Transform is the keyword for the situation we are in. The climate is changing and we do to. Our needs change every day, and we like the change. We like the transformation, because that is life. We search for goals. Goals that help us to become something we always wanted to be. This year was all about learning and evolving and I enjoyed every minute of it. Even the lows with all that happened in the world and around us I tried to make the most of this year. I found my self as a student that is slowly transforming in something that looks like an architect. I learned to trust myself and my decisions and followed my fascinations. This book became a journal, a collection of my memories, thoughts and designs. It has been a journey. And you will see that though out this booklet. In addition to this booklet I have written a story that explains the coversation between me and the project. The project ‘The Spring’ is not only a search to master the science and art of making space, but also to search for the poetics of space. Architecture is more than making room for people, it forms people and how they live. With this project i tried to study the changes we can make to solve the problems of to day and the future.

Wandering around the neighborhood and exploring the unstable interstitial space, the passages were deemed as the most vibrant stages for real life, the hidden gems behind the walls bounding the street. The passages connect the street to the consumption space behind the row of housing blocks, which is transformed from the old production structures due to gentrification and de-industrialization. With blurry sovereignty, people improvise, people share the space and people reuse. This discovery led to the question: This discovery led to the question: Who should design the way of living? Architects or Individuals? The existing situation entitled ample freedom to individuals, yet the optimization of space in terms of usage and circulation is not ensured due to poor communication and consideration. Here is when architects introduce Generous Space. Generous Space is the stage for improvisation with an embedded narrative designed; empowered symbiotic benefits; and is a kind of semi-public space that entitled stakeholders a sense of ownership, be it charged or not. In the urban level, Generous Space becomes the newly drawn internal urban passage, a public interior that generates different open spaces for the plot. The form of the varied open space suggests certain types of happenings respecting the zoning and edges definition of the plot under the theme of urban mining, which gains from the waste from the city. The actors along the urban passage can occupy the space for events in different timeframes and adjust accessibility when the plot evolves and the demand changes. Architecturally, the project focused on the second-hand shopping arcade which is the end segment of the internal urban passage that lies between a gigantic social housing block and a strip of abandoned offices. Generous Space turns to flexible space, communal space, and shared space. Flexible space is demonstrated by the various combinations of living, production, and consumption spaces of the studios with free plans and band connections. Communal space is a kind of public space where different parties enjoy symbiotic benefits. This is exhibited by the communal thrift cafe that allows the neighbors and consumers to relax and work while displaying the repurposed furniture and accessories of the studios. A shared space is a more intimate space that is only shared among a smaller group of stakeholders, mostly found in the shared corridor that tenants can choose to collaborate for common interests or maintain it as the extension of individual space. As for materialization, Generous Space is a system designed in a way that controls and allows replacement and appropriation. This could take place in different artifacts, a ceiling, a facade, a staircase, etc. The most prominent application is the ceiling of the passage, which also serves as the balcony garden of the residents. Wooden crates were collected from the neighborhood to form the modular structure where residents can choose the plantation to form a pattern for an ever-changing collective aesthetic. The way of living is the most precious remnant to be spoliated. The passage is the identified stage that promised the actions. Architects, like and more than a choreographer, need to be generous enough when the dancers want more improvisation without deviating the main storyline.

The graduation project wants to define some activity points and events capable of creating social integration. The key to their meaning and success will be the use and the appropriation that the communi¬ty itself will make of them. According to Jane Jacobs the ‘everyday life’ space is ba¬nal and repetitive; however, its dynamism is determined by its mixture of uses and public contacts. The creation of a square, a space of public domain, will have a direct impact on the Anderlecht’s societal sphe¬re. The strategy is to build a ‘city inside the city’ to improve the neighborhood by its differences, its functional and social mix, its places to form relationships and com¬munitarian feelings.

'The Scarred City', the theme of the Urban Architecture graduation studio in 2022/2023. This location-based studio started with Droixhe/Bressoux, a troublesome and difficult area in Liège (Belgium), as the overarching project site. Starting with fieldwork and participatory research into the hidden social structures of Bressoux and Droixhe and resulting in the importance and absence of nature in the area and its relevance, this thesis grew into a project aiming to contribute to childhood development in Bressoux and Droixhe by strengthening nature connectivity. Drawing workshops on the theme: 'what is nature?' with primary schools in Rotterdam, in comparable demographic neighbourhoods, where key to understanding children's perception of nature and observing their nature connectivity and inspired and aided in the design of a children’s community/leisure centre in Park de l’Oasis. A building which functions as the anchor between child and nature and where the design and its current natural environment go hand in hand to achieve the project’s aim.

