This thesis project, Synergies of Trade and Waste: The Engine & the Hive, reimagines the urban bazaar in the heart of Tbilisi, Georgia, by proposing a hybrid architectural space that integrates a waste sorting facility with a Georgian "bazaar" marketplace. Situated at the intersection of informal trade networks and negligible waste infrastructures, the project explores the dual roles of trade and waste as agents of urban change. Rooted in research conducted within the "Borders & Territories" studio of the MSc Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences program, the project responds to Tbilisi’s strategic position in global trade routes and its cultural reliance on informal marketplaces. Simultaneously, it addresses the urgent challenges posed by the city’s fragmented waste management practices.

The design is located on a brownfield site, formerly a railway repair depot, and leverages its infrastructural past to propose a new civic space. By examining material flows, urban rhythms, and social dynamics, the thesis constructs a spatial dialogue between the formal and informal, public and restricted, and human and machine. Through mapping, fieldwork, and experimental modeling, the project speculates on how architecture can bridge economic, environmental, and cultural systems—proposing not only a building, but a new way of seeing and situating infrastructure within the city.

This project explores the entanglement between identity politics and spatial transformation in post-Soviet Georgia, using the district of Gldani in Tbilisi as a site of investigation. Against the backdrop of Georgia’s ongoing pursuit of European Union membership, the project questions how national aspirations manifest in the everyday built environment. In Gldani, the failure of top-down urban planning after the collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in widespread self-built “add-ons”—informal extensions protruding from apartment blocks. These architectural anomalies are both responses to socio-economic necessity and expressions of individual agency in a fragmented state.

Rather than erasing these conditions, the project adopts a palimpsestic design approach that builds upon them. At the center of the proposal is the Wall-Stage Building, a 180-meter-long linear spine that reactivates a dormant 2.5 km Soviet-era axis. The building integrates modular public programs—such as libraries, sports spaces, and rehearsal rooms—into a hybrid structural system of precast concrete and prefabricated steel. These volumes interlock with the spine like reciprocal extensions, reversing the logic of the original add-ons. Through this, the project proposes a new architectural model for urban regeneration—one that does not overwrite informal identity, but weaves it into the city’s future.

this project explores a post-human-centered transformation of an abandoned flour milling plant in Tbilisi through the lenses of rewilding and temporality, aiming to redefine the identity of this vast and formerly obsolete industrial facility. Through a series of interventions, the former brownfield has evolved into a living lab—a dynamic, evergrowing site of a novel ecosystem undergoing continuous ecological succession.

Wind behavior is complex and not intuitive. Despite its significant impact on urban environments, the topic remains underexplored in architectural design practice. Meanwhile, as cities continue to densify and buildings rise to increasing heights, designing with wind comfort in mind becomes increasingly more important. This thesis explores how wind behavior can be effectively integrated into early-stage high-rise design to improve outdoor comfort and safety.

Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, a series of design strategies were evaluated for their impact on local wind conditions in Rijnhaven, Rotterdam, a site facing both ambitious urban development and strict wind regulations. The study identifies how design interventions such as aerodynamic shaping, podiums, and open floors can significantly reduce wind discomfort at street level, particularly on the leeward side of buildings. The result is a workflow aimed at guiding architects in designing with wind more intuitively and effectively.

This research demonstrates that incorporating wind analysis early in the design process can not only improve environmental conditions but also support more coherent and informed architectural outcomes.

Light touches, but is untouchable itself. While being airy and ethereal, light is grounded in architecture: it plays a fundamental role in the experience of touching and tender spaces. However, catching light in terms of contrast, light diagrams and simulations models doesn’t reach the
complexity of light, the moment when light touches us. Truly understanding daylight is a matter of grasping light in its subtle, fleeting, ephemeral experiential reality. Therefore this project is a search for sensitivity to light, in particular Dutch coastal light. It does so by asking the question:
- How is light a material?

Materialization of light was researched in different ways. Firstly, using philosophy. Secondly, using artistic references. Thirdly, by making photos of light and form experiments at the Dutch coast. The architectural design project functioned as the last entry into the search for sensitivity to Dutch light, this time through the eyes of the architect specifically. The choice of location based on presence of Dutch light: Vluchthaven at Neeltje Jans, a peripheral place which radiates light and where big natural forces interfere with huge human interventions.

