Youth care has undergone a significant transformation in 2015. Secure residential youth care is one of the areas that is currently experiencing difficulties as a result. Research has shown that the conditions in secure facilities often negatively affect the residents. Furthermore, young adults often find it difficult to adjust to independence once they leave the facility. Youth care organisations are currently closing these large secure institutions, and creating small, more customized alternatives called small-scale residential youth care. This type of care accommodates minors who are unable to make use of lighter types of care due to their complex problems and behaviour.

Many have studied the design of healthcare environments. Others have concentrated on the design of mental healthcare facilities or healthcare environments for children and young adults. However, the majority of research still appears to be focused on the design of hospitals and other formal healthcare settings, such as psychiatric facilities. Research on the design of residential care for young adults with mental and behavioural disorders is scarce. There is a need for more specific research and knowledge on this topic. Therefore, this research aims to discover: What location conditions and architectural and built environment features can support the design of open and secure small-scale residential facilities for youth care and increase user autonomy and social interaction? During this research, the following themes will be discussed: location conditions, architectural features, level of autonomy and social interaction.

Four small-scale youth care homes were visited. Analysis of the buildings, semi-structured interviews with caretakers and conversations with residents were conducted. The research showed that users preferred a neighbourhood setting close to public transport and general amenities. Architectural features included spaces that are flexible and adaptable to different users, a domestic and normalised setting, the right balance between privacy and security, sufficient facilities for leisure and materials that are low maintenance. The research showed that autonomy could be enhanced by including safety measures to prevent (self-)injury, as few security measures as possible, security measures as invisible as possible, adaptable and customisable security and safety levels and easily personalisable spaces. Social interaction could be improved by providing opportunities to meet with neighbours and to interact with the social network and other users.

This project delves into the transformative potential of human-centric architecture as a catalyst for social connection, urban revitalization, and empowerment in the neighborhood of Droixhe in Liège, Belgium. Drawing inspiration from the collective Les Amis de L'Étang, comprising 15 social organizations, the research explores the concealed narratives behind facades and the daily lives of the communities residing in the neighborhood. Uncovering a pressing need for suitable spaces and housing tailored to the requirements of marginalized women and poorly represented social organizations within the modernistic ensemble of Droixhe, the site specific project proposes a women's house as a multi-functional complex, re-interpreting the role of the public, communal and domestic space. Aiming to promote social safety and empowerment for women, the project at the same time revitalizes and enhances the neighborhood through its public functions, with it's community kitchen as main urban connector. By transcending conventional design paradigms and activating curiosity through architecture, this proposal seeks to invigorate Droixhe, forging a vibrant, inclusive living environment that empowers its inhabitants.

This graduation work serves as an academic documentation of my graduation project within the Urban architecture studio, black hill city.
The project aims to investigate and implement architectural interventions to transform the urban structure of the Belgian city of Liége. By focusing on innovative design strategies rather than large-scale urban interventions. More specified to this research. This project focusses on the different senses in architecture and the connection between architecture and urbanism by integrating these different senses in the design.

‘Design with (addiction) Care’ is a reflection on the role of an architect within the humanization of addiction care, primarily the design of the typology of a hostel. It is deeply rooted in the studio theme of the scarred city, where both the vulnerable scarred urban tissue as well as vulnerable people demand careful architectural reasoning. The thesis combines several methods to obtain an understanding of how architectural decision-making affects the use and experience of buildings over time. Concomitantly it examines how the perspectives of different stakeholders influence the design process. Analyzing the perspectives of architects, residents, managers, social workers, directors, local residents, professors and municipalities has contributed to a reflection on an architect's challenges, limitations and possibilities within our multidisciplinary profession.

