The book explores how architectural design has evolved from the production of form into a communicative and strategic practice. Rather than approaching architecture as a fixed end result, the publication positions design as an active framework through which knowledge, negotiation and collaboration are organised.

Structured around three major projects by KAAN Architecten – the redevelopment of SPOT, the Amsterdam Courthouse and the Schiphol Terminal competition – the book investigates how architecture operates within increasingly complex political, economic and institutional realities. Processes of representation, integration and public communication become central to the act of designing itself.

Combining essays, project analysis and visual documentation, ‘Building Narratives’ reflects on architecture’s shifting role in a context shaped by neoliberal transformation, financial uncertainty and digital culture. The publication proposes architectural design not only as a spatial practice, but as a medium capable of structuring dialogue between stakeholders, institutions and the public realm. ... Read more

Cross-scale, multidisciplinary design projects such as station area redevelopment are inherently complex, with many stakeholders and vast amounts of data relevant to decision-making. In the Netherlands, these projects face a dual challenge: meeting housing demands while reducing the embodied carbon emissions associated with construction. Early integration of carbon data is essential, yet the abundance and heterogeneity of supporting datasets required for Life-Cycle Assessment beyond the building scale can hinder progress. This paper presents a collaborative workshop method that enables a data-supported design process for informed decision-making. Sessions with station architects, urban designers, railway operators, and carbon specialists co-create a curated data inventory for low-carbon station design. Using analogue data-cards in a constrained deck turns digital data opulence into a structured, tangible, face-to-face procedure based on a shared language, making tacit choices explicit and traceable. Findings underscore the architect’s new digital-era role as a knowledge integrator. ... Read more

Architecture extends far beyond the design of buildings and cities, engaging with environmental, technological, and societal challenges. As practice evolves, so must the research that supports it. This theme track examines architecture’s expanding role in collaboration, communication, and service, positioning it as a research-driven discipline and a tool for inquiry, innovation, and responsiveness to communities and stakeholders. Operating across systems, social processes, and technological infrastructures, architecture is increasingly understood as an interdisciplinary practice. The track strengthens Architectural Design Research by addressing its evolving methodologies and its role in knowledge production. Contributions explore co-creation, artificial intelligence, data as design material, and practice-based approaches, alongside theoretical reflections on design processes. Together, the papers frame architecture as an open, relational, and collective mode of inquiry, in which architects act not as sole authors but as participants in dynamic networks of actors, tools, and knowledge. ... Read more

In the urgent context of climate change, embodied carbon data has become critical to the decarbonization of the built environment. This research examines the integration of embodied carbon assessment into urban design practice, with a focus on early-stage design. Based on a 3-month practice-based case study in a Dutch architecture office, the study identifies persistent challenges in applying Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) at the urban scale, including the definition of system boundaries, reconciliation of heterogeneous levels of detail, and communication of data omissions. The findings reveal abductive reasoning, visualization, and tacit knowledge enable designers to transform fluid design artefacts into workable protocols—what is here defined as designerly ways of decarbonizing. The study redefines early-stage design as an operational category for carbon assessment and demonstrates the codification of tacit knowledge in data-enabled tools, advancing understanding of design processes in the low-carbon transition. ... Read more

This paper examines thick mapping as a design-driven research method applied in the educational setting of an international architectural design workshop. The workshop brings together 45 students at different levels and fields of education, academics, and practitioners in a collaborative exercise to co-create new knowledge about mobility at railway stations. Participants reinterpret stations as architectures of interchanges through three thematic lenses of investigation: articulation (flows), light & safety (perception), and interfaces (interaction with users). By combining mixed-media drawings with thick mapping practices, the workshop explores the visible and invisible relationships between mobility infrastructure, architectural space, and human perceptions in stations. The contribution of this paper is threefold: 1- to demonstrate how thick mapping can reveal new spatial narratives, creative potentials, and constraints that define mobility architecture and its experience; 2- to illustrate how it provides a deeper understanding of stations by visualising interactions between multiple scales, systems, modalities, agents, and flows; 3- to show how it supports co-design across different disciplines. Thick mapping thus emerges as a critical collaborative method of production linking research, learning, and design in addressing the complexities of mobility architecture. ... Read more

In contemporary practice, design extends far beyond the invention of form. Projects unfold through dense constellations of actors, institutions, and technologies. Drawings, models, and presentations span multiple disciplines, enabling different forms of reasoning to converge. The architect’s task is no longer limited to producing objects, but now extends to maintaining coherence across these exchanges – translating between technical systems, social values, and civic ambitions. ... Read more

Aims
Railway station areas can play a crucial role in promoting sustainable development if integrated with cities and be fluctuation-responsive through effective urban design. However, during the design stage, assessing the station areas' performance, of which user satisfaction is indicative, is challenging due to methodological limitations. Agent-based simulation (ABS) is promising as it can link spatial features with agents' behavior features. This research questions to what extent ABS can help assess the urban design of station areas.

