Tilde(~) - Forensic Research Institute aims to question the role of architecture in the field of dialectical perception. In this project theoretical framework is formulated as a doubling of two different philosophical schools of thought: epistemology and phenomenology. They converge as a bigger theoretical constellation in order to interpret how architecture phenomenon is constructed in the city of Bucharest. The following findings are then converted into series of different mappings, 2.5 models and assemblages. They address the question how architecture and in particular its representation can be used to express this dialectical mods of understandings... Yet it's only a refraction of a larger phenomena. This methodology of creating visual apparatus reflected in the final architectural design. Form follows refraction is a architectural design manifesto where architecture is an assemblage of various transparent materials and their various physical characteristics that can refract, reflect, mirror, blur, architecture space. This architecture can't no longer be perceived as a whole and is creating an oligopticon where you can read only a small piece of a larger panorama. So the final architectural result operates in a very similar mods as does Forensic type of work but this time operating on architecture itself. Bridging theory to design.

This project takes place in Friedrichshain, Berlin, Germany and presents the design of a Public Condenser along the Straße der Pariser Kommune named ’Bau(m) Berlin’. The project is part of the Public Building Graduation Studio and looks into the topic of designing a ’new urban lounge and commons’ through the process of Research by Design. Through field research and urban analysis, three issues came to the forth in the Friedrichshain area; A disconnection between residents, a missing framework for social (re-)integration and low quality green space. These issues consequently led to choosing the project site along the Straße der Pariser Kommune and forming the following research question: ”What if there could be an architecture that pushes interaction so that the social gap between people could be bridged whilst functioning as a platform that helps people to (re-) enter society?” In order to tackle the pre-described issues, the project takes the notion of ’building’ and dissects it into ’Building the Future Commons’, ’Building Connections’ and ’Building Things’. Together they describe and result into the project Bau(m). The ’m’ in Bau(m) entails the notion and concept of Multiplicity, e.i. the idea that a thing, in this case a public building, can be used in multiple ways, for various programmatic functions, throughout time. For me, this meant seeing architecture as a framework that allows for adaptable use of a building. Consequently, the building is designed as a pavilion within the park stretching along the Straße der Pariser Kommune and has one big roof supported by a grid structure column repetition made from timber. The columns are bended so that together, they form an arch-shaped pattern. By seeing the building as part of the park, the park is equally redesigned into a park of higher quality with an urban route that stretches through the building and connects the Ostbahnhof train station with the Karl-Marx-Allee further North. The main function of the building is a workshop space for various crafts, amongst which furniture making, as it uses the method of making as a way of bringing people together and getting those in need back on into society. This workshop space stretches into the basement and thus forms the substructure of an urban square that exists in front of the building.

The term interface is commonly known as a device or program enabling man to use machine, and mainly associated with relationship between users and computer. Generally it means a point where two systems, subjects, organization, etc. meet and interact. A good interface would effectively raise efficiency and improve experience of the users. In concepts it also helps to interpret museum as interface, related with question: what an art experience should be in the future? Firstly, museum should interface spectators with arts. We need to think from spectators, that they are varied from different cultural and educational contexts considering the international immigrant background of South Rotterdam. Art is abstract and sophisticated for non-professionals, who would be the major group among visitors. Thus, museum should take responsibility to interface people with different levels of knowledge in order to improve their experience when encountering art. Why is their experience so important here? Here I would refer to Rosalind Krauss’s “Late Capitalist Museum” theory. Better art experience is the demand in this consumer society, take example as MoMA. In terms of spectators’ experience, Nanette Snoep’s curating theory also helps to support my position. To improve experience, the method is to create an immersive environment, which means let spectators participate into artwork during visit. The suitable art collections here would focus on interactive art, performative art, installation art, process art and folk art. Secondly, museum should interface physical space with virtual space. It is a bilateral relationship. On one hand, the aura of contemporary artworks is descending, while their interrelation with space is enhancing. Virtuality is the basis of Minimalism’s hyperspace theory, or “the fourth dimension”, also the new demand of museum space in the digital future. What museum should do in the future is to interface spectators with this “fourth dimension” space. On the other hand, people’s life is virtualizing by new technique. Majority of communication and social interaction are happening on the Internet through smart phone and PC. Although it frees human from restriction of physical condition, it also locks human in his or her own limited space. The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating this problem. Disconnection of social bonds would impair mental health, causing loneliness, anxiety, inferiority, alienation and so on (Mendelsohn, 2020). In this sense, museum should turn from a cultural institution into a social infrastructure, dragging people from virtual world into physical interaction, like Gaillard’s installation work the recovery of Discovery.

