This thesis studies the Modern Malls in the Netherlands that were formed in the 1960s. The problem with these malls is that they have changed through time to keep up with the changing demands of the users, a development that has changed the once open ex¬troverted malls into introverted closed struc-tures. The closed structure of these malls, combined with rising vacancy and the ever-changing behaviour of the mall users, results that the malls in the Nether¬lands are struggling to survive. By analysing the open forms introduced by Sennett, the aim is to develop an intervention method to open op the modern mall. The interventions show that the open forms relate to different sca¬le levels depending on the intervention. The materialisation and architectural elements play an important role in the effectiveness of using open forms as intervention methods in Modern malls in the Netherlands.

At the same time that we’re solving climate change, we are building cities for another 3 billion people until 2050. That’s a doubling of the urban environment. The most extensive of this construction, and especially housing projects for the coming decades, will take place in emergent and developing countries. We, as architects, engineers, developers, and government officials, have the opportunity and important responsibility to give shape to our future. But our decisions not only impact the environment but also our social well-being, economic vitality, our sense of community and connectedness. In Africa, the number of urban dwellings will triple from 400 million to 1.26 billion by 2050. If we zoom into sub-Saharan Africa, 80% of these buildings are not yet built, compared to 30% in Europe. Therefore, I see this project as an opportunity to use the knowledge and lessons we have learned over the past to give these countries a head start in developing their cities. Today’s choices will have an impact on the decades to come.
With the continuously rising temperatures due to climate change and already elevated outdoor temperatures, the current housing situation in Benin is battling elevated indoor temperatures. They strongly affect the thermal comfort and, generally speaking, the well-being of people. With the rapid growth of cities and the shortage of currently available housing stock, builders and developers focus on quantity rather than quality. Many housing projects that are being built do not consider the specific climate conditions. Too often, they follow the occidental low-income housing model (Plattenbau, HLM) and battle temperature variations with mechanical cooling systems (air conditioning) and standard universal amenities. The needed urban infrastructure to supply these new dwellings with the necessary services is expansive and takes time to build. The existing networks are overloaded, and water and electricity supply interruptions are commonplace, even in the cities. Proper waste disposal and garbage collection are mainly non-existent, and landfills are the final waste destination.

Therefore, a sustainable building approach in Benin and in general in countries with a hot and humid climate is not only a way to have a positive impact on the environment, but instead, it is a fundamental means that allows lower energy use and lower long-term costs of use while improving the thermal comfort and quality of life. People want a modern, hygienic and spatially sophisticated living environment and housing of the same standard while keeping a sense of cultural and social identity. Those social and cultural patterns must be considered a “compass” during the design process at all scales.

This graduation project finds its origins in my fascination for cities and its atmospheres, which are endangered by the process called gentrification. Gentrification is the effect in which urban areas are renovated and upgraded causing for lower-income classes to be abandoned towards the outer city. Living in the inner city becomes only affordable for higher income classes who have all the same needs for their living environment causing for the cities to change to these needs and loose their authentic spirit.
Dealing with gentrification is difficult since it’s a process that slowly starts without noticing and ones its there there’s no way back. Therefore for my graduation project I developed a new strategy on how to deal with gentrification. I experimented with this new strategy using architectural design as a tool.
Since the overpopulated inner city of Paris is rapidly changing due to gentrification I focused myself on this location and in particular on the street Rue du Faubourg du Temple. For my strategy it’s important to be ahead of the gentrification process and while visiting Paris I found out that this street still possesses its authentic character.
I immersed into Rue du Faubourg du Temple and used all my observations to create a design that is enhancing and exaggerating the important qualities of the identity of the street, hoping these will resist gentrification in future.

The housing process in dense metropolitan environments experiences difficulties to adapt to the comprehensive needs and wants of the modern household. As a consequence of the increasing flexibility in daily-life, there is a growing diversity in the shape of households and their living patterns. In addition, digital developments enable and create more specific requirements among users for the products they purchase. Knowing the impact that these rapid developments have on consumerism, it is inevitable that users will create stronger preferences for their living environment as well. These tendencies in our society must be translated to its housing. To adapt to such diverse demands would be a difficult challenge for the housing market. Current processes make it labour-intensive and therefore a costly and unsustainable matter. It is of importance that both our existing and future housing is able to respond to these demands in an adaptive and sustainable manner.

A possible solution, responding to the diverse demand, would be to involve the consumers themselves in the development of their dwelling. When involved, consumers can directly shape the dwelling to their needs themselves; customisation. However, current practices make this an undoable matter. The over-complexity in (pre)construction processes and conservative mind-sets of real-estate developers and construction firms hinder any level of participation with the consumer. There is a need for smart processes and designs to involve the user in the realisation of the customised urban dwelling.