In the ever-evolving world of architecture and construction, there is a growing recognition of the urgent need to embrace sustainable and circular practices. As the challenges of climate change and resource depletion become increasingly apparent, architects and designers have a unique opportunity and responsibility to shape the future of our built environment. It is within this context that I followed the Urban Architecture Graduation Studio, leading to my project called "Re:Generation Liège", in wich I aim to reimagine local building culture as a showcase for a circular generation of architecture, while revitalizing an abandoned industrial site.
At its core, "Re:Generation Liège" seeks to challenge the prevailing linear model of resource consumption in our field of Architecture, while trying to create architecture that is culturally fitting, encouraging social life and in symbiosis with nature. By harnessing the principles of circularity and sustainability, this project strives to create a harmonious interplay between human habitation, natural resources, and the surrounding environment.
The city of Liège, with its rich architectural heritage and vibrant cultural identity, serves as the backdrop for this project. By leveraging the unique physical, economic and socio-cultural characteristics of the local context, "Re:Generation Liège" aims to demonstrate how a circular economy can be boosted in this specific context, through showcasing the potential of adaptive reuse, component reuse and reuse-focused public program.

This paper has argued that the absence of inter-generational contact and a deficit of care-taking in communities leads to the societal exclusion of the elderly and increases the development of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, dementia and depression. Dementia is a pressing problem of our time. The number of people with dementia is constantly rising and will triple by 2050.1 The understaffed healthcare system can no longer provide enough care in nursing facilities. Therefore, this thesis aimed to discover how to prevent the development of cognitive impairments by implementing design strategies on the neighbourhood and housing block scale.
The main research question to be addressed in this thesis was what inclusive design strategy can encourage daily inter-generational contact, strengthen communities and prevent cognitive impairments?
The research included primary research on the target group’s social needs and future-proof living space design through a one-week observation study, three semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire conducted among 18 participants.
Additionally, secondary research was conducted by analysis of two case studies of community-based design projects.
This study has identified a correlation between staying socially and physically active and has found that the combination of fostering social contact and encouraging physical activity can delay the illness by several years. It investigated the needs and wants of different generations regarding neighbourhood and housing design. It identified that a need to feel like a part of a community is the most important overlap between all age groups.
It also examined how to use the principles of ‘Active design’ and ‘Architecture for encounter’ in a housing block.
As a result, the research provides answers on how the architectural design of a housing block can prevent the development of cognitive impairments and thus enable healthy ageing in place. Conclusively the research identified that it is indeed possible to encourage daily inter-generational contact, strengthen communities and prevent cognitive impairments through a design of a housing block which revolves around the community.

Architecture is made for the user. It needs to fulfill their wishes.
When a building is taken into use the architecture of the architect partly disappears. This is not because the architect did not do a good job. This is the cause of being use. The users will always change a space to their wishes. This can be small by hanging a painting or bigger by using the spaces differently. More or less the user is the final layer and finishes the architecture. However this layer is a forever changing elements since users come and go and no user is the same.
This process should be let go by the architect. Even when it is hard to accept the design changes. Because the architecture was made for the users. The architect served as a tool.
However as a architect you can take the wishes of the user in account during the design process. Listen to their wishes and translate this in the design. This way the user will be more satisfied and less changes will be made by them in the life time of the building.
During this research I went to the users. Asked them about the current buildings and how they use these. What are the flaws and what works good? This was implemented in the design at some level.
I, as the architect, made the design for the new school with the wishes of the users in mind. Of the design the grey drawing is made. This represents the layer of the architect.
A new layer is added by the children of the school. The colours of the children make the design partly vanish. This represents the layer of the users. This layer works with the layer underneath but is adds new things to the architecture of the architect.
This way a new building is created, which will change into newer versions.

"At the beginning of this graduation year, there is a theme: Glaneurs, Glaneuse.
‘We are concerned with the city as a man- made landscape. The studio intends to reap and sow pieces of the city, to work with the existing and make use of its resources and potentials.’

In this case, gleaning is interpreted as an attitude to valorize residues, leftovers, what people would consider as non-space. By looking more deeply, diving into the site, and progressively identifying different layers of value (political, economic, architectural, etc), this research aims to discuss the image of industries in urban districts. Sometimes discrete, sometimes prominent, we often only remark their existence once they are gone.
‘There is a need to invent new processes and business models, more gradual and cooperative transformations working with existing building stock {…}.’

What Markus Schaefer (Hosoya, 2021) suggests in the book “Industrious city” is to better consider the value existing buildings instead of too simply decide to tear them down. He suggests elaborating new reconversion strategies, especially in urban environments which consider social, cultural, and societal parameters, more than only looking for financial profitability. Looking at former" "industrial campuses anchored in urban tissues, too often their reconversion has been oriented towards a tertiarization of city districts, somehow replacing a monofunctional industrial campus by another one.