Following the ideologies of club cultural communities, which finds abandoned space throughout the city and gives it new meaning by transforming it into spaces which hosts different activities for creative communities, this projects attempts to design a building with no meaning in the first place which in turn allows for multiple interpretations of the space. For this project, I interpret the space as a nightclub and fit in a daytime program which supports communities within club culture. However, the building also intends to be interpreted in different ways giving the possibility to evolve it's meaning over time along with the evolving needs of society.

The municipality of The Hague is currently redeveloping Binckhorst from industrial area to a high-rise mixed function area. The drastic redevelopment of this area is causing the loss of numerous reuseable materials and buildings. This is worrisome, given the need to improve the sustainability of the building sector. To prevent the destruction in Binckhorst from repeating in future, a strategy is needed that allows easier transformation of the area and buildings to meet the demands of future stakeholders. In addition, there ought to be dynamic and diverse functions to make the area more lively to attract more attention and care. Applying the flexible building strategy offers a possible solution, as it aims to extend the life of a building through its adaptability, and adding a public performance space in Binckhorst will broaden the dynamics of the area, by introducing entertainment as a function. However, the use of this strategy in music halls has been limited, as there are special requirements for structure, space and materials in order for these spaces to perform well. Moreover, the overarching characteristic of today’s flexible buildings is that they are nondescript in their architectural appearance and usage. This poses a challenge, as a building must have a certain appeal, to prevent future demolition. Therefore the question is posed: “How to design a music venue that is flexible and has a unique identity?” This project will research the current implementation of the strategy and its flaws, from this a toolbox will be created. Research from different fields of science is conducted to understand the design principles of an iconic building. Last, flexibility of the music function is analysed through case studies. These three researches combined will form the parameters to design an iconic and tuneable performance venue, demonstrating that the flexible building strategy can perform with a demanding function, and still have character.

HangARTs museum, situated in Rotterdam Zuid at the quay of Maashaven, is the new art museum of Rotterdam. Here, the visitors are audience without needing to enter the building. The public space that the museum provides has public art for passers-by to admire. Even if your original purpose of being was not visiting the museum, you get to experience art in the absent mind. The thesis explores the issue of art not being present in the daily life of the neighbourhood. The proposal resulting from the research aims to attract even the people that are indifferent to the art world, providing small thresholds for the audience to pass to see what the art world can offer. Starting as just a place for leisure, the design then brings the audience to public art and eventually to the exhibitions provided. Ultimately, hangARTs museum is the museum that will lay the base for people to start enjoying art.

My project starts from the city Berlin. After visiting the site in Friedrichshain, I found that people who lived there were not satisfied with the food-eating space nearby throughout my interviews. They said that even though there were some restaurants, the community was lack of diverse food space, and they were willing to go to the West Berlin for food. To check if they were right, I made a food mapping of the community. I found that there are a few restaurants and supermarkets there, but not too many. And there was just one flexible exterior street market nearby, so basically they were right. Based on this, designing a food-eating space for the community came into my mind. To follow up on the locals’ idea, I went to the west of Berlin and found many diverse food-related activities. There are not just many restaurants in the West, but also many street markets, and an interesting Prinzessinnengarten where people can farm, make and cook inside. At the time, based on the topic of our project “Public Condenser”, I think if I condense many kinds of food-related activities(farming, making, shopping, and eating) into one building, it will provide more opportunities for people to encounter, which also suits my understanding towards the word “Common”, where people can make something together, and participate into activities constantly. Then food could be a good medium to connect people in Berlin from different backgrounds. Furthermore, facing the trend that eating become more private and people do not want to go out for food and feel lonely, a food condenser can take people out and solve these issues very well. From the food mapping, I consider the REWE supermarket as the best location to build. Because it sits in the street full of restaurants, they can work well together economically. And the site is also near the Warschauer Straße station, so it is accessible for the locals and outsiders. Finally, the original supermarket will be turned down, and a better new flexible market space will show up in the new building. After making sure of my topic about food, I divided the program into four parts, from farming, making, and shopping to eating. In the farming part, people can grow some vegetables, ingredients, and some plants in the balcony, rooftop garden, or indoor area. In the making part, people can cook the food they pick up from the farming part in the shared kitchen, chefs can learn cooking from the culinary school, and chefs can explore their recipes in the food laboratory, citizens can see the food exhibition, they can also order the food in the kitchen that is already cooked by the chefs. In the shopping part, people can shop, eat, and socialize in a flexible market space, including a long indoor market, some eating space, and relaxed space. They can also listen to lectures about food culture in the hall. In the eating part, people can enjoy a big food square. They can also order in two big round-shaped food bars, and find food in some open restaurants. To condense these multiple food-related spaces in one building, I worked out a prototype, I call it “Vertical Food Forest”, which will be situated at a specific site and create various food experiences as an interesting and complicated system.

