Preliminary to this design, a careful research was done on the proportional theory of Dom Hans van der Laan. Based on how we perceive space and measure things this system offers a way to create harmonious architecture. What can we learn from this theory for today's architecture and what is the relevance? Starting from the ideas of Dom Hans van der Laan concerning proportion and perception, this design for a modern monastery in Rotterdam is a statement towards our mental health and the importance of careful design in relation to that.

Waste streams from cruise ships come back into nature which negatively influences the environment. Research has shown that actions need to be taken to reduce climate change. Not only the government should take their responsibility, but also other businesses, like the cruise industry. The cruise industry is a growing business and cruise ships have an environmental impact. This study aims to contribute to the development of sustainable, circular cruise ships. Specifically, the gas, fluid, and solid waste streams. The final product is a roadmap, based on waste stream analyses, towards a set of targets and goals. This master thesis, examines which steps need to be taken, focusing on the three waste streams to make the transition towards circular cruise ships following the City-zen method to comply with the UN sustainable development goals. Three roadmaps are made, with three different levels of ambition; 1. Fully Circular, 2. Collaboration Ship & Land, and 3. Positive effect on the environment to find the best way to design a sustainable cruise ship. The research can be subdivided into four main sections, background information, waste stream analysis, master planning, and conclusions. These four main sections are all in relation to the case study, cruise ships from Royal Caribbean Ltd. A literature study is conducted to obtain the needed information. The results show that it is impossible to ensure that no waste enters the environment under the conditions made for the specific roadmaps. On this basis, a combination of the three roadmaps and their technical solutions is made to design the sustainable circular cruise ship. The final design for retrofit cruise ships and newly built cruise ships is not fully circular. The treated black and grey water and bilge water still contain pollutants that come back into the sea. However, the emissions from the gas stream are reduced or fully eliminated, more pollutants are removed from the black, grey and bilge water, pollutant by-products are recycled on land, heat is recovered and reused, clean products as biogas, biodiesel and struvite are produced, seawater as ballast water is not needed, and non-hazardous and hazardous waste is reduced, reused and recycled. These adjustments and additions should be added to prevent waste discharge into the environment. This research also shows that the same design principles and interventions used in cities and building complexes can also be implemented on cruise ships, like the New Stepped Strategy, Cradle to Cradle, material passport, plants, heat pumps, and the energy exchange principle. Further research is needed into technical systems to treat and prevent waste from entering the environment and into other criteria like cost, energy consumption, needed materials and emissions.

The project envisioned a social-ecological resilient waterfront for Rotterdam. By focusing on the outer dike area of Rotterdam, it aims to protect the port from flooding ,and at the same time create more nature habitat for biodiversity. With creating a resilient river, it can re-realize the role of industry and reconnect them into resource flows, in the end, it will formulate a healthy and liveable social-ecosystem at New River Mass. The vision of the River Mass is firstly to restore the riverfront as the place of ecological importance and also aplace for working, living and recreations. It should be a place for people to come and meet together. In order to achieve that, it implies four strategies including protect, restore, reconnect and grow. Stadhaven is the programmes for applying proposed strategies. In fact, the stadhaven is an area in transition. Over the coming decades, new links between the city and port will be constructed in stadhaven to bridge the port and city, at the same time, develop the economy. It is vulnerable to high water levels since it is part of old harbour complex. The area is on the water which is subject to tidal dynamics and could have transition between River Mass and inner city distcit. Based on that, the systematic strategies could start from the aspects of Nature(sedmiation), densification and open space and access.

Anthropogenic development is the main actor in the destruction of our planet. Urbanization, industrialization, and agriculture have been expanding exponentially at a global scale in an attempt to create prosperity and progress. Still, in the process of this never-ending pursuit of betterment for the human race, we are killing native biodiversity and entire ecosystems. This graduation project in Urbanism and Landscape architecture will portray the current issues resulting from anthropogenic development, taking the Guanajuato, Mx, central region as a case study and reflecting on the challenges, scenarios, and possibilities for the future. This thesis project aims to reflect and understand the current environmental, ecological, and social issues generated as a result of anthropogenic practices in the central region of Guanajuato, Mexico. Through research and resources such as literature, governmental projections, urban and geomorphological analysis; the thesis gives an understanding of the current conditions of the state of Guanajuato, MX focusing mainly on the central region of the state and in cities of Irapuato, Salamanca and Pueblo Nuevo as well as highlighting the disconnection between the built environment and the native biodiversity and nature. The urban, industrial, and agricultural expansion in the region has completely neglected the state’s ecological elements and the role they play in our ecological cycles. As of now, the central region has annihilated most of the native biodiversity. The constant exploitation of the soil has resulted in erosion and compaction throughout the region, and the existing aquifers, lakes, ponds, and rivers have been extracted until their last drop. Therefore, to react to a symbiotic change, the goal is to create a regional proposal that focuses on mitigating ecological and environmental problems in the region as well as enhancing the biodiversity in the landscape and the development of sustainable agriculture that supports native ecosystems as well as integration and balance in the urban areas through the halt of large cities expansions transitioning into a network of ecocities through sustainable compact towns redevelopments. The aim is to find a regional strategy that enhances the native species through their ecological territory and designs and intervention for towns to develop and grow sustainably by creating a balance between people, animals, and plants.