The research showed how light is able to both make people turn inwards, towards their own internal world, and outwards, towards the external world. The changing between those processes is admirable because it creates a sensitivity for what is outside, while at the same time it addresses imagination for potential change of reality. Light makes people see. Therefore, the design project worked with light to make experiences of introversion and extraversion, in the Dutch light. Four ateliers were designed, which address light in different manners, and one dwelling for an artist in residence, the caretaker of the ateliers. Visitors experience the light at the place, to see the place even better.

By defining, describing, and contextualising light, the project materialized light. But overly describing how light is situated, kills light vibrancy. Therefore, to use light as a material it is also important to admit its volatile character, by not catching it. It is within the associative, the intuitive, the imaginative where light is able to move. The method of artistic research, including the act of experiencing light, gave space to both processes to be able to materialize light: making light explicit and leaving light implicit.

The Stockholm City Library was designed by the renowned Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund in 1928. Since then, the role of public libraries has changed dramatically. Nowadays, public libraries constitute important social infrastructure within cities; they should provide a wide range of program for all needs and demands and enhance interaction among people. This project is about the transformation and expansion of the Stockholm City Library, in an attempt to open up the library to a broader public and address its various today’s and future needs.

The Graduation Project is facing the challenge of extension to the historical building of Stockholm City Library. Its main goal was to provide an architectural answer to the political, economic and cultural problems which the institution of public libraries in Stockholm is facing nowadays.

My proposal refers back to the original plan for the site proposed by Erik Gunnar Asplund in 1928 and completing it with the 4th building. Thanks to that I managed to densify and fill the already-used part of the plot with subsequent educational functions. The building is connected to the main library underground which allows to preservation of its monumentality and independent character in the city. In the proposed extension I focus on the functions which can not be placed in the historical building due to its spatial limitation. The new building is a contemporary library incorporating a variety of interactions and ways of sharing knowledge. The structural layout allows for a flexible adaptation and at the same time provides different spatial qualities.

The project deals with extending a monumental building - the Stockholm City Library. It's complexity lies within the position of respect towards the monument which the library is and the work of the architect behind it - Erik Gunnar Asplund. This project proposes to extend as a mean of modernising and coming forward to the needs of growing and changing city.

This graduation project explores the feasibility of renewing the competition for the Asplund Library in Stockholm. The competition and assignment focus on a possible extension. A renewed proposal will have to determine if the original intended program still reflects the needs of a contemporary library. Furthermore, this proposal seriously questions whether the established strategies of working with heritage still hold up in a world that must deal with limits to growth.

The proposal suggests that by looking beyond the strategies of adding to and contrasting with existing architecture, the brief can be answered in a much more modest way.

The construction industry is a major contributor to climate change. To create sustainable and resilient architecture longevity should play a major role, as the initial embodied carbon can be used for longer. Furthermore, the lifespan of Dutch dwellings needs to be extended to counteract the low annual net addition of new buildings and the housing shortage.
To address these problems this multi functional design (housing + education) on TU Delft campus rethinks the typical timescales of architecture and aims to provide a sustainable alternative to construction methods with a low initial carbon footprint such as timber construction.
The combination of an „ever-lasting“ concrete structure that merges with the site, and can be seen as new land, with temporal building elements guarantees that the building is able to adapt to new functions and requirements over its long service life. The site, which is currently used as a parking lot, can be actively used as part of the campus where living, teaching, nature and leisure meet.

This paper aims to present and assess the prospective environmental feasibility and efficacy associated with the integration of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology into diverse design methodologies within contemporary architecture. The primary focus of adjusting the flow of the chemical process through various design parameters will be elucidated for the hypothetical application into buildings. This chemical process involves the scientific method of utilizing the hollow-tube fibers with potassium hydroxide (KOH) as the primary carbon absorbent, where the CO2 contained ambient air is absorbed in fibers and converts into liquid state of K2CO3 + H2O. This carbon dioxide will be captured and transported through building services, for the future utilization and storage. This research highlights that the chemical flow of the DAC process can be effectively implemented through three distinct architectural design factors: façade modules, and an add-on mechanism for existing buildings and infrastructure. Despite the early introduction of DAC in 1999, its current status remains at the research level and cost demanding, yet to progress beyond industrial applications. However, the paper argues that when broadly applied in buildings powered by renewable energy sources, DAC integration has the potential to mitigate the escalating CO2 contamination, through ensuring buildings to capture more carbon than they emit, mimicking the principles of photosynthesis from the nature. Thus, the research prioritizes in opening a vision for new concept of sustainable architecture, directly responding towards the global climate issues, and acts as a first stepping stone beyond carbon reduction, towards carbon-capturing architecture.