Methods
This paper adopts the user pyramid as the theoretical framework, which outlines five types of user needs: safety, speed, ease, comfort, and experience. The paper selects indicators linking satisfaction and spatial features at the district and building levels. These indicators are measured in the simulation of the station system using digital tools, including MassMotion and Python scripts. The theory, indicators, and tools, in combination, serve as an assessment framework. Rotterdam Central Station is used as a case to demonstrate how the framework works.

Results
The framework is capable of assessing design alternatives by identifying changes in user satisfaction. It can be applied on the district level (at a scale of 250 m) with substantial details to inform design decision-making, and it is useful during the design stage when only limited data is available. This paper strengthens the scientific knowledge of railway station areas through the multidisciplinary literature review that translates user needs for urban design use, and it advances the digital means to visualize user satisfaction affected by design. ... Read more

Despite growing interest in human-building interaction (HBI) studies to improve performance and comfort in building operations, existing architectural design and representation methods primarily focus on static layouts and material forms, overlooking the spatio-temporal, invisible characteristics of interactions. This paper proposes a novel visualization method grounded on affordance theory, dynamic network graphs to computationally model HBI in Grasshopper. Using a multipurpose educational space as a case study, the study illustrates a multilayered workflow that visualizes material components, immaterial affordances, and dynamic multimodal interactions in three programmatic scenarios. Resulting representations and animations spatialize the footprint, distribution, and modalities of afforded interactions in relationship with occupant patterns. This scenario-based, computationally-driven HBI model supports the qualitative assessment and strategic allocation of sensing, actuation, and control interfaces, identifying spatial opportunities and challenges. This study offers an architecturally informed HBI visualization framework to enhance interdisciplinary communication and critical early-stage decisions in designing responsive environments. ... Read more

Society is increasingly tech-driven, with AI, automation, IoT, and MaaS reshaping daily life. Mobility hubs like transit stations prioritise efficiency and cost-effectiveness, using digital platforms for personalised travel. Competition among private providers fosters innovation, reducing costs and overshadowing public transit. Digital twins predict and manage congestion, ensuring smooth operations and controlled maintenance. Hubs now feature flexible, modular designs that reconfigure in real-time, optimising operations and enabling a decentralised, sprawled urban fabric. Major hubs such as airports and central stations, including hyperloops for long-distance travel, accommodate automated vehicles, offering on-demand services that cut wait times and improve efficiency. The shift from predetermined shuttle routes to more dynamic systems aligns with car-free streets and residential zones. Small hubs, strategically placed in these areas, become essential for providing convenient and efficient access to mobility services, ensuring that people and goods can move seamlessly within these pedestrian-friendly environments without relying on private cars or fixed transit schedules. Goods distribution relies on micromobility, drones, and automated systems. Urban air mobility solutions serve as premium services in congested centres, transforming hubs into high-tech innovation centres but raising concerns about affordability and inclusivity. While these advancements maximise space and efficiency, they risk prioritising data providers' interests over public welfare. The real-time reconfigurations demand significant energy, and the increased modularity risks rendering existing stations obsolete, necessitating retrofitting to avoid abandonment. […] ... Read more

The concept of sustainable development introduced issues of urban growth and climate change to the domains of geography, urban planning and architecture, becoming major components in research, teaching and practice. The IPCC reports have heightened awareness on climate change and put pressure on the need for action to bring about real-world changes to the built environment. Climatologists note that global urbanisation has greatly influenced the spatial distribution and intensity of carbon emissions and is having a negative impact on climate change. However, they emphasise that well-planned cities with densely populated centres produce numerous benefits if good access to infrastructure and services is guaranteed (energy efficiency and air quality in particular). In this context, Transit Oriented Development becomes a key concept for sustainable urbanization, and Geodesign gains stage as a method to support design decisions in such projects, across domains. ... Read more