With the first Five Year Plan of 1928 Stalin initiated a period of massive industrialisation of remote zones of Russia. This lead to the creation of several Monotowns, newly built industrial settlements based on one economical source or industry.
The project takes as a study case the town of Togliatti, the largest built in Soviet Union and still functioning. Constructed in the 60s as an industrial complex for FIAT car manufacturing. The plan of the city, designed by the Soviet architect Boris Rubanenko, was inspired by Ivan Leonidov’s project for Magnitogorsk, and was based on a grid of squares of one kilometer per side, each of which contained the fundamental facilities for living such as housing, commercial spaces, hospitals, schools and green areas. The fixed urban layout, together with the very regular organisation of infrastructure was planned in order to facilitate and accelerate citizen’s movements from one place to the other, minimising what was considered an unproductive time expenditure.
The city, with its very readable and concrete set of established routines, represents the fieldwork to study the creation of everyday life rituals and to understand their materialisation in architectural space. In particular, these established rituals have been unfolded in the research in order to uncover the eventual problematics that are representative of the critical condition of the city.
The current economic stagnation in Russia and the slowing down of the production, has lead the mono towns to a state of inactivity, generating lack of jobs and a general feeling of discontent in the population, proving the need of finding alternative productive sources.
Concurrently relating to the contemporary debate on the productive means of the capitalist system, the project deals with the current transformation of the concept of production, that is gradually shifting from production of goods to production of knowledge. In this scenario, the line separating life and work is blurred, and the city unfolds in an endlessly interlinked maze of spaces that don’t host any specific function and yet are able to host any.
The project investigates how architecture becomes an instrument of control, bending to the needs of the market and imposing hierarchical systems over everyday life. At the same time, the project experiments with alternative solutions that question the common way we perceive architecture, working places and educational institutions, highlighting the need of a transformation in the design processes and goals, considering architecture not as a problem solving practice or a profit maker tool but rather as a tool to investigate new ways of working and living.
More in detail, the project wants to question the possibility of liberating production from pre-imposed economical constraints, therefore challenging the necessity of accumulation and classification and most of all private property, considering knowledge as a common good instead. The criticality of this reflection acts specifically in relation to the economic system and the contemporary lack of attention that is currently experienced in the everyday life, simultaneously putting forward the necessity to improve social interaction and awareness, the processes of thinking and reflection, aiming to the creation of a consciousness that starting from the individual would eventually spread and influence the entire social body.
The intervention unfolds design concepts against classification, categorisation, compartmentalisation but also against material and immaterial accumulation. The scale of the project seeks to represent this vision and therefore surpasses the limits of what can or cannot be built to put forward an idea, an alternative that doesn’t want to be a solution but a starting point for a further reflection. In the same way, every aspect of the design is conceived to be able to be appropriated, re-interpreted and re-proposed in a different scale and condition therefore allowing the project to be not only a site specific intervention but a trigger for new ideas, questioning the way we design contemporary architecture.

We all refer to it in our daily lives; we talk about a concert as having a good vibe, we talk about a social situation as being ‘gezellig’, we talk about the impression of a part of town as being gloomy and we even talk about the mood of a day as having a sense of anticipation. Atmosphere is a familiar conversational subject, but at the same time it is remarkably undefinable. We return to the use of the term constantly despite its ambiguous quality, or maybe even because of it. And this atmospheric description that seems to be applicable to every situation always concern a spatial sense of ambience.

Remarkably, the notion of atmosphere remains largely unaddressed in architectural education and practice. The appreciation for the art of building is still largely dependent upon the supremacy of it’s functional, aesthetic and conceptual value. The essential task of architecture to support human life by engaging with human experiential reality has been frequently overshadowed by these formal inclinations. Atmosphere could be defined as the very initial and immediate experience of space, and thus can be understood as a notion that addresses architectural quality. Fortunately, there has been a development in which architectural practices are showing a renewed interest in atmospheric quality in the built environment. Leading advocates of the value of the atmospheric dimension in architectural design include architect Peter Zumthor, architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa, philosopher Gernot Böhme and environmental sociologist Jean-Paul Thibaud.

Despite the fast-growing research field, the discussion on architectural atmosphere does entail a certain ambiguity. After all, the atmospheric experience is something personal, ephemeral and vague, but above all it is hard to conceptualise. We seem to be able to immediately sense the atmosphere of a place, but it seems to be very difficult to capture in text or design. We are able to intuitively recognise atmosphere, like when we recognise the essence of the weather in a glance, but we are not able to define, analyse or understand its phenomenological origin. The Argentinian poet Jorge Luis Borges captures this difference between intuitive and analytical identification as follows: ‘We might say that we know something only when we are unable to define it…This is what we know what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it.’.