In that respect, the case of Maastricht is particularly interesting to investigate. Considered for a long time as the first industrial city in the Netherlands, such slogan as become more a marketing strategy to develop tourism than a real representation of what the job market looks like. In December 2021, one of the biggest employers of the city, Sappi, a South-African paper company, announced leaving its historical situation in North Maastricht (Philippens, 2021). The departure of the paper mill, beyond the social disaster the loss of more than 600 jobs represents, also brings back on the table the status of industrial spaces in urban environments. It also offers an opportunity to draw a more inclusive strategy, as suggested by Markus Schaefer, for the redevelopment of this testimony of the industrial prosperity of Maastricht.

In that respect, this research aims to evaluate the potential interest in redeveloping productive activities in the Sappi campus and to elaborate a strategy for the reprogramming of the industrial site into a more inclusive productive urban environment."

A building complex, including a kayak clubhouse and a hostel, is proposed on the former industrial terrain of the Sappi paper factory. This project is contextualized in an urban proposal that aims to regenerate the south part of the Sappi factory, by creating new connections and bringing the isolated site back to the city. The building, situated directly on an inner harbor, aims to activate the waterfront by the introduction of a kayak clubhouse. A hostel, on the other hand, will accommodate visitors and keep the site alive 24/7.

Gleaning, in the context of architecture, suggests a careful reading of the existing and learning to respect the existing. This approach has resulted in a highly site-specific design. Together with the existing Maasboulevard and the Affuitenloods building, this proposal provides a series of open spaces situated on different levels with varying publicness. They contribute to the recreational and informal life in the city.

The project is developed based on the theme of the ‘edges’ and a study of the ‘edge conditions’. In this study, two types of edges are mainly addressed: the facade or the building edge, and the waterfront, an edge that separates the land and the water. During fieldworks carried out in Maastricht, many appropriation and informal use have been observed in these spaces on the edges. The spatial characteristics of these spaces are being studied and the findings are then translated into the design proposal.

The city itself serves as a stage for major sports events and as a sports space for individual and not organized sports such as running, biking and skateboarding. The scale of sports spaces ranges from large sports parks for professional competition and narrow allies for informal jogging. People’s movement brings energy to urban life while the city provides a sequence of places to ensure that people can move safely and comfortably. The essential concept is to introduce a small city system in this sports complex and make it become a public interior as an extension of urban life. A major entrance hall serves as a ‘square’ which is a gathering space for people to wait and communicate after sports. There are two main ‘streets’, the circulation space starts from this hall and links all the interior sports spaces and supporting facilities together. Besides different scales of interior spaces for sports activities, this sports center also provides common rooms for flexible use. Bridging together diverse programs promotes interaction between program components and urban life. The greater the variety of amenities, the more diverse groups of people will use the amenities. Fitting sport in an urban environment is more than just adding sports-related programs.

The theme of the studio, spolia, is a term from archaeology, which is to place remnants in a new environment. The project started research of a historical river in the city—the Senne in Brussels. The river influenced the urban development of the whole city morphologically and typologically. Interventions regarding the river show how local people treat spolia. The site is also located along the trace of Senne. A typical wall was formed because of the covering the Senne. It indicates the history but also segregates and influences current situations. It serves as such an important role that it should not be easily discarded. It is the spolia for this site. There is a big difference between the two sides of the wall--living and working, nature and the built environment, leisure and production. The urban concept is to reuse the wall to activate the neighbourhood, increase housing and public facilities and remove the productive constructions to the suburban area. The urban regards the wall as the main spolia and returns the centre of the block to the public. The wall frames the public facilities and parks of the community garden. The architectural proposal continues the focus on the wall as the spolia and explores how to treat it on the architectural scale. The project deals with three issues: the urban gestures facing different sides, the combination of the elderly and the children and the reuse of the existing wall. Among these, to reuse and reconfigure the wall intertwine the other two and becomes the main spine of my project. In the architectural scale, the content of spolia can be enriched. The wall is not only a line. It has the thickness; it has structure; it has a function. The wall acts as the perimeter of the project and organizes programs. The two user groups share an event hall and the kitchen. They have visual connections but also have their privacy. The façade intends to remain the solidness of the wall and make the new open and light while ties in with the old. So for the new façade, the frame can open up the courtyard by reducing the mass of the wall. The original texture of the old is remained to highlight the old wall. The façade also uses similar bricks of the old wall but uses different bonding to create a subtle difference between new and old. Especially for the entrance, light and translucent material is applied to the cladding to express an opening of the old. The interior use wood floor and plaster wall to release the heaviness of the texture of the bricks. In conclusion, my project lies partly in the urban solution. It articulates and celebrates an existing wall from urban scale down to materialization. In different stages, the content of the wall is enriched and enhanced.

