Due to the ongoing housing crisis in London, a significant number of low-income families at the risk of homelessness and displacement are currently placed in insufficient temporary accommodation while simultaneously autonomous developments like the ‘financialisation of housing’ and the ‘sharing economy’ result in an increasing number of vacancies. Thus, this graduation project aims to improve the availability and quality of temporary accommodation by developing an integrated housing system inspired by informal practices that utilises currently unavailable vacant buildings.
Therefore, different types of informal housing practices and their advantages and disadvantages were compared, and useful outcomes were transferred for the development of the integrated housing system. The system consists of a framework of policies and regulations which operate in different ways and on different levels. Additionally, the situation of low-income families being at the risk of homelessness and displacement was analysed with a mixed-method approach using both quantitative and qualitative data to gain an understanding of their needs and requirements regarding temporary housing solutions. Furthermore, an investigation based on literature as well as statistical and spatial data of vacancies, their indicators, and location in London, has revealed two main types. In order to determine the suitability of the different vacancy types a multi-scalar set of indicators was developed based on the three concepts of livability, meaning of home, and social safety. Based on the previous analysis a catalogue of spatial interventions that enhance the suitability according to the three concepts was created as a guide for both the public and private sector. Lastly, through an exemplary design in the case study area, the different spatial changes are visualised.
In summary this graduation project offers a combined solution for the presented problem by introducing the integrated housing system and providing a guide for related spatial changes.

The first decades of the 21st century are defined by an expected shortage of fossil resources and an emerging climate crisis which make the transition towards renewable energy resources not only inevitable but also urgent. In the process of this transition, the Port of Rotterdam, associated with the biggest fossil fuel industry landscape in Europe, is confronted with the danger of becoming a drosscape. As the Province of Zuid Holland attempts to deal with this challenge under the umbrella of circularity, new issues regarding environmental and social justice in the whole area arise and call for a coordinated planning effort towards a just transition. This effort begins by answering how can the province use the obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure to transform the port‘s material landscapes fostering spatial justice and balancing the problematic relationship between natural and man-made systems.

Consequently, the project decodes the layers of the material, social and environmental dimensions investigating the critical issues that associate with the port‘s distinctive territories. In parallel, it defines the main concepts that can instruct this just transition arising from the fenced urban and port districts towards the whole province and combining top-down with bottom-up planning processes. As the project evolves in time, starting at the most critical territories as nodal points and involving all the different actors, it takes the form of a central green-blue spine that meets Zuid-Holland‘s energy demands while embodying a redefined symbiosis between nature and human. The result defines a new paradigm for the energy transition and the remediation of fossil fuel drosscapes that incorporates material circularity, environmental and social justice under the concept of “Energy Habitat“.