Seam like spaces is expanding extensively and overlapping with other entities repetitiously. The seam is a spatial concept that it does exist; however it never reveals its physical properties: rather the seam straddles complexities, and involves itself in other objects converging and diverging. It tells us about an ambiguity of spatial characteristics of interstitial spaces.

Neglected and abandoned places in the contemporary city are typically understood as negative, problematic issues followed by a tendency of straight-forward architectural solutions. Considering such places as a result of accumulating city processes and conceptualizing them as ”cuts’’ in the urban and architectural tissue opens up an unforeseen potential to construct a design process based on the investigation of phenomena that leads to the awareness of different spatial perception and a more profound understanding of the context. The city centre of Bucharest provides a multitude of mesmerizing examples of such spaces where the theory of motion, play and desires merged with a fascination of parkour as a ‘derivious’ contemporary practise transgressing control and conventional reading of the city. Gradually, these ideas have led to a design of stacked structures with a multitude of height differences, smooth and rough surfaces, and freedom of multiple moving directions suggesting a challenging yet complex environment for learning and practising parkour. Simultaneously, the project manifests as an endless labyrinth of corridors, modest and monumental, warm and cold, reflective and absorbing, transparent, semi-enclosed or even dark spaces all intertwining with each other and inducing a ‘derivious’ spatial exploration. Modular assemblage and possibility for disassembling the project interprets the understanding of flexibility as a reuse and repurpose under different contexts. From a larger perspective, the project becomes a counterargument for the obsession with flatness, rigidity and over-control in the contemporary city and public buildings (places).

The ultimate aim of this research is to create a theoretical framework for the design of a multifunctional cultural waterfront on the edge of the Tarwewijk in Rotterdam South. From this follows the main research question: How can the regeneration of a waterfront into a cultural area add social and cultural value to the Tarwewijk and Rotterdam South? There is a strong cultural division between the North and South of Rotterdam what leads into the fewer access to culture and lower demand for culture in the South of Rotterdam. Knowing this, the redevelopment of an underused unconnected waterfront in the South of Rotterdam into a cultural area can lead to unwanted social effects, like no social and cultural connection to the neighbourhood and by this it could lead to gentrification. It is important to develop a cultural area that adds social and cultural value to the neighbourhood and that this area is part of the neighbourhood (tangible and intangible). This can narrow the (cultural) gap between the North and South of Rotterdam. This happens because both culture becomes more inclusive and approachable for the local people and the population of Rotterdam South become culturally richer. In order to investigate this, The research that follows focusses on three hypothetic parts of the solution. The first one is multifunctionality. This subject will be researched through the questions: What does multifunctionality entail? How can multifunctionality benefit the cultural area? How can multifunctionality be beneficial to the neighbourhood? And how do multifunctionality and multiculturality relate to each other? The second subject is identity. The sub questions for this are: What creates this identity? How can identity benefit the museum? How can identity be beneficial the neighbourhood? The last subject is connection. In this part there will be focus on how can tangible and intangible connections can be established between the site and the neighbourhood with as main goal to integrate the museum with the neighbourhood. For every of the three subjects firstly there will be done a literature research to theorize the subject and get a grip on the main principles of the subject matter. I will research what others have done in the field of multifunctionality, identity and connection and from there I will try to come up with my own hypothesis about these subjects. After that case studies will be conducted where the aspects of multifunctionality, identity and connection will be analysed. After that site specific research will be done to form a conclusion about the information that is gained from the literature and the case studies. In this research and design I want to redefine the way cultural area’s and museums are looked upon to make them more attractive to a wider audience that normally wouldn’t visit a cultural area or museum. It aims to create an alternative to the classic typology of the museum. The research and design try to show that a museum or cultural area can also function in a more social and inclusive way. This case can then be an example for future projects.

