This work is based on the insights that came from the research developed during the first semester. This work of analysis on la Perseverancia, a working class neighbourhood situated in the area of central Bogotà started from its foundation up until now. I analysed and interpreted its transformations and my proposal can be seen as a possible next one.

In the middle of the picturesque quarter of Kosančićev Venac in Belgrade, a small empty crater is to be found. Once, the National Library of Belgrade stood here, but it got bombed during the second world war. Now it seems there is nothing more but some ruins of the original building. In multiple cases in Belgrade, the questions of how to deal with these scars in the urban fabric remains unsolved. This graduation project investigates the site of the former National Libray of Serbia and how to deal with the historical continuity of its narrative. For the design of the intervention, the concept of layering will be used as a formative method. To strengthen the memorial function of the site, the intervention will serve as a place that allows for the experience of an abstraction of daily life. To achieve this, research into religious architecture is conducted.

The green strips can be found in many roads/streets in Bogota as an urban infrastructure for dividing vehicles and traffic. However, on top of this regulating function, it can be observed that the citizens of Bogota have the tendency to spontaneously appropriate the green strips in ways that’s convenient for them.

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.

Informal actors possess a practical knowledge of the city, a sort of ‘secret know-how’, of how to move and operate in an environment that is unwelcoming to them. How could this knowledge be used as a tool or input of urban design? By considering the knowledge and ways of operating of the informal actors in a city, the project incorporates the elements observed in the interaction between informal actors and city infrastructure into the finished, non-prescriptive and multi-functional city interventions. By incorporating that knowledge, the project aims to create spaces of increased number of opportunities and affordances, and as such, to give voice to the informal, marginalized actors in the city, that are often dismissed and excluded.

Skopje is city of architecture with a strong emphasis on their exterior. Looking at the image of the city, the variety of architecture present can seem a bit overwhelming; each type of architecture seems to claim that they are thé image of Skopje. Since Skopje is filled with these different types of 'loud speaking architecture', the image of the city seems noisy and crowded, with different types of architecture all talking over each other. Therefore, Skopje's retreat is a space for people to get out of this conversation of the exteriorized buildings, in the form of a bathhouse with the strong focus on the interior and perception of the visitor. With a sophisticated design, challenging architectural elements on the bigger scale; by redefining the concept of the room, calling it space, and on the smaller scale; finding ways in detailing to create the atmosphere we want, to create the most comfortable place for the visitor, the project creates a more silent space in the noise of the exteriorized buildings of Skopje. This results in Skopje’s retreat; the space for inhabitants to abstract from the conventions of the city.

Cities are becoming places for Instagramable experiences and Disneyfication. People are moving as fast as possible to get from one place to the other. We often forget to really look and be aware of our surroundings. I believe that some parts of the city should be dedicated to a more slower, more enjoyable, experimental way of moving through and being in the city. Within this thesis, the decision is made to intervene in an extremely sensitive and politically charged point in the urban context of Bogota. Not by traditionally transforming it by giving it back its original function, or by simply demolishing it, but by introducing an alternative way of transformation; namely transformation by ruination. This is inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire who says: ​“To prepare for ivy and passing time, a ruin more beautiful than any other.” Ruinating one part of the building creates opportunities for a biotope and gives the importance of time and imagination a place in the city. Besides that, I am also introducing basic and minimal architectonic elements to create a public space which connects the ruin to the river on the site. I have decided to only introduce platforms, plazas, and plateaus. By these 4 interventions, the area becomes an articulator of public and natural resources of the city. By being guided by genuine curiosity and evolved through multiple instances of trial and error, I have created a project that is elegant and provides clarity. Besides that, this project reflects upon the collective nature of architecture (e.g., architects layering their work on top of their predecessors), the acknowledgment of decay and destruction as necessary complements to creation and construction, and the possibility of developing serious, rigorous work with simplicity and happiness. This project is inspired by and operates at the work of Rogelio Salmona. The inspiration and underlaying guiding theme can be perfectly explained by an excerpt of a speech he gave at the Alvaro Alto Award: "…between the “elephant” and the “butterfly”; between the permanent and the ephemeral, there is a relationship that we cannot ignore, for it would mean sacrificing the enormous importance of diversity. .... The issue is to constantly extract, as Baudelaire used to say, the eternal from the transitory. There it is."