This thesis is made during my graduation project within the studio Explore Lab at the Technical University of Delft on the Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences. Since the writing of my first master thesis, the fascination for the topic arose. At the Architectural Theory department under guidance of Andrej Radman I wrote; ‘Biomimicry: Mimicking biology in architecture to achieve sustainable development’. Although there was so much more in this thesis then just the idea of using nature’s ingenious solutions to serve human needs. I was already thinking in a much broader sense how we ever ended up in this climatological crisis? And how we could be able to solve it? Are we as individuals even able to change anything within this metastable system? With these questions in mind I dived into a research process with Peter Koorstra my research mentor, nevertheless he also gave guidance during the design process. The thesis is an elaboration of my first master thesis and functions as a source for design occurred parallel to my graduation project; ‘The Temple of the Natural Delights’. Robert Nottrot and Jan van de Voort supervised the design, even though they were also involved in the thinking process of this thesis. Through research a specific kind of philosophy is developed, to achieve a certain goal. The architectural design is just an imagined posture of this philosophy on a moment of time.

To cope with the climate crisis, sustainable and eco-friendly buildings are a necessity. To achieve this, we need to change the way we build, this accounts as well for construction materials. For thousands of years, humans have lived in clay and timber hybrid constructions. These hybrids are made of sustainable, possibly circular, highly available and renewable materials with low embodied energy. However, the labour-intensive production makes these hybrid constructions expensive. This was, among others, one reason why modern architecture and construction looked to other, industrial and artificial building materials to satisfy our need for cheap, fast and prefabricated construction methods. The promising, traditional combination of earth and timber has barley been used for prefabricated wall components and façades, despite their huge ecological benefits. On the contrary, questionable and polluting building technologies and materials are used to increase the efficiency within the construction sector. As designers and engineers, we should start looking back into clay/timber hybrids as one solution architecture can offer as an answer to the climate crisis, despite the high labour cost of this construction type. Digitalisation might be a solution to tackle these high costs. Customized computational design, large-scale 3D-printing and file-to-factory robotic fabrication allow the automatization of certain labour-intensive production steps. It offers new perspectives on production techniques and material usage. The fourth industrial revolution could, in combination with changing legislation and CO2 taxation, lead to a revival of clay/timber hybrid buildings. These hybrids could be made of timber with a density decreased non-structural gradient material infill, such as 3D printed with clay. Exploring material mixtures, production techniques and building components results in a computational, informative workflow for customized nozzles and the building component. This allows to coordinate and customise the nozzle design according to the limitations of the material properties, the building component and the 3D printing process. But how can the density of a 3D Printed clay prefab wall component with a 6-axis robotic arm be gradually decreased? Designing a gradient material that is dense on the inside and gets increasingly lighter towards the outside could increase the efficiency by adding another function to the earthen building element. The created cavities reduce the density, the thermal conductivity and the material usage compared to a traditional solid earthen infill. To simplify the toolpath and reduce the cycle time each density class of this stepwise gradated wall system has its customized nozzle. The customization of the nozzle allows to print a complex cross-section geometry with a simplified, otherwise complex toolpath. Establishing an informative workflow between the building component design, the production tools and the material mixture should lead to a feasible design that is considering the limitations of each input category. Ideally, this approach reduces the necessary amount of adaptations before the earthen component infill can be printed. The nozzles will be customized to reduce the cycle time and shorten the toolpath by creating a gradient material at the same time. This material can be used as an infill for a hybrid wall structure.