As the housing shortage in the Netherlands increases, students have a harder time finding living spaces. On top of that, there has been an increase in psychological issues and feelings of loneliness among students. This loneliness can be exacerbated by the focus on building large studio apartment complexes without collective spaces. The proposed solution for both these problems is community housing (co-housing). In this paper we are going to research if co-housing can indeed decrease loneliness among students while intensifying the use of space and we will research the willingness of students to share their space. A boardgame was developed to establish TU Delft students’ attitudes towards co-housing, offering insights to inform the design of future housing compositions. The main question in this research was: How can the spatial, social, and emotional preferences of TU Delft students be systematically mapped to inform design decisions related to their loggings? The literature review on co-housing showed that co-housing can reduce the spatial need per individual and provides strong possibilities for social and emotional bonds which could reduce loneliness. Data gathered from the boardgame revealed that the majority (68.4%) of TU Delft students are willing to pursue co-housing principles to achieve a reduction in rent and climate impact. This makes co-housing a potential typology for student housing to intensify the use of space and create a possibility to reduce loneliness.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA), is in search of a new building. Influenced by the anti-museum philosophy of the ICC, M HKA aspires to integrate itself into a network of regional museums while concurrently positioning itself within a broader global context. The institution has identified a promising site within a suburban neighbourhood in Antwerp, strategically positioned between the Scheldt quays and the city park, the site commands a central and strategic position, seamlessly connecting two crucial urban spaces.

Recognizing the global trend towards the increased need for financial independence among museums, M HKA is adapting its approach to ensure long-term sustainability. This adaptation involves enhancing visitor experiences and diversifying revenue streams while maintaining to enricht cultural engagement.

The redesign of the museum is informed by this growing need for financial stability. Interactive displays will be integrated to facilitate visitor engagement and bridge the gap between art and the public. Additionally, the inclusion of a publicly accessible roof terrace, known as the forum, will offer panoramic views of Antwerp and can be used for a range of cultural events.

A notable architectural feature of the museum’s redesign is the suspended white cube which is exclusively dedicated to art exhibitions. The suspended construction enables the creation of unobstructed floor plans, affording significant flexibility in exhibition layout design.

By this redesign the museum seeks to inspire, educate, and engage visitors while strengthening its ties with the city of Antwerp.

MHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp seek to change its current building and re-establish itself on the wide arena of cultural institutions in Antwerp. Museum has a complex history, from its roots in the anti-museum of the ICC, via the “kunsthalle with a collection” up to today’s aspirations to be a part of a network of regional museums and seeking to take its place within a global context.

The layers of critique inherent in this trajectory are evident in the counterpoints established in the clients brief for the proposed museum: questions of material, abstraction, scale, and scenography underpin an oscillation between what it describes as anti-museum fascinations and technical museum requirements. Underpinning this are fundamental questions about contemporary art’s history and its relation to wider questions of culture, society and the world of art and artistic practice, embodied in its attitude to the very idea of the museum.

The MHKA's legend was built on contacts with avant- garde movements in art of the 1950s and 1960s, such as minimal and conceptual art. Their most prominent representative was Gordon Matta Clark, who worked in Antwerp at the time and whose artworks formed the foundation of the museum's current collection. Initially informal, the movement became institutionalized over time in the form of the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum (ICC), and decades later the Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp (MHKA) became its successor. The planned construction of the new museum also involves renaming the institution the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art (VMHK).

The duality between the avant-garde past and the institutional present is an important part of the museum's identity. How does one think about the setting of the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art in a way that respects its critical history and context in which it operates?

This year's Interiors Buildings Cities graduation studio focused on reimagining the contemporary art museum typology through the lens of M HKA in Antwerp. The process of designing a new museum building, guided by principles of anti-monumentality and a dedication to public engagement, led to a site-specific intervention revolving around the excavation of the former Zuiderdokken area. This intervention not only influenced the architectural expression, but also resonated with M HKA's anti-institutional identity.

The act of excavation serves to shape the architectural character of the museum and the park's topography, as the excavated soil is repurposed for rammed earth construction. The idea of excavation extends beyond the physical act of digging, it also encompasses the exploration of negative spaces and interstitial areas within the design. These spaces are intentionally integrated to create opportunities for art encounters, social interaction and various levels of public engagement throughout the museum experience.