A proposal for a series of water plazas along the route of the Rio Arzobispo in Bogotá, Colombia. This follows extensive research on elements of the city and how they are perceived through my method: Narrative Inhabitation. The bed of the rio has been redesigned to increase its capacity to hold rainwater to be released slowly, mitigating flood risks downstream. Whilst not flooded the Rio is a linear park, site of interactions and urban life, transforming a forgotten space into a socially productive part of the city.

This research booklet can be read along the film: In Transit: An Exploration into Subway Space, as an experimental study into the everyday experience of architecture. The film, story and essays are an attempt to better understand the relationship between architecture and human life and to question the way the subject of architecture can be studied. The triadic work is a layered study that combines actual footage of subway systems and stations, which is edited into a narrative. This narrative is structured and accompanied by a written account of a fictional figure, who starts as an outsider and slowly progresses into an everyday commuter of subway space. Lastly, each chapter is accompanied by an academic essay about the nature of the architectural phenomena and the observed phenomena through exploring a number of theories about perception, atmosphere, materials, semiotics, habits, space, time, rhythms, the everyday, and public space. Overall, this work is an attempt to study architecture by actually participating, to experience lived space while also observing and writing about the abstract processes that produce it. In the words of Anne Buttimer and Henri Lefebvre, it is an attempt to be both an insider and an outsider, and to situate oneself in the seam, between practice and theory, ordinary and special. In doing so this study linger on the edges of the architectural discipline that touches upon subjects such as philosophy, sociology, biology, anthropology, geology, urbanism, storytelling and filmmaking. The design is an attempt to put use these lessons into practice and to design a transformation with simple interventions.

In a world that is becoming more virtual by the day, there is a longing for physicality that yearns to be fulfilled. This thesis explores the potential of architecture to evoke diverse behaviors and emotions, drawing from the idea that individual perceptions of space are subjective and influenced by the memories and knowledge ours bodies have absorbed from our unique lived experiences. With Budapest as a dynamic testing ground, the thesis focuses on activating the Danube waterfront. The proposed project consists of a retreat that transitions the people from Budapest to the water fostering a more symbiotic relationship between the urban community and the river. The project comprises two parts. The first is a private bathhouse facility, nestled within a once-concrete expanse in a park and sheltered within a public layer. The result is a building that outwardly serves the public, while inwardly housing an introvert private bathing facility. The second is a public floating structure, paying homage to the evocative reminiscences of old pontoon pools with a purpose of re-activating the historical legacy of swimming in the river. By sewing these two worlds together in one area, while bridging the community physically to the river, the proposal becomes a revitalisation of the waterfront. The goal was to craft an architecture that delivers spaces capable of leaving a lasting impression on the mind and bodies of those who engage and experience them. Architecture is the set for life to happen, and we, as set designers, choreograph and orchestrate different scenarios and environments for different users to engage with - and the play plays out.

In September 2018 I have traveled to Bogota - the capital of Colombia with a group of Methods & Analysis students and teachers. During the trip to Bogota I have repeatedly visited the campus of Universidad Nacional de Colombia – a national higher education institution. What stayed with me the most after these visits were not the sights of the most prominent university buildings and representative spaces but quite contrastingly – pictures of the forgotten lawns and the dilapidated fence which marks the boundary of the campus. Universidad Nacional has been isolated from the rest of the city by a fence raised in 1970’s and even more severely by busy traffic arteries. In spite of the separation, the campus plays an invaluable role in the lives of the inhabitants of Bogota. Not to mention the thousands of students, who daily cross the gates, innumerable families and groups of friends arrive at Universidad Nacional to rest and play there. The campus is a green resource for the city.Boundary is a social contract in which the sides agree that a contradiction cannot be resolved in any way other than separating the conflicted sides. If the separation is not questioned the status quo remains. An architect – a person whose work is to introduce change – is inclined to question the division. And what happens if we transform the environment in such way that the discourse, more intensive exchange between the sides and with each other realities become possible? The reality supplies one of the possible answers. In the present state of affairs many aspects of the functioning of the student life have been left to the informal market. In fact the informal markets flourish near the boundary. Vendors have discovered the boundary in a way that does not conform to the orthodox understanding of a boundary. The organic, unplanned, improvised erodes the stiff, regulated, formalized.What would it take to open the gates for the other realities though?