Design principles are widely used in the design field, yet some remain visionary rather than grounded in real-world applications. Assessing their effectiveness is therefore essential before implementation. This study focuses on a set of visionary design principles intended to promote the flexible use of railway station areas: (1) Ensuring event visibility by aligning paths and spaces; (2) Incorporating reconfigurable elements and reconfiguration-supportive layouts; (3) Establishing high-quality connections at different scales; (4) Adopting scattered layouts for high capacity or vibrancy; (5) Prioritizing core spaces for humans instead of vehicles. This study aims to address the gap in validating these design principles. Recognizing the potential of jointly employing research-by-design and agent-based simulation, this study presents a major research question: How effective are these design principles, as demonstrated through research-by-design (RbD) and agent-based simulation (ABS)? Methodologically, it first applies the design principles to Station Xtreme and generates multiple design proposals, then simulates the generated proposals, followed by assessments and reflections. The results suggest that the principles are generally effective, though limitations emerged: for example, quality connections may demand greater investment and space, while scattered layouts can increase wayfinding difficulty and operational complexity. This study contributes to the growing body of design knowledge by validating these flexible-use principles. It also introduces a transferable conceptual framework that integrates RbD and ABS, offering a novel methodological approach for testing other visionary design principles. ... Read more

Mobility is vital for societal wellbeing, economic growth, social inclusion, and access to essential amenities. However, the current system faces significant challenges, including environmental impact, unequal access, and safety concerns. […] ... Read more

Student visions on TU Delft MedTech Building for Education & Research in Waalhaven, Rotterdam. ... Read more

With the growing demand for sustainable accountability, the European Directive 2014/24/EU (EU 2014) pushes architects to deliver Building Information Models (BIM) as a part of procurement processes for public buildings. In the Netherlands, BIM model data is relevant to the building permitting process, which involves an environmental performance calculation (MPG). This assessment takes into consideration the embodied carbon of materials in a building. Although this analysis is performed by a qualified expert in late design phases, architects benefit from integrating carbon data in early design decision-making. Design methods supported by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) values are needed before involving expert collaborators, and not only when applying for a building permit. The existing carbon assessment tools require detailed data from BIM models, which are often not available at early design phases. Simplified tools have been discussed in theory, and explored in their potential applications, however, there lacks scientific literature discussing the hurdles designers face in their attempt to create such tools in practice, for their internal use throughout early design phases. This paper focuses on the architecture professional practice and design methods supported by digital and computational technologies, regarding embodied carbon data. It investigates the challenges in integrating embodied carbon data in the design workflow, through the development of a digital tool made by designers, for designers. This paper conducts an empirical investigation within a Rotterdam-based architecture office, with a broad portfolio in BIM usage and public building projects, to identify and categorize the factors affecting carbon data integration into the design workflow. It proposes a taxonomy of challenges within the architecture office, to better communicate the designer’s needs to the data providers and software developers with architects as a target user. Amongst the bottlenecks encountered are: access to data inclusiveness), data literacy and connecting data usage with design decision-making. ... Read more

What does your local station mean to you? For some, it represents opportunity: the chance to go anywhere. Others might actively dislike the noise, the crowds, the aesthetic... Or perhaps you never think too deeply about stations. But they definitely affect you, according to Dr. Manuela Triggianese. “At stations, all scales come together: from the building and its elements, to the neighbourhood, the city, region, even country. They are involved in every aspect of urban life.” ... Read more

With the growing demand for sustainable accountability, the European Directive 2014/24/EU (EU 2014) pushes architects to deliver Building Information Models (BIM) as a part of procurement processes for public buildings. In the Netherlands, BIM model data is relevant to the building permitting process, which involves an environmental performance calculation (MPG). This assessment takes into consideration the embodied carbon of materials in a building. Although this analysis is performed by a qualified expert in late design phases, architects benefit from integrating carbon data in early design decision-making. Design methods supported by Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) values are needed before involving expert collaborators, and not only when applying for a building permit. The existing carbon assessment tools require detailed data from BIM models, which are often not available at early design phases. Simplified tools have been discussed in theory, and explored in their potential applications, however, there lacks scientific literature discussing the hurdles designers face in their attempt to create such tools in practice, for their internal use throughout early design phases. This paper focuses on the architecture professional practice and design methods supported by digital and computational technologies, regarding embodied carbon data. It investigates the challenges in integrating embodied carbon data in the design workflow, through the development of a digital tool made by designers, for designers. This paper conducts an empirical investigation within a Rotterdam-based architecture office, with a broad portfolio in BIM usage and public building projects, to identify and categorize the factors affecting carbon data integration into the design workflows. It proposes a taxonomy of challenges within the architecture office, to better communicate the designer's needs to the data providers and software developers with architects as a target user. Amongst the bottlenecks encountered are: access to data (data inclusiveness), data literacy and connecting data usage with design decision-making. ... Read more