The museum institution, despite the drastic changes that happened in its understanding over the centuries, was always directly connected with the concept of archivization. The following work is an attempt to draw attention that this tendency has significant negative aspects related to a particular model of thinking about the concept of a contemporary art museum. It aims to be understood as a manifesto; an architectural provocation that questions the existing guidelines in thinking about the institutions that focus on art of today. Although, it is not a criticism of a concept of archive itself, it tries to point out substantial democratic values that seem to be lost due to the above tendency. Due to the Derridian theory of deconstructivism, the human endeavour to archive is extensively rooted into our existence. It is an artificial attempt to tame a fear of loss, a civilizational mechanism to preserve the presence and a cultural product aimed to create the collective memory. Although, over the course of ages the ethicality of archivization was not a subject of question, nowadays it is evident that this matter is inextricably connected with politics and social conditions. Understanding the role that the archive plays in creating a historical context and that it provides an effective reference point for the work of both artists and art historians, the thesis challenges the global practice of understanding museums as institutions primarily storing the past. Taking as its subject the relatively young institution of the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art, the work suggests a new conception of the archive as a place that is primarily a transcript of contemporary trends in art. Simultaneously, following the anti-museum theory, it proposes a new vision for the museum as an open habitat, an organic catalyst of the present and a transparent institution that brings together both resident artists and the international community.

Humankind has always made art. Through its appeal to the human senses, it has helped to shape the ways in which we perceive the world around us and, in its varied forms, offers a means beyond language through which we have become able to articulate our relationships with one another. Throughout the ages art and architecture were facilitators of societies’ development and transformation, of which the peak was embodied by the 19th century palaces of culture: public museums and galleries. Later, as modernity rapidly adapted the world to human needs and subsumed sublime nature within its own image, art became means of resistance. Expanding out of the studio and the gallery it moved outside, to portray and critique the relentless industrialisation against its own backdrop. Artists co-opted and adapted redundant structures left behind by the contemporary city’s rampant process of change.

The competition brief for the development of the M HKA, the contemporary art museum in Antwerp embodies many of the larger issues that arise from the forementioned shift. It emerged out of the activities of the ICC (Internationaal Cultureel Centrum), which was founded in the revolutionary spirit of the late 1960s, and had a long history of making place for itself in which an adaptation of an actual palace and an old disused office building were considered, until it finally settled in an old grain warehouse to become a full-fledged museum in 1982. The next step in its development, which is planned to move the museum into a new, purposely build location asks therefore to be consciously understood and developed. It is to be placed near the current building, as an urban figure in focus of undergoing conversion of a monumental former dock into a linear public park.

The proposal turns challenges of the competition brief: an existing building on site, the scale of the programme and limited budget into factors that generate quality. Efficiency is used to shape identity, linking to the legacy of Antwerp as a harbour city. It is a building that does not mimic the expression, but follows the logic of efficient structures for the industry. A museum that accommodates existing structure, the art, the general public, gallery visitors, and the neighbours. It creates environments, provides striking curatorial settings and versatile workspaces and does so with minimal means while fulfilling strives of the competition brief and reducing the carbon footprint. It welcomes the legacy of the M HKA as a pioneering institution that always appropriated spaces, exposes the back office to the visitors to contrast them with pristine gallery interiors, and becomes an icon by establishing its own league instead of trying to fit in. Yet it fits within the city.

This year‘s graduation studio of Interiors Building Cities focuses on the redevelopment of the M HKA (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen) in Belgium. In the context of an industrial metropolis like Antwerp, museums have evolved from spaces of representation and power structures to spaces for critique. Artists have repurposed disused structures in the city, including those left behind by the contemporary city, giving rise to new forms of art and the formation of art collectives and institutions since the 1960s. These spaces now serve as platforms for the public to engage with and learn about contemporary art and its significance in our society. They showcase a diverse range of mediums, from paintings and sculptures to photography, video, installations, and performance art. Additionally, educational programs and events are offered to enhance visitors‘ understanding of the art and the creative processes behind it.

With the redevelopment and relocation project, M HKA aims to establish a Flemish museum of contemporary art on a new site in the southern part of Antwerp. While the client‘s brief emphasizes the need for static sequences of spaces and programs, it fails to address the potential for unpredictable changes and user demands. Public institutions must bring flexibility to the forefront of architectural design, particularly when dealing with so-called obsolete buildings. This perspective is evident in the new site‘s design, where the planned demolition of a former court building is the only justification given in the brief. In my graduation design, I critique this decision by proposing to retain most of the existing structure, using it as the foundation for new towers on the site.