To listen and to make a noise, as sonic acts, formed the premise of the project. Continuing a lineage of inquiry of human conduct that is underpinned by the notion that humans engage in purposeful behaviour; the sonic act in the field of architecture questions how people behave sonically in their environments. The importance of this spatial query is underpinned by the premise that sound is critical for experiential engagement and a defining feature of phenomenological attributes of spaces. As with many forms of praxeological inquiries that have given form to the typologies of buildings we have come to know and love; the project was underpinned by continual introspection as to the sonic inhabitation of spaces. Throughout the iterative design phases of the project, continual cycles of questions were being asked- What is the sonic behaviour and how does this form spatially (Vis-à-vis)? The project is situated in Valparaiso, Chile. On the steeps slopes between plan and hill. Drawing on the strong sonic research component the outcome presents four primary spatial interventions that each hold diverse qualities for the sonic act of presence to occur. These are a learning centre; collective school environment; market square; and Sonic Vantage point. Each of which serve as precedent for the utilisation of the sonic act as being a core design tool in defining the spatial logic. The significance of the work is that it aims to test notions of experience, that have over the last two decades gained increasing recognition as being fundamental to architecture and calling for a turn away from the dominance of visual mechanisms.

Skopje has developed through a series of erasures and periods of rebuilding, each time with an aim to establish a new order. Conversely, the common culture can be best recognized in self organized commercial spaces in the city, which emerge from activities taking place and forming the physical. The city centre is fragmented in pieces of imposed developments of different historical periods. Despite being a very culturally and administratively charged site, the Mother Theresa square represents one of these undefined, uncomfortable spaces, left in-between disparate unfinished traces. The question becomes how to mediate between the surrounding highly prescriptive buildings, by making a space which can become used and appreciated for its embedded openness. By being unfinished, the traces offer an opportunity for reconfiguration, therefore parts of functions are taken from the existing buildings into the in-between, such as archives, exhibition spaces containing usually unavailable media from cultural buildings, rehearsing and performance spaces. From the tension of encounter, a dialogue can happen between the disparates, forming a smooth field of interaction. The intervention happens in the existing underground garage below the square for its inherent freedom from political imagery and hierarchies of the above ground, offering an unstaped potential. The rigidity of the existing building is softened by establishing a dialogue between the existing and the new, and making a permeable space, investigated through articulation of the relations between public and private, dynamic and static spaces, interior and exterior, light and shadow.

This project describes the search for new methodologies of analysing an unknown context as well as questioning existing patterns of behaviour in the urban organization. After a fieldtrip to Bogotá, an interests in elements with connecting and separating values in the public sphere has been developed. Teusaquillo, the central area of intervention, has been shaped by educational and cultural institutions. It consists of quiet neighbourhood streets, hectic connecting roads and the green spine, the parkway. The dominance of traffic and movement within the city leaves little space to interact in the public sphere which led to the following question: How can collective space in Teusaquillo be altered from a space of movement to a space of inhabitation? Developing an architectural response to this question, inspirations from the comma in literature and the pause in music have grown from conceptual inspirations to design tools. Apart from this, investigations on intimacy in architecture and the boundaries between architecture, urban planning and landscape played a major role. The street itself became the location of this project and has been analysed in depth. The resulting intervention is envisioned through a new layout of the street based on ground interventions with landscaping elements as well as a modular façade structure that extends buildings and creates spaces of transition. This was developed through a systematic approach that has been tested and validated on other streets. Spaces of Permanence is carried out beyond the boundaries of architecture and questions modernist urban planning ideals. Through acts of slowing, blurring boundaries, introducing means of appropriation and material culture collective space is made accessible and spaces for meaningful interaction are created.