Despite the elusive character of atmospheres, is it suggested by the intuitive recognition and appreciation of the atmospheric dimension that we are able to share this intuitive sense with a larger community. The atmospheric experience seems to have a collective quality about it. Therewith the atmospheric experience has the inherent quality to be as much the realm of the layman and daily use, as it is the realm of the expert and professional discourse. I believe that non-architects primarily sense the atmosphere of a place or building, opposed to appreciating distinct visible and formal concepts. Therewith non-architects have the advantage of approaching places and atmosphere more intuitively, whereas architects to often assume an intellectual and theoretical approach. Layman may not have the vocabulary to verbalise their sensitivities for the atmospheric dimension that is acquired through an architectural or artistic education, but the notion that the sensitivity for the atmospheric dimension is largely intuitive indicates that the actual sensitivity does not necessarily differ between layman and expert. And this exceptional transcending quality is why atmosphere may be the ultimate intermediary between architectural quality as perceived by the architects who design the architectural plan and architectural quality as perceived by the inhabitants of the architectural environment.

I believe that architectural atmospheres are more effective than the architectural discourse has been willing to rationally admit. I would even argue that the atmospheric dimension of a constructed environment is the key to architectural quality. Therefore in this research I would like to explore how the atmospheric dimension may attain its proper place in architectural design. The main question of the research considers:
How can an architect integrate atmospheric quality in the design of architecture and the built environment?

Dissecting this question into four parts, we will consecutively explore the phenomenon, the perception, the process and the plan. The research thesis will start with an introductory chapter in which we will look into what the perception of atmosphere entails. In chapter one we will look into the conditions under which atmosphere may be perceived. Subsequently we will look into the atmospheric dimension in relation to the design process, and finally we will explore its relation to the architectural realm.

Atmosphere by definition, seems to lack definition. This inherent paradox will echo throughout this research on how to construct atmosphere. The very act of analysing and defining the atmospheric phenomenon may result in the dissolution of its very quality. Therefore the research approach is built around the duality between an analytic and an intuitive approach. Even though the main body of this research considers a theoretical exploration of the atmospheric dimension in architectural design, I have sincerely attempted to protect the ambiguous quality and integrity of the atmospheric phenomenon. However in order to counteract this theoretical and analytical approach and to appreciate the personal, ephemeral and ambiguous qualities of an atmospheric experience I simultaneously kept a so-called atmospheric journal. This highly personal document, called Encountering Atmosphere - a personal account of the atmospheric dimension, contains memories, observations and encounters of atmospheric experiences. A multiplicity of sketches, images and words illustrate the way matter, light, rhythm, age, imperfection, fragility and life move me to evoke a rich emotive response to space and matter that seems to be the essence of atmosphere.

Furthermore, I aim to integrate the acquired knowledge on the integration of atmospheric quality in the design of the built environment in the subsequent design project of my graduation. I aim to have absorbed the acquired theoretical knowledge on this topic in a way that makes it part of the subconscious dimension of the design process, ultimately allowing me to intuitively integrate atmospheric quality in my own architectural design. My search for the integration of atmospheric quality in the design of architecture and the built environment will not end at the closing of this document, but will continue as I explore its application during my own design process. I aspire both the research project and the design project to accumulate the knowledge and experience to provide me, and hopefully others, to find the essence of the atmospheric dimension in architectural design.

Being ill, treatment at health centres causes anxiety and stress with children. This has a negative effect on their wellbeing, healing process and more important, their cognitive, motoric and social development. The goal of this thesis is to describe a set of generic properties for the built environment to reduce this negative effect by stimulating the imagination of children, aged 3 to 6 years. The generic properties are derived from the analyses of spatial elements, present during activities, in which the imagination is active: playing and perceiving art. Through play they develop their motoric, social and cognitive skills, including their imagination. In addition, not all children in healthcare institutions are able to play, therefore also perceiving art is studied. Through observations at different play areas and the (spatial) analyses of these areas, playgrounds (designed by Aldo van Eyck), fantasy worlds of children and different artworks a set of properties is determined; a place which stimulates the imagination must be created by the composition of different elements. In this composition their scale, number, variety and interrelationship are taken into account. Each of these elements can be described by their properties: height & planar differences, contrast, whether they can exists of loose materials, can be manipulated or that they support enclosure. The composition of these elements and the abstraction of their shape creates a framework of information. Certain aspects are visible and other aren’t. This results in the stimulation of the imagination. These results are translated into a design tool and forms the starting point for the design of a treatment and prevention centre for obese or overweight children. Obesity is a problem which has increased the past few years and probably will become bigger. This centre is located in Zuidwijk, Rotterdam. The percentage of children with obesity is higher in this area than in other parts of Rotterdam or The Netherlands. This centre exists of a treatment centre, sport centre and restaurant. The centre doesn’t only focus on the treatment of children, but also on the prevention and the promotion of a healthy life style of the children, their families and the neighbourhood