Gentrification is a controversial process where lower-income neighborhoods are transformed into affluent areas through the arrival of higher-income residents and development efforts. Friedrichshain in Berlin serves as a prominent example of this phenomenon. Since the 1990s, the neighborhood has attracted artists and young professionals, causing property values to rise and making it difficult for long-time residents to stay. Gentrification has resulted in the displacement of low-income residents, a shift in the neighborhood's demographics, and a change in its cultural landscape. The real estate market's development has played a significant role in driving up property values and rents, further exacerbating the situation. In response to these effects, a Public Condenser is being designed as a social catalyst, aiming to mitigate the impacts of gentrification by providing a space for diverse individuals to share knowledge and creativity. The project's goal is to foster innovation and progress, following the theme of "Boundless architecture," and potentially serve as a prototype for similar neighborhoods in need.

(Re)Mind the Wall is an architectural critique on the current function/position of the East-side Gallery in Berlin, Germany. What once paid tribute to the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has now eroded itself into a manicured and appropriated tourist hotspot in the city. While the colourful murals from international artists remain intact, their representation of freedom and unity has now been lost to the mass-gentrification of the Friedrichshain neighbourhood. The historical remnants of the Berlin Wall act as a backdrop for selfies, where visitors are oriented towards the hyper-commercialised Mercedes-Benz Platz, as a ploy to lure the people into spending more money. However, the “backside” of the Wall, a nearly 300m long public park remains barricaded and invisible to the public eye. The project seeks to re-claim one of the few remnants of greenspace left along the Spree canal and renew it into an accessible, affordable, and liberated public space. The design was inspired by the “everchanging, colourful, and fluid” character of the city, drawing from the local’s needs and desires. It reflects on the past; the Berlin Wall, the Fall, and the words left behind by the artists of the city. It draws from the existing remains found around the area, scrap materials that are repaired and brought back to life. The architecture promotes unity and the connection of people through a series of social interventions all interconnected by a public bridge that quite literally climbs over the Wall itself…

ASSUMPTIONS Still quite far away from visiting the city of interest, Bucharest, a model was the means to subsume personal stories I heard from friends, media reports and interviews as well as resulting subjective expectations on the trip. At the same time it led to the assumption, that all of these stories, but also historical events, even plans - no matter if physically manifested or never exxecuted - left/leave their traces in the city like a kind of imprint into a multilayered plane. Later on this assumption provoked the rereading of the area of Văcărești in the south-west of the city centre - following Sébastien Marot’s elaborations on Ithaca - as a palimpsestous stage which formed several distinct urban elements or characters. Their potential interplay and the resulting clashes and negotiations became the key aspect of my research, which transformed into one of a range of principles for the design. At this point my focus shifted from the urban scale of the area to the specific site of a abandoned and reoccupied civic slaughterhouse, which comprehends all of the assumed levels at the same time in a smaller, more architectural scale.