The historical framework that is underlying the city of Valparaiso, Chile brought a certain type of city planning, one wherein the city operates in fragmentation. Not only in the way how the city operates and solves problems also in the way people deal with each other. Therefore the tackle of bigger problems is not there. In this created lifestyle, these problems tend to come back in a viscus circle. In this project I try to break this circle and the fragmentation. Trying to solve the bigger problems by filtering out key aspects in the city and bringing them together. The project aims to create unity and operates on two scales. The project tries to have effect on a neighborhood by offering different kinds of communal spaces. This part of the program is combined with a ritual which is known in the whole city. To bring smaller expertise’s to one place to solve problems than affecting the whole city. To state what can be down by only the strength of people.

In the Advanced Housing Design Studio we explored how housing design can successfully address the challenge of reducing the ecological footprint of its residents and assure social inclusion. In this studio an emphasis was put on the housing concept of collective living. A cooperative housing concept that offers the opportunity to create a living environment that meets the needs and wishes of the future dwellers and encourages the use of shared and collective spaces. My experiment in this studio was finding an equilibrium, a balance between different household types with different habitational needs in an existing monotonous block. For my research I looked into a way of placing the different household types or one can say social groups together without causing an unpleasant living environment. Whilst on the contrary bolster a close-knit and sustainable community.

In this graduation project I propose that the urban voids found in Bogotá are a key resource for the development the city in the coming years. Through the surface-based method of field intervention the project explores how these voids, and their hidden qualities, can be recycled into the urban system.

In my graduation studio, “Constructing the commons” in the context of Valparaiso, Chile, South America is the topic under the theme “Position in Practice”, in the track of Method and Analysis. Since September last year, throughout the nine months of graduation studio, I have observed, analyzed, researched, reorganized, and envisaged some aspects in the urban to explore what exactly is the real commons in the city. I am concerned about What are the commons in contemporary and local contexts, what are the commons in the architectural vocabulary, and what are the interventions that we achieve commons by, in practice? My answers to those questions includes the observation and experience in Valparaiso, the research of the common resources, the position regards to co-existence, the choice of the site, and the generation of program, function, atmosphere, as well as the ultimate building.

With the implementation of Skopje 2014, the cityscape has undergone tremendous changes with new facades and constructions, resulting in the dominance of political messages in people's daily life. Alongside these imposing alterations, the public space of Vardar River is greatly neglected, displaying a contrasting condition from the vibrant upper city level. The project seeks to redevelop 3 areas of public space of the riverbank through urban acupuncture of surfaces to enhance the area as a better public space for people of Skopje to serve as an escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. Through surfaces of various materials and opacity, the project aims at creating a public space that encourages interactions, activates social security and ultimately, devises a new relationship of people with their built environment.

Within the densely populated metropolis of Bogota, there are few places one can go to escape the chaos of the city. Spaces and places that provide seclusion from the rigorous, repetitive and stressful urban life are fundamental in the composition of a flourishing city. This project tries to answer this need for seclusion within the city limits by combining two common typologies, the market hall and the bath house, into a two-faced building. The market, that faces towards the city, comprises of a contiguous row of spaces that house small businesses, shops and market stalls. This ring of activity shelters the enclosed bath house from the chaos of the surrounding city, creating a hidden treasure. The secluded and introspective interior invites the visitor to step out of the everyday, allowing him to take the time to dream, reflect and contemplate. Subsequently, this project is about the balance and contrast between the perimeter and the secluded. Between the extrovert and the introvert. Between the conventional and the extraordinary. The design proposal has proven to be both the method to explore these tensions, as well as the instrument that communicates the outcome of these questions.