This project is about transforming existing buildings that are facing demolition. In opposition to the constant renewing of our physical world for better performing building, this graduation proposes a gradual mutation of a locality.

The main research in question regards what is Bricolage in architecture. This topic is strikingly valuable to contemporary demand, given the fact that there is a considerable amount of buildings and building elements that do not carry a value that is strong enough to be considered historical or cultural. In fact, often the meaning of Bricolage crosses the line with the one of Spolia, which consists of a twist respect to the first one, in the sense that a Spolia gains a further value, recalling a former life, a significance that revives identity and history. The questions of this research investigate the role of bricolage and spolia in today’s context and the way in which bricolage can be applied to architecture, and the value that bricolage assumes within it, in particular, related to monetary value, durability, and sustainability. There is a limited amount of resources available, and even if the moment in which they are going to be over seems distant, it’s going to be reached. Thus, it is of extreme relevance to start learning now the possibilities of second hand construction materials, the processes and limits to overcome, as well as the potentials. There are many ways in which the subject of Bricolage in architecture could be approached, leading to different orientations within the field. Nevertheless, the focus of the thesis is directed more towards the material sphere, in which the potentials of re-use and adaptation of building elements of various nature are investigated.Simultaneously, the possibilities of integration of both the new and the old materials are pivotal aspects to be scrutinized, while on the other side, the material properties should be taken into consideration for the components and elements to work together. In addition, the portion of the research that is most relevant to be described consists of the study and onsite observation and analysis of the practice of dealing with the concept of bricolage in these terms, that regard the reuse of materials and any available elements of architecture. The design results in a series of buildings realized with the most reused materials possible, with a program and a composition responding to the needs of the area. To be more specific, it will involve the realization of a promenade composed on one side by a work of sew and cut, dealing with existing buildings combined with new ones.Eventually, the design is based on actual resources found available, partially from site demolitions, partially from contemporary demolitions around the city of Brussels, and, as a third source, in the moment in which the first two ones are not enough, from Opalis, an online database presenting all the major resellers of second hand construction elements in Belgium. These material resources, instead of a design limit, will represent a potential for future design approaches that will inevitably be taken into consideration in future times.

This thesis aims to develop a new urban and architectural condition for the site of the existing Molenpoort shopping centre, within Nijmegen’s city centre. The project aims to investigate how play can be considered as part of urban and architectural design in an attempt to make a healthier and more engaging city to live in.

The studio theme is spolia/bricolage, which means re-using old materials or ideas (spolia) and working spontaneously with what is found at hand (bricolage). The research leading to the collective memory and its architectural application was about Alvaro Siza’s way of working with context, local community and ‘as-found’ elements on the site. The collective memory – especially as described by Aldo Rossi – is something that architects has to find on site and interpret through his culture and knowledge to provide the architectural design settled in the context. This way of approaching to the given place allows better understanding of local way of living, the needs and architectural solutions responding to it. On another hand, it deals very much with the identity crisis in modern cities, which are dominated by placeless architecture, which was promoted by modernism. All those issues raised in the projects are also the concern of the studio, which focuses on medium-sized areas, which problems need to be understood in detail, so they are too small for tools of urbanism to provide the accurate solutions. The idea of memory is an important part of the approach, allowing to find cultural importance of certain elements in space. The site is located in Anderlecht district and plot for the intervention is a collage of everything both in form and function. Traditional row-houses, post-industrial buildings, modernist housing block and 16-storey high slab social housing in one place together with a park and a lot of undefined space occupied by ruins or outdoor storages. The place, however, has a certain history of the Senne river, which once flew through Brussels and at some point in time was covered and left traces within the whole city or industrial character of the neighbourhood which is still visible and now is the topic of many projects which consider bringing back the character of productive metropolis to Brussels. Nevertheless, the plot is complicated in its present state and challenges students to think between the urban and architectural scale in order to improve the spatial quality on the site by using tools and precision, which would not be accessible on an only urban scale. Since the post-war modernist times, architects regularly raised the critical concern on the technology dominance, standardization and commodification of the architecture. Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre wrote the theory of Critical Regionalism, which was later cited and expanded by Kenneth Frampton. Previously mentioned Aldo Rossi and Christine Boyer wrote about collective memory where they criticised and tried to refer to the context made by modernist architecture in cities. As it appeared, post-modernism with its contextual movement also did not solve the problems of disappearing identity within modern cities. Today, the effects of globalization are much more visible than back in the 1970s and therefore the role of an architect is also about understanding different issues appearing in various areas of one’s work. Moreover, in the time of rapid development of technology, changing societal habits, architecture also has to keep that pace. It is an architect’s role to keep up with the innovative research methodologies and knowledge to provide a better response to the dynamic environment of constant change. Important thing is that the theory does not promote coming back to vernacular roots, but creates a room for interpretation of these values in a critical way. The problems outlined by mentioned architects, philosophers and sociologists can still be found as an important issues of modern architecture which has to deal with the fast-growing of the cities, sustainability issues and therefore the development of technology – especially in the time when international submissions for architects are not exceptions, but in most cases everydayness. This pace of growing demands and shrinking deadlines makes it difficult for proper studying of context and ends up in standardized structures optimized to meet all demands. The most common concern cited in mentioned works is placeless architecture, which cuts off itself from the context. Studying those phenomena, reasons why they appear and how are the possible solutions to them can give me a proper awareness for my professional future as an architect to implement this knowledge during the real projects.

