Would you feel relaxed in hospital? Would you choose to meet a friend there? Would you like to spend your free time there? The answer for most people is no. Hospitals have always been synonymous with fear and sadness. Although it relates to the fact that life and death is a heavy topic, the hospital’s factory-like model and oppressive space exacerbate the negative emotions. This situation is even worse for elderly people. According to a CNN Health survey, the older you are, the worse the hospital is for you. But on the other hand, Germany is even entering a super-ageing society. According to the United Nations Health Organi-sation, 27.6% of the population in Germany is over 60 years old, the second highest population in the world after Japan.1 And in the German healthcare system, more than 60.5% of patients are older than 60. Geriatric medicine department’s average length of stay of 15.2 days is twice the average, ranking first among all departments. All the facts prove that hospitals, which have remained unchanged for decades, need a revolution. The best future hospital is NOT hospital, at least not the way it is now. This article studies the body perspective to provide an excellent healthcare experi-ence for elderly patients. Filling the gap between society, hospital and home, ena-bling the revolution from hospital to house.

The Berlin Open Depot complements the cultural heart of Kulturforum, the cultural center of Berlin, located on Potsdamer Straße in the Berlin-Tiergarten district, situated on one of the busiest transportation nodes of Berlin. It is a center for a wide range of exhibition types and stands among the global frontrunners in the field of innovative exhibition experience. The Berlin Open Depot transcends the typical structure of museum buildings, adopting a new approach in its design and layout. The design pushes the boundaries of exhibition and storage spaces, consequently forming a solid, yet flexible space that can facilitate unlimited forms of exhibition. Due to its multidimensional design, the Berlin Open Depot extends beyond the confines of display, exhibition or showcase. It can also serve as a space for events, lectures, or workshops and can be curated by artists as an ever changing canvas.

The task of a courthouse is to facilitate the correct and fair execution of justice. Consequently, the building must not only meet all functional requirements, but also take the human impact on the court proceedings into account. Since conflicts, stress and concentration have a decisive influence on trials, this graduation project explores the question of what spatial qualities influence the user's experience in a manner that improves the efficiency of processes in a courthouse. The final design is a regional court for Berlin that exclusively handles criminal trials.

Train stations are becoming an increasingly important part of urban life. They are the connection between different transport hubs, a social interaction platform, and part of a culture or daily routine. However, many train stations are designed to meet only the first demand, “transporting people and making the city accessible”. Many stations in Berlin are designed with these thoughts and are therefore unattractive to many passengers travelling to and from the city, leaving other modes of transportation dominant. The design for a new train station in Berlin will primarily respond to creating a unique traveller experience to enhance the user experience. Digital media and automation technologies play an essential role in this, allowing the station user to configure their own experience at the station according to their needs. The station within which these technologies can serve the user will also have to change its character. Adding features related to service and experience should ensure that a new platform is created that encourages travellers to use the public transport network. Moreover, adding these themes in a station reduces travel time and enhances the user experience. The design extends the standard train station by integrating automation technologies that allow travellers to perform daily actions at the station faster. For instance, car and bicycle parking in the station is automated, eliminating parking operations. Moreover, the station will also feature service cores. Integrated into these cores are automated food and package services and digital media that can provide users with necessary travel information, daily news and weather, exhibition display and events. Besides the addition of automation technologies, the building will also have various functions related to the traveller’s daily routine, facilitating social activities and providing work and study places. Through interactive screens in the station or the telephone, travellers can pre-select the desired functions they will use at the station. The station configures its layout using this data to make the required space available. Finally, in addition to classifying their travel experience at the station, users can configure their space in terms of spaciousness and climate. By applying these new functions and techniques, the station will no longer be a monotonous building for the user but will be able to react to needs and adapt to current and future use.

In an era when rising threats put increasing pressure on security demands in state office buildings, the public trust in these same governmental institutions is on the decline, owing to a sense of detachment and lack of transparency. This detachment partially stems from the functional and physical separation of people’s civic and political lives, leaving public officials as uncountable, a separated class unresponsive to the everyday people, who in turn can glance little of the everyday working of their government. In other words: it is easier to pass unfavourable legislation when you never interact with the common people and sit in your fortress hidden from protests. For these reasons, the future must see the creation of new governmental spaces that are public in nature, but also safeguarded from new dynamic threads. New design approaches in established typologies need to be sought to answer these relationship questions that stem from new state, societal, and technological developments. The Graduation Project ‘Fortress Without Barriers‘ seek to explore these issues of security and accessibility by using a scenario involving the design of a new Federal Ministry of Defence headquarters in Berlin. At first glance this typology might be perceived as ill suited to the integration of public life, even agitative. But rather the project places it as the ultimate test for whether these values can be effectively expressed in an urban context. Defence Ministry being the most prime domain of security, on the scale of city within a city, and placing the most private and secured programme imaginable alongside the proposed public functions.