This thesis aims to revisit the conventions of digital mapping, by undergoing the theoretical endeavour to understand digital mapping beyond the convenient dichotomy, and find our position as readers. Two theoretical lenses are borrowed from the field of anthropology and art history, first being the “thick description” from Clifford Geertz, and latter being the “open work” concept from Umberto Eco. The thesis concludes by emphasizing the significance of the role of the “reader” in digital mapping, for the greater public as well as the discipline of architecture could then reclaim our agency in the flood of data with a shared “digital literacy”.

The work of Bernard Stiegler (1952–2020) provides invaluable material for rethinking the built environment as a sort of inorganic spatial memory that enables the evolution of life by means other than organic life. Following Stiegler’s theoretical turn toward epiphylogenetic processes, Footprint 30 is devoted to revisiting the built environment as middling between individuating technical ensembles and niche construction processes. It offers a platform to the transdisciplinary field of posthuman scholarship dealing with existential niches from a technological angle and the concomitant architectural thought that advances such speculative recasting.@en

A Flat Theory presents a first step toward a yet-to-be-completed, larger project: a genealogy of apartments. While centering on the historical formation of apartments, it does not offer a straight-forward history of apartments or flats. Rather, as a contribution to a wider history of the present, it draws together the first synthetic study of the complex processes through which apartments have initially taken form. To do so, it proposes an eco-systemic and assemblage-theoretic extension of genealogical modes of inquiry so as to draw together an epiphylogenetic mapping of this complex process. After situating and specifying this approach, A Flat Theory charts three converging lineages that mark the ‘material-discursive’ formation of appartamenti and appartements as an (I) architectural concept, (II) spatial phenomenon, and (III) residential system during the 1540–1780s in western Europe@en

Desperate times demand optimistic transdisciplinary measures. This volume unites a select group of thinkers who courageously traverse disciplinary boundaries. What brings them together is the least stratified ‘component’: a shared problem. It is a widely recognised that a problem gets the solution it merits. However, only a few acknowledge that a problem seldom neatly fits within a single discipline, nor does it conform to the principle of general equivalence. Handling its irreducibility and non-entailment is a skill possessed by very few. Even fewer take the quasi-causal capacity of what we term the ‘space of technicity’ seriously. The space of technicity, the shared problem of this volume, is a consequence of immanence. Each configuration of surfaces comprising the built environment produces an intangible effect, acting as a quasi-cause. It can be referred to as downward causation or the timely rediscovery of (neo)finalism. In this volume it is approached it from the perspective of axiology. The space of technicity allows us to evade techno-determinism without adopting an anything-goes attitude. That which has become manifest could have individuated differently. However, the potential of a body cannot be discerned before intervening in the causal fabric of agential reality to extract the singular points that make certain outcomes more likely than others, surpassing mere probability. When operating within the ethico-aesthetic paradigm, where sense becomes intricately dependent on sensibility, and vice versa, the volume’s attitude might be said to approximate the Spinozian third kind of knowledge that intuits design (and its space of technicity) beyond mere imagination or reason. This edited volume was inspired by a virtual round table that exhibited a high degree of resonance among the participants. www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBiBAgxC5FM@en

Driven by the Foucauldian attitude of subsuming architectural history into a genealogy of techne, Architectures of Life and Death advances a transdisciplinary approach rethinking subjectivity and exploring the political ramifications of these processes for the discipline of architecture and beyond. In contrast to mainstream approaches, architecture will not be seen as representative of culture, but as the mechanism of culture, the ‘collective equipment’ that rests on the reciprocal determination of social habits and technological habitats. In this sense, the idea that we shape our environments, therefore they shape us, is not to be taken as a metaphor. The animate has always been utterly dependent on the inanimate. A livable habitat is one which the inhabitant actively co-evolves with and which does not constitute a ready-made condition to which the inhabitant would simply have to passively adapt.@en

Driven by the Foucauldian attitude of subsuming architectural history into a genealogy of techne, Architectures of Life and Death advances a transdisciplinary approach rethinking subjectivity and exploring the political ramifications of these processes for the discipline of architecture and beyond. In contrast to mainstream approaches, architecture will not be seen as representative of culture, but as the mechanism of culture, the ‘collective equipment’ that rests on the reciprocal determination of social habits and technological habitats. In this sense, the idea that we shape our environments, therefore they shape us, is not to be taken as a metaphor. The animate has always been utterly dependent on the inanimate. A livable habitat is one which the inhabitant actively co-evolves with and which does not constitute a ready-made condition to which the inhabitant would simply have to passively adapt.@en