The Brussels-Capital Region (BCR) exemplifies a paradox of urban complexity: home to Europe’s political center and progressive policies, yet persistently struggling with social housing shortages and a high number of homeless individuals. Against the limited public social housing and a private rental market shaped by the homeownership-led housing market in the BCR (Costa & De Valk, 2018), this research proposes to develop a transitional housing stage that can mitigate the housing problem of Belgian nationality roofless people, ultimately enable them to transit more quickly and stably into the regular housing market.

The thesis is grounded in a theoretical framework that explores how social segregation among roofless individuals is reinforced by stigmatization, housing filtering, and Flanders' long-standing obsession with homeownership. It argues that securing housing justice is essential for regaining full citizenship, ultimately reducing social segregation. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research combines quantitative with qualitative analysis, drawing from 21 interviews with experts, roofless individuals, and local residents. Participants were asked to evaluate the key spatial indicators necessary for reintegration and assign weighted scores to their importance. These factors—such as the number of markets and stores by each monitoring district, were then mapped at the BCR level to create a Reintegration Supportiveness Index for Belgian nationality roofless people.

Based on the results, targeted transitional strategies are proposed for selected districts that have relatively low Reintegration Supportiveness Value, focusing on: (1) Stakeholder collaboration to enhance different actors to involve in neighborhoods activities; (2) Flexibility in housing typologies to unlock potential transitional housing spaces; (3) Needs-based spatial improvements at the neighborhood level to improve city space for roofless people to have more opportunities to interact with neighbors and receive more systemic supports. By implementing the housing strategy, the thesis not only offers a way to reduce rooflessness, but also creates opportunities for various vulnerable groups to participate, ensuring that everyone has a place to call home, access to stable housing, and a better chance to integrate into society.

The Netherlands has the ambition to transition to a fully circular economy before 2050. Between this future and where we stand now, there is still a large gap. The Netherlands produces 60 million tonnes of waste per year. This fact contains two problems that this project aims to deal with: 1) the heigh of this number in the first place, and 2) that approximately 20% of the waste does not find its way back into the system. In 2020, 7.6 million tonnes of waste was incinerated and 32.7 million tonnes of waste was exported to non-EU countries, where waste often ends up in landfill or is send for incineration with adverse health effects.

This project takes the radical stance to stop incineration and export, which means the Netherlands must take responsibility for the waste it produces. For much of the waste that currently follows one of these trajectories, there are no adequate solutions for reuse or recycling. Hence, we designed a system of waste collection, sorting, and storage where materials can be stored in waste houses until they find their way back into the system (problem 1). The piling up of the waste will create awareness of the consequences of unresponsible consumption, affecting the behaviour of people through confrontation (problem 2).

The system we design aims to create a disruption of the existing linear system at different levels. The large-scale societal perception of production-consumption-waste generation will slowly change, while the waste houses will create a sense of urgency at the small scale. This will stimulate niche innovations to find innovative solutions to deal with waste that is stored. Our project is thus both an instigator of change and part of the change itself in the transition to the circular economy.

If the project is successful, the waste houses will gradually become obsolete as consumption and waste production go down. In the far future, the former waste houses can house different functions, or they can be demolished in a circular way, returning the materials into the resource loop.