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 The city is soon reaching its limits for urban expansion, and perhaps it already has: most agricultural land has been replaced by urban settlements, and the city’s population keeps surging.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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.