Doing architecture is an act of bricolage. New things take shape out of the existing. The architect makes do with the materials at hand. Accidents happen, incidents occur, circumstances meet. The site-specific nature of the architectural project opens up questions on how to work with materials at hand and as found, and how to capture, approach and unlock their meanings and stories. This paper explores acts of reading, narrating and translating sites as fi elds of architectural exploration. It grows out of an ongoing educational and research program, developed in the Chair of Urban Architecture at Delft University of Technology, which engages with the real stuff and site-specific elements of the city. Architecture is approached from a sustainable understanding of structures and materials, that in a sense are continuously ‘on the move’, transforming from one project, meaning or purpose to another. In the paper, work from three graduation studios is used to reflect on ways of acting upon the materials and conditions of a site and how to ‘read’ cultural, historical and political forces at work. The potentials of sites are exploited through the exhibitions of visual media, working from section drawings and material samples to moving pictures and sequential stories. The paper argues for stretching and thickening the architectural project. To stretch means to improvise and experiment; a willingness to cross disciplinary boundaries, to see through spatial scales and to involve notions of past, present and future. To thicken requires time and care; to look careful, be non-judgemental, and embrace ambiguity and contradiction. The architecture of bricolage, we argue, refers to acts of interpretation, adaptation, re-use and juxtaposition. The existing materials are input for design thinking, as resources and components. They refer to physical elements of a site, as well as to neighborhood structures, social spaces, political and economic developments. To bricks and buildings as well as stories and histories. Sites are found, stories to be told. The paper offers three episodes of fieldwork, that each touches upon a specific feature of the as-found as architectural discourse. ‘Spolia’ introduces the collector and the practice of re-purposing and re-use: to transplant existing pieces into new structures. ‘Bricolage’ offers architecture as a science of the concrete and specific; to make do, and use what is at hand. ‘Gleaning’ concerns acts of reading and reaping; the glaneurs harvest the field by collecting left-overs. In three episodes the paper explores an architecture that acts upon the existing and grows out of the specifics of a place and time. The paper is a collaboration between practicing architects and an anthropologist, and is inspired by practical needs and academic reflection.

Dutch New Towns are in-between old and new. They are not yet recognized as cultural heritage. At the same time, they are passing through major transformations. Research is therefore necessary to document and assess them, to inform stakeholders and prevent later regrets for disregarding this Groeikernen legacy. This paper presents a comparative analysis of five low-rise suburban neighbourhoods in Dutch New Towns. The central question in this research is: what are the urban and architectural attributes (tangible and intangible) of the residential architecture in Groeikernen? The applied methods were fieldwork, archival, and literature research. The paper presents two extreme positions in design concepts and societal aims that have dominated the Groeikernen residential architecture. On the one hand, the humanist approach advocating an organic architecture focused on the human scale, diversity, and inclusivity. This architecture was a countermovement to Modernism, producing mass housing in disguise. On the other end, a neo-rationalist reintroduction of the Modernist tradition by a pragmatic and formal architecture manifests mass housing unambiguously. This paper discusses the influence of these two positions on the architectural discourse, by illustrating their specific impact on the documented neighbourhoods. Many designs of housing typologies adopt characteristics of these extremes, playing on both sides. This leads to a rich collection of typologies, combining humanist and neo-rationalist characteristics. The exploration of tangible and intangible attributes of the Groeikernen legacy in this paper aims to enable a future discussion about its values, which is needed for the development of informed heritage policies, conservation, and transformation.

An ageing society has severe implications for the organization of care and residential housing. Existing housing designs as well as public spaces generally are not well equipped for accommodating growing numbers of elderly. The demographic transition to an ageing society runs parallel with transitions in the policy and practice of elderly care, which moves away from institutional buildings and arrangements towards informal support networks of friends, neighbours and family. Despite these transitions in elderly care policy, research on the perception and use of home spaces among older people as well as how to incorporate this knowledge in the design and redevelopment of residential space, is still scarce. There is a need to rethink the architecture of home and living environments for elderly people, as, for example, in how elderly care might be embedded in urban settings or how more inclusive environments might take shape.This paper addresses these issues by reporting first findings of an ongoing anthropological and architectural research on the everyday life of elderly in care centres, located in two Dutch cities. It aims to document and visualize the needs and living conditions of elderly today, as well as translate fieldwork into architectural design. The paper contains three sections. The first section discusses current paradigms in the management, housing policies and architecture of elderly care. The second section proposes a method of researching elderly in daily life by combining visual anthropology and architecture. The third section presents preliminary findings of a fieldwork study in one of the two elderly care homes we worked on, organized as part of a design studio with a group of fourteen students in Architecture.

Reflections on the history and current situation of Coney Island with a specific interest in the public and collective spaces of the Island.

Body and Soul is a sociological and ethnographic treatise on the social art of boxing in the Woodlawn Boys Club, a boxing gym in the South Side of Chicago. The book sets out to translate the bodily and kinetic practice of boxing, its ‘carnal existence’, in academic writing. Wacquant claims that the ‘pugilistic art’ of boxing can only be apprehended in the action itself, the body being actively used as a research instrument and object of analysis. [...]

In 2001 nam een groep van architectuurhistorici haar intrek in een tramhuisje nabij het winkelcentrum van de Rotterdamse deelgemeente Hoogvliet. Het collectief, dat voortvloeide uit het plan voor een Internationale Bouwtentoonstelling, opereerde onder de naam ‘Welcome into My Back Yard!’ (WiMBY!), die zinspeelt op het ‘Not In My Back Yard’-syndroom. In zes jaar tijd lanceerde WiMBY! vanuit het tramhuis talrijke projecten, waarmee ze door middel van kunst en architectuur interventies pleegde in het stedelijke landschap van Hoogvliet, dat op dat moment aan de vooravond stond van een grootscheepse herstructurering. […]