Exhibitions and collections of art museums mostly consists of visual art. When we talk about “contemporary art” museums, people immediately think about paintings, photographs and sculptures: visual arts. Monet’s, Van Gogh’s and Picasso’s paintings, photographs of William Klein, sculptures by Richard Serra or Woody Allen’s movie. All these artworks are experienced by observing them with your eyes. Visiting those visual artworks in museums, possibilities to reflect on the social and political situations of today, are offered. However, for a great number of people the world of experiencing visual artworks is not accessible. They do not know how paintings can provoke imagination. Non-visually handicapped people can visit any “visual” art museums, and experience artworks with all their senses. A visually handicapped person, has less museum possibilities to go to and experience contemporary art. Art museums should be more accessible for visually handicapped people but also for people with other disabilities such as hearing impairment or people living in a wheelchair. Synesthetic art is a form of art where more than one sense contributes to the experience of an art work. There are art genres using other senses than only the visual sense. Sound, smell, taste, we can include them. Take music as an example, music has just as many opportunities to provoke imagination as a visual artwork. A second problem we are facing today is gentrification. The process of upgrading neglected urban neighborhoods, in which the current, less wealthy residents and initial small entrepreneurs and pubs, have to move out of the way for the middle class and their catering industries and companies. Through the experience of synesthetic art, the new museum aims to stimulate and include current residents, offers appropriate daily-life activities, which are accessible for everyone, and where visually handicapped people are no longer excluded. A node of multiple scales (urban and social) will be created in my design. 
To respond to the lack of synesthetic art museums and the problem gentrification, the definitions and experiences of aesthetics and synaesthetics will be explained and discussed. It is fundamental to have knowledge about the relation between architecture and the human sense. The main question of this research plan therefor will be:
What architectural means are essential to provoke and reinforce our imagination while experiencing synesthetic art?
In order to answer the Research Question of this study, literature about synaesthesia, synesthetic art and gentrification are necessary. The “Van Abbe Museum” in Eindhoven has established to create a “multi-sensory museum”. This museum project is used as a case study to understand what people with impairments need and miss in current contemporary art museums. During a visit to the museum called “MuZIEum” in Nijmegen, the visual sense has been taken away, an experience of being visually handicapped leads to the awareness about the kind of art that can be experienced without seeing. 
The aim of my graduation project is to re-wire Tarwewijk, Rotterdam-Zuid, through an art museum. A museum that is able to contribute to an improvement of social conditions in a neighbourhood. And where current residents from the direct surroundings are stimulated and included. 



In the South of Rotterdam there is a disconnection between the artworld and the way of life in the neighbourhood. The design of a new museum will try to attempt to reduce the gap between different segments of society in the area. Therefor a museum for Street art will be introduced. Focussing on re-wiring the museum to the neighbourhood and make art accessible again for all kind of audiences. To achieve this, the traditional museum image will change by breaking down the walls of the inaccessible museum and instead give room to the accessible and low culture form of Street Art.

The project ‘Bincks’ Music Factory’ is part of the graduation studio Public Building, a studio in which Multiplicity is researched as a characteristic of a Music Marvel. The ‘new’ Music Marvel as I designed it has the Binckhorst location in The Hague as its given parameter. This former industrial area has been absorbed by the city in response to the transformations of economic, cultural and socio-political dynamics, and will be transformed into an urban living and working area in the future. The question that immediately came up was how can a music marvel be embedded in Binckhorst and what are the characteristics of my music marvel? Nowadays, music is tangible for everyone and can no longer be ignored in our lives. However, today’s music buildings cannot keep pace with the demanding condition, the multiplicity, and the ever-changing character. Architecture for music has largely been transformed into an inanimate spatial form, characterised by its pursuit of timelessness and limited to the perception of music. The architectural design of music spaces in our time is guided and often controlled, by the science of acoustics. The understanding of perception is often incomplete. The spatial requirements and design parameters of a Music Marvel must be questioned in order to meet the demanded versatility of today’s music buildings. To fulfil this demand for multiplicity, my Music Marvel is focused on facilitating a variety of music genres. Based on a personal fascination, I focus on various subcultures as a target group with the idea of offering them a place for interactions and incubation - a cultural factory where diverse components or subcultures come together to form a larger whole and refute the sense of social hierarchy. An autonomous place to stimulate (local) subcultures and thus profile its own place.