Bricolage is a way of thinking, researching and designing. From the perspective of architect, we build our realm using the existing constructing logic and limited materials, to make something new from the old, which seems to be a low-key but efficient way for renovation of Passage de Molenpoort. Date back to 1972, the popularity of the American shopping mall gave birth to de Molenpoort in Nijmegen, the first shopping mall in Europe. Because it is a product of emulation, the Molenpoort did not take root in the city, but isolated from the context and grew savagely in the city center. On the one hand, ignoring the problems and simply protect it as a heritage building make no contribution to the rebirth of “dead mall”. On the other hand, totally replace the Molenpoort with another building will also be a loss for Nijmegen. In my proposal, I step back and review the whole evolution history as well as thinking over the existing problems hiding in the Molenpoort. And then I use all the materials in hand and all the ideas in my mind, to bricolage a Commercial Fulfillment Center, which is not only a solution to reinvent the "dead passage", but also a transitional product between retail architecture and public realm aiming at returning our public life back to the urban realm.

The design and research developed in a Lexicon of bricolage definitions of Nijmegen, becoming a new way of recomposing an understandable language as a research product that could be shared but also interpreted by everyone. The research highlights the value of the context, related to typologies, fragments using beguinages as a guiding reference as urban enclaves that generated positive alterity worth re-propose in the contemporary city. Moreover, in the “Bricolage layout” I propose an interpretation of the term bricolage from a theoretical and practical framework including works of art, literature, architecture, design as representative elements of the approach. The layout concludes with some of my critical conclusions to design with the aim of diffusing the concept of bricolage as a guiding approach that everyone should consider, and find the bricoleur hidden in them.

The project site in Anderlecht, Belgium exists a fragmented urban fabric in terms of morphological evolution in the post-industrial period, functional mix of the urban plot, connection with the immediate urban grains and the ephemeral state of ownership of spaces around the site. However, the nomadic site actors practise informal ‘urban mining’ which enables material flow despite physical distance of the urban fragments. The flow of resource becomes the immaterial spolia that gives experiential qualities and grants adaptability to the neighbourhood. The urban planning proposal thus endeavors to orchestrate the process of urban mining from collection, disassembly, extraction, recovery, consumption and reinvention within the site plot, challenging the status quo of recycling industry as infrastructure. The site is re-zoned into a production strip, mixed commercial and production public interior strip, and a cultural strip, forming a sprawling alley-yard internally that connects the major urban nodes of the plot at its periphery. The organization stitches the urban fragments thematically and functionally with narrating the process of urban mining. “Everyone is equipped by nature to receive and to assimilate sensory experiences,” (Lehmann, 2017). Recyclage is a hybrid that encompasses a material library, makerspace for material experiment , exposition space for new prototypes, auditorium, meeting rooms, office space for researchers and archive, providing a converge point for inhabitants, entrepreneurs, researchers and everyday makers. Being juxtaposed with teaching space of Le goujon and confronting the street of institutions, the recycle learning center serves as an extension of the educational cluster. The programmes are devised in zones that foster a pedagogical environment based on the observation of how a person understands and approaches material when I conducted the sensory experience mapping for the research. The spatial arrangement suggests exploratory and ascending movement with constant sightlines towards Le goujon which predominantly constitutes to the site context. The center interpreted materials as interlocutor between people from all walks of life, unleashing the inherent material literacy of individuals, reinventing architectural opportunities between traces of events, time as well as memories. The materiality of the project illustrates the boundless possibility of materials and the humanized facet of urban mining. Aluminium at different states and forms are harnessed to showcase the time and traces material afford particularly in this site with occupants constantly moving in and out. Aluminium is highly available, omnipresent in ever-changing commercial and residential buildings, and associated with domestic life and the remembrance of Anderlecht being a post-industrial city. The architecture ensemble is depicted as a living life account of aluminium that it is finished with mainly reused aluminium which undergoes a myriad of transformation strategies: reuse, repurpose, reconfigure and transform to take up different expressions. The ‘patchwork’ language presents an amateur character and recognizes the potential of anthropocene waste in elevating the design outcome, manifesting the envisioned position of Recyclage in empowering a home-grown community of nomads.