Made in Manhattan is a cluster of productive spaces based on historical manufacturing areas of New York. The projects intends intends to rediscover the industrial past of NY and translate it into contemporary forms, refreshing the identity of Manhattan in the 21st Century while contributing to a socially layered and more stable community in Hell's Kitchen. Adaptability, temporality and interactions are the key elements in the distribution of the program (ateliers for makers, workshops and spaces for promotion).

The Urban Architecture graduation studio focuses on the topic of spolia, a term from archaeology that defines the leftovers of a building that find themselves back in a new structure. Spolia is about reuse, finding value in what is there, and how it can acquire new meanings by being transformed or relocated. It is also about stratification, of adding layers to a story that continues when the spolia is given a new life. The research focused on time and the unfinished, exploring the relationship between architecture and time. Architecture is subjected to the social forces of time, defined by the change of users and functions over time. Buildings are usually designed to be a finished product, with a specific use, leaving the time factor out of the equation. This often leads to vacancy or underuse, due to the inability of the building to adapt to new uses or undergo a transformation to accommodate new uses. Aiming for the unfinished allows time to take its course. Like spolia, a building can acquire new meanings – or a new life – when transformed. This stratification of layers of time, materials and uses, turns the building into a story that will never be complete, evolving and adapting to respond to occurrences over time.

During the last century, Brussels transformed into an international capital, a process in which the quality of life of Brussels's own residents was not the first priority. The community of the neighbourhood and the everyday life of the residents became overlooked with the city shining it’s spotlights on the international stage. The neighbourhoods of Brussels become audiences to the city, not the actors.
The neighbourhood is to ignored no longer. Everyday life is a performance. As time passes people work, dwell, consume and express in an ongoing dialogue between the characters of the neighbourhood and the stage sets they perform on. Through staging everyday life value is given to these performances; a spontaneous discussion amongst neighbours, the captivation and amusement of a child, a moment of respite and relief from the city. The careful understanding of the relationship between stage and character puts the people of the neighbourhood in the limelight, their lives become the story to be told that the surrounding city audience should view.
Stage sets of public life are to be engrained into the urban blocks of the neighbourhood, anchoring their worth into the physical form of city and pronouncing their integrity with their embracement of local material and technique. An architecture of modesty is to be achieved, functioning as scenery to the performance, keeping the spotlight on people and their value in creating in the neighbourhood. Future development is going to happen. These stages of public life are fundamental to preserving the character of a place, to ensure the performance of everyday life can go on.
Derived from Latin "spolium" (plural: "spolia"), the term spolia is used in archaeology meaning "spoils" (as in "spoils of war"), booty or loot, typically seen in Greek or Roman architectural sculpture. It refers to the cut stones or decorative elements from older buildings that are re-used for new construction as an economical alternative to quarried stone which was more expensive.
The principle can surpass the re-appropriation of material to that of a defined approach to architecture. The spoils are found in the existing space and form of the built fabric, the traces of memory within evolved site and the everyday routines, use and occupation of the people in their neighbourhood. It’s an approach of attentiveness, with concern for that which exists, with a passion for the task of making something from something. It is a technique of reaction. With thorough observation the existing elements of the site are to be negotiated with, understanding their value and how they can be redefined to benefit the needs of the present.
The value of the neighbourhood needs to be reaffirmed. The stage needs to be set around the people that act immediately upon the city and that give life to its character. Through an architecture of modesty, stage sets of public life can be ingrained into the urban blocks, ensuring their preservation. Through the principles of spolia, value can be discovered in everything and gifted back to the people.
As the film producer Karel Reisz has said, looking back on his work, “It is about wanting what you got, rather than going out and getting what you want.”