What relationship can a cemetery have with the city? Since the first garden cemetery was built in the early nineteenth century, this concept spread rapidly throughout Europe. Until now garden cemetery is still the common form of cemeteries in European cities. With the concept of garden cemetery, cemeteries exist in the urban fabric as a public space represented by nature and landscape attributes. The emergence of this relationship is closely related to the demand for burialbased burial forms. For a long time, this relationship has given the cemetery a natural and green identity, which is also the common perception of the cemetery among citizens. Has this relationship changed? In the context of the Complex Project, Building Body Berlin course, this research design will focus specifically on Berlin, Germany. The existence of the German cemetery law, known as “Der Friedhofszwang“, makes cemetery burial mandatory in Germany. Along with this law of compulsory burials, the demand for cemeteries has a huge quantitative basis in Germany. However, according to the research of cemetery development plan of Berlin in 2006, since the end of the 20th century, the cemeteries (mainly garden cemetery) in Berlin have roduced a large amount of vacancy. These idle cemeteries consume a lot of operating and maintenance costs. This phenomenon does not mean that the demand for cemeteries has declined. On the contrary, the demand for cemeteries in Berlin is still increasing. Moreover, with the aging of the population in Germany, the death rate and the number of deaths have risen, and Berliners’ demand for cemeteries will continue to increase in the future. The increase in demand for cemeteries does not appear to coincide with the reduction in cemetery size. It is this inconsistency that helps us see the problem for what it is. The reason for this lies in the transformation of the form of burials. As cremation has grown in popularity, people have increasingly turned to other forms of burial, such as burial of ashes and placement in columbariums. According to statistics, the proportion of cremation in Germany has reached more than 75%. Compared with the traditional form of burying coffins, the land area required for the new burial form represented by cremation is greatly reduced. Statistics show that compared with the average area of 12 square meters in traditional burial coffins, the average area of urns placed in columbariums is only 0.5 square meters. This huge change has also led to a continuous reduction in the core space actually used in the cemetery. Therefore, more and more cemeteries can no longer assume the role of urban public green space due to the reduction of the core use area. Although this phenomenon of quantitative change has not accumulated to produce qualitative change, we can still see the urgent need for the transformation of the cemetery. So how can the cemetery provide a new value as an urban public space? This research design process will ask questions around this question and offer a possible solution.

The project attempts to address the types of spaces needed to guide the AI revolution constructively. Currently, an AI revolution is unfolding, as reported in newspapers, broadcasted on the news, and discussed on the radio. Socially, it’s a significant topic, as many users are unaware of what AI is and its functions. This underscores the importance of designing a building that illustrates to society how these AIs are implemented and who is behind them, while also fostering discussions and inquiries.

In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive global trade environment, cargo terminals have become crucial hubs for the transportation of goods. However, workers in these environments often face physically demanding tasks, such as heavy lifting, awkward body postures, harmful noise, and extreme temperatures. Besides, they also mentally face the mentally demanding working conditions, resulting from the time pressure, increasing complexity of logistics systems and the integration of advanced technologies. These factors have significant implications for employee health, well-being, and productivity, which in turn affect the overall efficiency of cargo operations. The architectural design of cargo terminals has the potential to offset these demands and address the consequences by creating environments that actively support employee well-being. By exploring innovative design strategies that consider both functionally and mentally, architecture can play a crucial role in alleviating demanding working conditions, promoting well-being, and boosting productivity within cargo terminals.