This master thesis explores the notion of social space by searching for ways of how architectural elements can encourage social behavior in the public domain. Both spatial planning and architecture offer us places for encounters, freedom and creation. Architecture has therefore an important social task, it gives meaning to a place and can stimulate certain activities. The research is structured in three parts which all influence the project and all operate on different scales. These parts are experienced in daily life, together they form and influence the everyday life and create an order of enclosure. The first part will explain the city of Maastricht, how it is perceived and used today and the historic events that changed the identity and appearance of the city. The second part will focus on the building scale, the transition from the city to a building, the level of public and private and the sequence of spaces in buildings. The last part will show the human scale in and around buildings. It will clarify the way people use spaces, their behavior and the places where people intersect and interact.

The project is situated in the neighbourhood of Bressoux in the post-industrial city Liege in Belgium. Bressoux felt at first as a deserted place. It gave the impression that only people live here because of financial necessity. The people with better jobs move away, the ones left behind seem forgotten and neglected. “The winner takes it all!” is the attitude of our economy (Brugmans, 2016, p.6). What is left for the ‘others’? Are they the ones hidden behind the facades of Bressoux? What will their future perspective be? In order to explore the lives of the people in multicultural neighbourhoods like Bressoux, a common ground had to be found. I believe it is food. And to be more specific: bread. Bread is used in almost every cuisine of every culture. Therefore the research follows the journey of bread trough time, space and the everyday life: Daily bread. The historical and social-cultural research of the production and consumption of bread, also led to an extended research on milling and (communal) wood-fire ovens. The research gave awareness of the importance of how we deal with our primary needs of food, warmth and community. They should be more visible and more directly involved in our daily lives. The conclusion of the research is translated into the design. The design contains a communal oven within a living room for the neighbourhood, connected with a mill factory using the traditional stone-milling. This is situated in an existing building and surrounded by seven new-built apartment blocks. The apartment blocks consists of three or five apartments, all connected with the chimney of a tile-stove which provides most of the warmth and is located on the ground floor in a shared space. The mill gives the neighbourhood the opportunity to buy local produces and healthy flour and the communal wood-fire oven a place to make their own bread or other food and share it with their neighbours in a warm space. The housing is based on the principle of sharing the responsibility of their warmth, which creates communities within the building block. So this project tries to give people an alternative future perspective in the winner-takes it all society by reconsidering the way we handle our primary needs. In order to hopefully improve the lives of ‘those others’, simply by giving back the control of their food, warmth and community.

Shopping Passage The Molenpoort in Nijmegen is an indoor shopping centre that in current times is struggling with decreasing visitor numbers and rapidly growing shop vacancies. The municipality of Nijmegen has plans to demolish the building completely, and create an outdoor -generic- shopping street with apartments on top. Research points out that there is no need for more chain stores in the city centre of Nijmegen, instead people want more specialized shops with local products. A new urban plan for the area is designed, in which parts of the original building are demolished, but most of it is kept to house new programs. Focus of the urban plan was chosen to be the public Music & Arts School, which is created in the existing concrete structure located in between the busy Molenstraat and the new green courtyard. A detailed investigation of the existing structure of the building pointed out some systematic characteristics of the construction, and on the other hand some unique particularities. The leading concept of the design became to articulate, show and appreciate these characteristics and particularities of the existing structure. The Music & Arts School has a variety of rooms, all with different acoustic requirements. The final design is a result of experimentation with the goal of finding the sweet spot between the poetics that came from the structure and the functional requirements for the interior spaces.