All places change over time; however, the extent and availability of alternatives are essential. Friedrichshain is an example of a neighbourhood where the transition to a high-income society can have significant consequences for low-income and elderly, who have fewer choices and fewer opportunities to travel for recreation and socialising. The design of a public condenser in Friedrichshain will form a new heart between the existing and upcoming neighbourhood and their society. The public condenser will blur the division between neighbourhoods and enhance inclusivity and diversity. A public function that facilitates different generations' recreational and intellectual needs is a library. Today's libraries already have a social function in addition to the intellectual purpose. Adding social functions to current services ensures that the existing and new cultures and societies reinforce each other. Moreover, bringing different socioeconomic groups together reduces conflicts and disorder and enhances collective security. This design expands the standard library with other media forms to anticipate the future. So there are printed books in the building and devices on which users can read digital books, listen to audiobooks and communicate via multimedia. In addition, the media library will contain extra functions that activate the brain's left (intellectual) and right (creative) hemispheres. The different media types connect the thinking and doing activities in the building through a guiding routing. The guiding routing serves as an extension of the public street and is designed for stocking books and other media types, the media library. Finally, there will also be space for leisure and gathering in addition to activities for thinking and doing. Traditional formal functions associated with a library are transformed into more informal spaces with room for the individual and the collective.

The economic crisis, demographic changes and increasing vacancy of real estate in the city urges us to question how we cope with the new needs of the city, and how these can be combined with the existing built environment. Adaptive reuse, as a concept of reusing pre-existing structures for new purposes, has become an increasingly appealing option. Not only because of the recognition of the effects on climate change by the built environment, but also the realization that adaptive reuse can make a considerable contribution to the formulation of strategies for sustainable, future-proof cities. A growing interest in adaptive reuse can also be identified in the public sector. It is now recognized by public organisations, like municipalities, that real estate cannot merely be managed and preserved by simple maintenance. The uniqueness of every adaptive reuse project however contributes vastly to the complexity and it appears that many municipalities are currently not equipped to deal with these kinds of projects. Moreover, it is arguable whether they should execute the adaptive reuse themselves at all, because of all the involved risks and commitments and the fact that they are dealing with public money. But how should they then act whenever dealing with an object within their portfolio that is eligible for adaptive reuse? A concise strategy is needed to provide municipalities with the means to make a fitted decision that can be properly justified to the other stakeholders. In general, one could argue that there are several alternative options, but what option would be the best for that specific situation? Therefore, the main research question is: “What criteria need to be considered when deciding upon adaptive reuse within the real estate portfolio of municipalities?” The result of this research is a tool in which the identified criteria are implemented in a comparison matrix which is used to discuss and assess the different alternatives. The comparison matrix is integrated into a step-by-step plan subdivided into two phases. The developed tool provides the municipalities with a structured decision-making process, which can be used to maximise transparency, stimulate critical thinking, optimise MREM and initiate the right discussion.

The predominant approach in dealing with spaces suspended often involves negative connotations that view these spaces as spaces that ought to be destroyed or avoided without considering the potential positive aspects that lend to the site uniqueness and novelty. This involves the approach towards designing in a condition of lazier-fare relationships and spaces of negotiations, and the potentials it brings in considering the application it brings in allowing the re-reading and re-composition of the city. Allowing for a differing design approach that will take advantage of the Architecture of Suspension. The research of the effects of the Architecture of Suspension and an attempt to conceptualize alternative re-readings and re-mappings of the Moralilor, Bucharest, Romania through the different but encompassing notions of the Architecture of Suspension. Through the manifestations of these mappings and re-readings, an attempt at the establishment of a language or idea which informs architectural designs in both the design process and aesthetic choices (without the reduction of the architecture into mere copying of trendy visual precedents) The earlier research establishes that the design as having the following possible characteristics, as event, as temporal, as fragment, as complex, as irregular, as existing outside locality, registering time and place beyond and before and as possessing a multiplicity of reading.

Environmental activism requires effective communication to a wide audience in order to highlight ongoing issues around the world. Art and environmental art in particular, can be a powerful tool to showcase this type of complex issues and can be used to raise awareness of the seriousness of the problem at hand. Museums, as trusted institutions, should be actively involved in highlighting the current environmental issues affecting the world. They must use their positions of power to inform the public about ongoing issues in order to provoke change across society. Furthermore, museums should provide public access to scientific information and policy on the environment in a format that is accessible and engaging to the average museum visitor. It is crucial to develop effective ways of displaying art dealing with environmental issues and to shape museums to accommodate these different methods of representation.