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.

The design of the new cruise terminal for Manhattan aims to revalue the relationships between Manhattan and its river, the very reason for the success story of the city. This re-evaluation is a public process of re-appropriation, in which the public value of the cruise terminal is given back its major role as gate to / from the city. Display, monumentality, publicness are the key words; the building owns back its proud of being representative place for Manhattan. The big cantilevering roof is the very symbol of this process of re-appropriation of the waterside. The terminal is complemented by a Media Park and event facilities, which increase the public meaning of the building and are a destination for many visitors, both daily and in times of low functioning of cruise terminal as in winter.

The story started from the invisible river Senne on the urban scale of Brussels, concentrating on the wall which is both spolia on site and the identity of my youth center. The archaeological idea of Spolia keeps me discovering the existing value, then constantly thinking of collecting, composing and re-using. Once existing fragments collide with new ones, the process of bricolage comes up.
The wall on site is the ghost of Senne that could be seen as spolia on immaterial, but now it became the backdrop of people’s lives in the neighborhood, where the youths there are facing issues such as stigmatization. The strategy of the urban proposal and architectural part is to use the wall as a frame to turn the situation from segregation and at the meanwhile to break youths’ mental wall. The old wall owns the collective memory, speaks for space. That’s why the walls teach.

Hell’s Kitchen West is currently transforming from former manufacturing to residential district however at the moment the quality of the living environment is far from being sufficient. The transition is done in a very hasty way and rezoning has a fragmentary character, some blocks have been already rezoned into residential and new high-rise housing developments are rising surrounded by warehouses, car retail shops, parking, car wash and warehouses which don't reflect the changing character of the urban environment. Moreover, the NYC planning department considers this zone a 'food desert' which means that the area between 10th and 12th avenues lacks public amenities which can provide fresh food. Doubled with the high level of environmental pollution from the Westside highway, lack of green public spaces and issues of reachability by public transport it leads to a discussion of how to create a qualitative urban environment for residents. Thus the research question is: How can food infrastructure be integrated into the residential urban environment of Hell’s Kitchen and soften the transition from the industrial past? How can local food manufacturing and distribution create new values for the community as well as provide green public spaces? The project is a combination of housing and Food Hub. Project is implemented in the group strategy of densification the strip of blocks along the Hudson River and creating new links with the waterfront and piers and thus establishing a new relationship between Midtown and the Hudson River. Food hub components are market and restaurants, urban farm/park-supermarket, e-commerce fresh food distribution centre, space for educational programs. Food and waste flows are a closed cycle between food hub ingredients and housing and shape a harmonious and sustainable food system.

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.

The amount of elderly will increase in the future and elderly homes were abolished by the government due to cutbacks in 2012. There is no room for the target group that is too good for the nursing home and too bad for home care. In this Graduation Studio ‘Designing for Care I will anser the following question, ‘What kind of buildings and neighbourhoods do we need if (older) people take care of older people?’ In this context, care is seen as non-professional care. To answer this question I lived for one week in an elderly home to study the target group in their context. The main observations are passive behaviour and ‘being alone together’. Life in that elderly home reminds me of a factory. An ‘elderly factory’ that produces passive elderly. The relation with a factory is because of the daily routines and the behaviour of the residents. Everyday is the same, everything is planned, nothing is spontaneous. My goal is to transform the ‘elderly factory’ into a ‘fun factory’. A design where elderly live together and take care of each other. Fun in this context refers to the lifestyle and the living environment. Fun can be for instance social interaction or making yourself useful to help someone else.
To come up with a concept I asked people in my surrounding how they would live when they are old. The main answers focused on the people. Interviews gave me insights in what people are willing to share with others. Namely a kitchen, living room and a garden, a good balance between private and collective space is important. The kind of support that people are willing to give to their roommates is divided. They like to do leisure activities, are willing to do some household tasks but not provide medical care. Caregivers are needed and will offer home care.
To create a place where you are together, help and motivate each other we can learn from an existing co-living typology for a new target group, namely ‘student houses for elderly’. A house with private and collective rooms that are shared with a small group of selected people. The design is a modern courtyard typology. A collective greenhouse is surrounded by elderly houses and care-free houses. A surrounding that stimulates small talks, interaction and social control.