The project is set in a fragmented neighbourhood called Cureghem in the south-west of Brussels. The newspapers often portray the neighbourhood as poorly developed with low living standards. The project considers that spatial transformation is only acceptable if it responds to current-day social and spatial issues. In the urban design of the project in Cureghem, the Senne is used to shape the park in the urban plan, not because the Senne is spolia, but because of the need for readable and climate-responsive exterior spaces. The smaller scale of the architecture aims to stimulate peoples feeling of belonging and ability to develop their crafts. In the design, the spolia of local craft and economic activity of textiles, ceramics and building materials is used as an inspiration for the program. Both in the urban plan and architecture, the spatial fragmentation is explained by zooming into the border conditions of the fragmented urban block. These conditions explain the current problems that are present. One of the theoretical explorations was to answer the question: What can be defined as a border or edge, what do they consist of, and are they culturally defined? To answer this question a lot of disciplines had to be addressed, from geology and archaeology to anthropology and the body. The research on this started with a very abstract approach to understanding borders, by zooming in on existing theories on borders in fields ranging from archaeology to performance art.

The studio topic Glaneur/Glaneuse refers to the old ‘profession’ of the gleaners, those people picking up the leftovers of the agricultural harvest and making out of these food for their families. Architects are called to be some kind of gleaners, too. In these past graduation months, the site (field) has been read and absorbed. The reading process has been guided by the french architecture theories of Clement, Lefebvre and Latour. Gilles Clement, in his ‘Third Landscape Manifesto’, describes how urbanisation creates residues within the city structure, such as vacant industrial areas. ‘THE (NOT) ORDINARY ACADEMY’ project challenges current urbanisation, questioning its environmental, economical and, mostly, social sustainability, attempting to give a new meaning (function) to these residues. For example, the demolition of the existing factory fabric indeed provides more space for specific urban and architectural developments. However, this specificity requires more time, money and energy than the adaptive reuse of these 'third landscapes’, with the risk that city requirements change during their construction. To then mention Bruno Latour’s theories, “...critical attention is shifted from architecture as a matter of fact to architecture as a matter of concern. As matter of fact, buildings can be subjected to rules and methods, and they can be treated as objects on their terms. As matters of concern, they enter into socially embedded networks, in which the consequences of architecture are of much more significance than the objects of architecture.” In a general and local context where architecture doesn’t engage enough with ‘local’ political and social contexts, the need to re-consider the potential for architects to be influential and transformative agents of (existing) space grows pressing.3 Challenging ‘mainstream’ architecture means fighting norms that shut down other ways of thinking and operating. In fact, in this conflictual environment, many architects find themselves reduced to simple decorative participants improving the marketability of developers’ projects. This critique aims to re-evaluate the potential and influence of the architects in the definition of the urban and social space. A similar theoretical approach has already been defined by some offices, projects and publications, which suggest other ways of doing architecture to move away from architecture's traditional focus on the look and making of buildings. They aim for a much more expansive field of opportunities in which architects and non- architects can operate and collaborate. These case studies have been presented along with this master thesis to show a transformative intent to make the status quo better: the means are varied, from activism to pedagogy, publications to networking, making stuff to making policy.4 Spatial production belongs to a much wider group of actors. In this ecosystem of actors and events, the intention of the research is to narrate the conditions in which an on-site architecture office can ACT as a device to challenge and/or inspire the ongoing developments, investigating in which way this alternative could provide more sustainable solutions with a different urban strategy. The purpose is to assemble a gradual re-appropriation and re-configuration of the leftover buildings whose functions won’t be overdetermined, allowing a continuous transition of activities that will increase the value and awareness of these spaces and their potential. More practical, the project is an attempt at how a fast deliverable architecture could be given back to the city with the least and mostly needed intervention possible, all done in the name of presenting a new way of looking at how buildings and space can be produced. How? The non-overdetermination of the building’s function is based on a simple change of connotation of the existing artefacts (being there spaces, structures or objects) allowing different conditions to happen while this transition is happening, also after the architect leaves the site. As written in the studio description, “architecture grows out of existing conditions and resources.” In fact, the design assignment – as will be presented in the common urban plan – aims to discover and develop the scenario between a vacant industrial site – in its built and unbuilt matter – and the possible opportunities that its vacant spaces can offer, as evidence of the possible cohabitation of public and private domains. In this way, the project detaches from the ordinary academic architectural ‘utopia’ and looks forward to a more realistic approach with given realistic social, political and architectural conditions, defining the architect’s role not anymore as consequential, but rather influential. Evoking “mixed feelings” (thanks Paul) is a way to express the complexity of this process. As Enrique Walker writes in the foreword chapter of ‘Without Content’ by Kersten Geers, (referring to architects) “...they stage a conversation, and situate their work within it. They forge alliances. They establish sources. They delineate sensibilities. They define positions. They declare programmes.” And, as shown this afternoon, they curate.