While migration is a megatrend and Germany is known as the top host country, the process of getting refuge in Germany is still a long, demanding, and overcomplicated process. By approaching the permanent but fluctuating influx of displaced people as a temporary problem, migration doesn’t have a recognizable face in Berlin’s cityscape, but is rather scattered and tucked away in several empty buildings throughout the city. Therefore, the multiple institutions in the process are collaborating inefficiently and the displaced have to move through the city to buildings that don’t answer their specific needs. The project Architecture for the Displaced: One building representing the resettlement procedure in the arrival city of Berlin is about proposing a better building solution for both the institutions and the displaced. The project is a building bringing the resettlement procedure together, from arriving to going to court. The building is a pioneer in a more humanitarian approach towards getting refuge in Germany, by responding to the user's needs. The research question is: “How can a building treat displaced people in a societal inclusive way while maintaining institutional efficiency?”

The night train hub Berlin is a station specifically designed for night train travel. This would be for a future scenario where long-distance travel throughout Europe is done by night trains. The design is located in the east of Berlin where Station Berlin Lichtenberg is now. Currently, it is an underutilized station. The main reason for this future of night train travel would be sustainability. To convince people to travel sustainable, comfort is an important theme. The design tries to balance comfort on one hand and sustainability on the other hand. Comfort is integrated in the design of the station, through the program of the building but also materialization and the architectural theme of light. The latter is in important since the design also deals with the time-specificness of night train travel. With trains always departing in the evening and arriving in the morning. The new station design has three entrances and a square which covers the train tracks to add public space to the city of Berlin. Next to that the design contains a central station hall which houses a lounge and a capsule hotel. This will be the first impression people have of Berlin when they arrive by night train.

Due to the growing demand for mobility (as a primary need for people to get to work, to obtain personal care or to go travelling), cities continue to be faced with new urban challenges. Stations represent, along mobility networks, not only transportation nodes (transfer points) but also architectural objects which connect an area to the city’s territorial plane and which have the potential to generate new urban dynamics. In the ‘compact city’ the station is simply no longer the space to access mobility networks, as informed by their dry pragmatism, but becomes an urban place of sociality and encounter - an extended public space beyond mobility itself. Which relationships and cross-fertilizations can be significant for the design of the future living stations in the Municipality of Rotterdam? How ought these stations to be conceived in order to act as public places for collective action? Which (archetypical) devices can be designed to give a shape to the ambitions for these stations? The station as a public space and catalyzer for urban interventions in the metropolitan area of Rotterdam is the focus of the research initiative presented in this publication. City of Innovations Project – Living Stations is organized around speculating and forecasting on future scenarios for the city of Rotterdam. ‘What is the future of Rotterdam with the arrival of a new metro circle line system?’ In the past fifty years, every decade of Rotterdam urban planning has seen its complementary metro strategy, with profound connections with the spatial planning and architectural themes. Considering the urban trends of densification and the new move to the city, a new complementary strategy is required. The plans to realize 50.000 new homes between the city center and the suburban residential districts in the next 20 years go together with the development of a new metro circle line consisting of 16 new stations; 6 of which will connect the new metro line to the existing network. Students of the elective City of Innovations Project (AR0109) have been asked to develop ambitious but plausible urban and architectural proposals for selected locations under the guidance of tutors from the Municipality of Rotterdam and Complex Projects. The Grand Paris Express metro project in France has inspired the course’s approach. Following the critical essays on the strategic role of the infrastructural project for city development interventions, the ‘10 Visions X 5 Locations’ chapter is a systematization of the work of 35 master’s students with input from designers of the City of Rotterdam and experts and academic from the University of Gustave Eiffel in Paris. The research-through-design process conducted in the City of Innovations project - Living Stations consists of documenting and analyzing the present urban conditions of selected station locations in the City of Rotterdam and proposing design solutions and visualizations of the predicted development of these locations.@en

