.

The site is a post-war social housing complex located in the Marolles neighbourhood in the centre of Brussels. Embodying modernism’s rational and abstract ideals, the site primarily consists of seven blocks arranged around two public courtyards. These courtyards appear almost devoid of social life and care, and the main change observable since the complex’s completion in the 1950s is deterioration—except for a new social housing building completed this year, named “Menslievendheid/Philanthropie”, eponymous to its street. Appearing out of place, the white plaster block standing on a corten steel plinth does not seem to (re)consider the human condition and its urban context, likely repeating mistakes of the past through a top-down approach and a superficially different aesthetic.

However, an open call for a feasibility study was published in 2021 by the bouwmeester / maître architecte of Brussels, which expresses a need to revalue, reorganise and revitalise the site for citizens, to grant them new appropriation and a better quality of life. This project is based on the premise that in order to achieve such goals, and to meaningfully tackle the aforementioned issues, a more fundamental rethinking of social housing and urban life is required. It intends to do so through principles of the commons— a relatively new ideology which has been emerging and gaining momentum in recent years. It is based on the values of sharing material and immaterial resources, and stems from a need and desire to counteract the aforementioned conditions.

This booklet consists of two parts: research and design. It is structured as such for clarity, but the sections are not to be read as separate linear processes. The research and design were carried out in parallel throughout the academic year 2022–2023. The first part is a collection of research, studies and analyses conducted alongside the design process, guided by the overarching question of how architecture, through principles of commoning, can contribute to more equal social relations, agency, new modes of production, and the reintegration of social life into the urban fabric in the redevelopment of Rue Haute in Brussels.

The research is not aimed at providing a finite answer, but rather at forming an ongoing reflection informed by various interrelated topics. It consists of theoretical and historical research, case studies, quotes, extracts from articles, maps, data, photos, conversation transcripts and collages. Although fragmented in form, each element relates to the transformation of the Rue Haute site and together forms an assemblage of relevant material.

The second part of the booklet presents the final design proposals, preceded by insights into the process and methods. Finally, the booklet is concluded with extracts from the final presentation. ... Read more

"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. ... Read more

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. ... Read more

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.

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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. ... Read more

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 ... Read more