The site of the project is in Anderlecht, Brussels. The design proposal including two parts: urban proposal and architectural proposal. For the urban renewal, I re-allocated the arrangement considering the programs, the new buildings groups follow their counterpart one by one, several inner courtyards acting as the spine of the site, connecting those groups. The architectural proposal is a manifesto of how it is possible to treat old houses. The three adjacent industrial buildings become my design target. I keep most of the ordinary architecture elements we could found in this task as the spolia. The programs have transformed from industrial space to a community center including a local food market and a daycare center, in between would also be an inner courtyard enclosed by two small pavilions.

"Interwoven: Rethinking Work-Live Relations in a Post-Industrial Neighborhood" is a graduation project focused on the neighbourhood Bressoux in Liege, Belgium. This project aims to address the socio-economic challenges of a post-industrial city by reimagining the relationship between work and living spaces. By repurposing existing industrial structures within the neighbourhood and integrating new buildings, the project creates a vibrant and interconnected community. It provides opportunities for local craftsmen, entrepreneurs, and residents to work, collaborate, and engage in shared activities. Through thoughtful design, the project seeks to revitalise the neighbourhood, foster social cohesion, and empower the financial and social position of the city.

The project developed as a continuous effort to define the idea of spolia. A term that surpasses the re-appropriation of material becoming an active approach to architecture becoming an attitude towards the city and the landscape in the consciousness that a deep relation is established between the forms and the culture that generate these forms. The project developed a Sport Hall in Brussels as a social condenser.

An urban architecture aims to redefine an environment through cross-scale design in which the public, collective and private realms are (re)shaped. It critically assesses and responds to urban sites by enhancing its qualities and addressing its shortcomings. New buildings should therefore aim to establish themselves as articulators of a broader intervention scheme. By doing so, both existing and new structures are bound together in mutual benefit. This relationship elevates the quality of what is found in our cities and is fostered by new buildings that have character and are not arbitrary. Spolia is made of what is found in our cities, both material and immaterial pieces of former sites and building cultures. These fragments can be recomposed and incorporated into new structures, providing meaning, adding value and stabilizing them into the existing.Bricolage can be described as a creative practice that uses a limited and heterogeneous repertoire of available resources. It promotes reuse and re-appropriation of both material and immaterial values. Such re-imagining of found objects often results in new and uncommon meanings, while also embracing a sense of practicality and ingenuity. Adopting bricolage means looking at design practice differently. It becomes important to start by investigating the existing, the heterogeneous repertoire of our buildings and cities, looking for signs and ideas. These will form the starting point of future interventions. New designs are to be developed in tandem with the creative reuse of existing structures, thus a position on reuse is also important. Through a creative reuse that imagines new possibilities, the existing is used as a starting point for a new design. The idea is to highlight what can be a complimentary relationship between renewed structures and the newly added, rather than to stage a clash between old and new. To piece together three modest buildings into one new building, in turn making them a valued asset on the site. I believe this project illustrates how, by working with what is already in place in our cities, we can add upon and improve urban sites. I advocate that this should happen by a creative reuse that pieces together old and new, generating new and meaningful structures. Through this practice, both ordinary and relevant buildings may have their lives extended, their qualities highlighted or their faults amended. Piecing together means slowly building towards something new, taking fragments of what one finds along the way and making the best use of them. Indeed, the pleasure is the act itself, and the satisfaction is in creating an harmonious whole out of such fragmentrs.