Due to the growing demand for mobility (as a primary need for people to get to work, to obtain personal care or to go travelling), cities continue to be faced with new urban challenges. Stations represent, along mobility networks, not only transportation nodes (transfer points) but also architectural objects which connect an area to the city’s territorial plane and which have the potential to generate new urban dynamics. In the ‘compact city’ the station is simply no longer the space to access mobility networks, as informed by their dry pragmatism, but becomes an urban place of sociality and encounter - an extended public space beyond mobility itself. Which relationships and cross-fertilizations can be significant for the design of the future living stations in the Municipality of Rotterdam? How ought these stations to be conceived in order to act as public places for collective action? Which (archetypical) devices can be designed to give a shape to the ambitions for these stations? The station as a public space and catalyzer for urban interventions in the metropolitan area of Rotterdam is the focus of the research initiative presented in this publication. City of Innovations Project – Living Stations is organized around speculating and forecasting on future scenarios for the city of Rotterdam. ‘What is the future of Rotterdam with the arrival of a new metro circle line system?’ In the past fifty years, every decade of Rotterdam urban planning has seen its complementary metro strategy, with profound connections with the spatial planning and architectural themes. Considering the urban trends of densification and the new move to the city, a new complementary strategy is required. The plans to realize 50.000 new homes between the city center and the suburban residential districts in the next 20 years go together with the development of a new metro circle line consisting of 16 new stations; 6 of which will connect the new metro line to the existing network. Students of the elective City of Innovations Project (AR0109) have been asked to develop ambitious but plausible urban and architectural proposals for selected locations under the guidance of tutors from the Municipality of Rotterdam and Complex Projects. The Grand Paris Express metro project in France has inspired the course’s approach. Following the critical essays on the strategic role of the infrastructural project for city development interventions, the ‘10 Visions X 5 Locations’ chapter is a systematization of the work of 35 master’s students with input from designers of the City of Rotterdam and experts and academic from the University of Gustave Eiffel in Paris. The research-through-design process conducted in the City of Innovations project - Living Stations consists of documenting and analyzing the present urban conditions of selected station locations in the City of Rotterdam and proposing design solutions and visualizations of the predicted development of these locations.@en

Have you ever imagined a hospital being a pleasant place to be? This project aims to provide a comprehensive and pleasant healing environment for people with decreased mobility based on the care model of the information society.

The Berlin’s Kitchenlab bridges the gap between highly specialised culinary education and the community. As a school that acts like a social catalyst for its surroundings. The building is located in Otto Park in Alt Moabit, an upcoming area, surrounded by food venues at the end of a public axis. The building consists of a central street with a public program surrounded by other specialised programs, resulting in a building that is easily accessible by the public while still tailored towards the program’s specific needs, like the distribution of food and support functions. All functions are situated on the façade making the building a frame that displays all contents. This makes the culinary university move past a traditional cooking school and become valuable for its immediate and broader surroundings.

Germany has a rich history in classical music. Berlin, in this regard, has been key in the development of concert hall architecture, most notably through the Berlin Philharmonic. With an increasing decline in visitors and structural financial support of concerts, together with developments in music culture, the building type once more is challenged to reinvent itself, leading to the following question: What spatial qualities could invite the broader audience to concert halls? Within the specificity of concert hall architecture, the project explores the potential of the foyer as a space to be utilized beyond classical music concerts.

The book is the result of the course ‘City of Innovations Project’ at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, led by the group of Complex Projects at the Department of Architecture. ‘Transit stations: sub-centres in Rotterdam Zuid’ is the theme of the course running in spring 2022. It is connected to the research project Walk-In (acronym of Widening sustAinable mobiLity networKs: Impact on Nodes) financed by NWO and part of the KIEM GoCi program. Students presented their research and design scenarios to the project partners in April 2022 and they learned from their expertise throughout the course. Those are the City of Rotterdam, Delta Metropool Association, De Zwarte Hond, PosadMaxwan, Mecanoo, Bureau Spoorbouwmeester, I&M, Prorail with the collaboration of the University of Gustave Eiffel. By doing so, students contributed to the objective of Walk-In: to investigate the potential of suburban stations in transition in the context of the low car inner city of Rotterdam and to develop generic guidelines and spatial solutions for the integration of sustainable mobility with public space and mixed urban functions and services.@en

In the Dutch National Environmental Vision 2021, new living and working locations are mapped on existing urbanized sites - mainly at catchment areas of public transportation (PT) nodes or stations. This is the case in the metropolitan area of Rotterdam, where new developments projects are taking place at several station locations. In the Rotterdam Mobility Plan “inclusiveness in mobility” is emphasized by setting several objectives for a PT node. These objectives address the mixité of facilities and attractiveness at station locations with public spaces, accessibility with more bikes (and sustainable modes of transport) and fewer cars in the city centre [3]. How could the station as a node respond to future challenges of seamless travel, inclusivity and the changing intensity of cars and pedestrian flows both in the centre and the periphery of the city of Rotterdam? The book intends to answer this question through the narrative of six research-by-design projects, conducted by the students of Complex Projects group and enrolled in “City of Innovations Project” elective, “Inclusive Stations’’.@en