The first interactions of the child with its environment can already have long-lasting impacts on its worldview (weltanschauung) and psychoanalytical state. This makes the architecture of housing, especially in poor regions, such as Nalasopara in Mumbai, a critical key point for the development of the next generations. However, after the economic liberalization of India, affordable housing has increasingly shifted from vernacular environments towards a dehumanizing accommodation of people in redeveloped chawls, so-called “vertical slums”. This thesis aims to investigate the matter and propose an alternative for the chawl redevelopment that can foster children's development and create a sense of community and identity in their dwelling environment without neglecting the pressing issues of density and affordability.

The graduation studio ‘Spaces of Collection’ seeks to explore the relationship an institution has with the host city. The central question in research during the process is how to make the university’s physical return by a building with ‘spaces of collection’ for the accommodation and display of artifacts in various university collections. The design proposal could be seen as a treasure box of collections with its urban context.

The first city wall, which is a national monument in the Maastricht as the festive city, has been situated in the private property for a century. However, the project aims to revalue this city wall, and bring the heritage object back to the public. As the site is surrounded by University's buildings, the project proposes the programs for the university as the center and the extension of the faculties.

By using a water-oriented scenography of Maastricht as an asset, the intention of the project is to stress and celebrate the festive sense of the city through the interventions along the riverfront area. The definition which best describes the festive nature of this project is ‘A pleasure of Entering’. From the foyer which performs as the arrival hall towards the swimming pool, the observation tower, the information center, the riverfront seating, to the gate of the city, the programs reflect a sequence of entering. The visitors will experience the spaces that portray their own identities and purposes. The project not only celebrating the festive moment but also the moment after the party by including the programs for both the tourists and the locals. The sense of festivity in this project is not bounded within a specific location, rather express through the set of buildings which situated in different venues. They could be considered as nodes of the city which represents the culture and tradition of entering the city.

The Future Bank involves the transformation and adaptive reuse of the National Bank of Belgium in Brussels. A vast closed off urban block, designed to safeguard the states treasures hasn’t moved with the ever changing ambiguous role of the bank. The project introduces a new public plinth for the city of Brussels to appropriate together with a conglomerate of different office environments for the banks employees. As architect, taking on the role of bricoleur, the existing building structure has been approached as a source of pre-constrained materials. The metaphorical tools of the axe and pocket knife are used to eke out new meanings within the existing building structure. The misfit building will be healed by stitching together on different scales. In that way creating an architectural continuity which allows future adaptation and even an informality that invites to do so. The minimal interventions aim to heal the existing, minimizing our impact on the limited resources that our planet has to offer. The result is a strategy which must be considered before diminishing a building that misfits its contemporary role.

The brief of this year ‘s studio is to address the the transformation of the National Bank of Belgium located in Brussels. However, since its completion, there has been a fundamental shift in the requirements placed upon it. Industrial functions like the printing and storage of currency have been relocatedout of the city, or overseas; finance is becoming increasingly digital; while Belgium’s membership of the EU has led to much of the Bank’s traditional role being subsumed into the European Central Bank (ECB), based in Frankfurt. In response, the National Bank has decided to redefine itself physically. As an architecture student, I am more prone to understanding the correlation between the social issues happening at the moment and the architecture. Social impacts of the transformation of the bank and its potentials to become a social role in the city are valuable to be explored. Other than that, it is crucial to find out the social relations between the bank and the public, also within the bank, so as to deliver a design proposal that can address the current social issues in the city while the bank itself can benefit from the renovation. Starting from 1985, the international young immigration has surpassed internal outflow of the city, Brussels and they become the main reason of population growth, causing the rejuvenation of the population at the same time. However, the availability of affordable private housing and social housing is not able to support the growth and it turned out that suburbanization of young generation happened. Due to the impacts of suburbanization, the socio-economic and cultural geographic patterns have created boundaries between communities living side by side with little interaction, causing intense hierarchy of social structure. This kind of social segregation poses a challenge to the long-term viability of the city. Meanwhile, the social relations and structure within the bank is another issue to be tackled with. The conventional office design of the bank has caused little communication and interaction between staff, leading the bank itself to become a complete introvert that is unable to engage with the public properly. Therefore, it is a good opportunity for the National Bank of Belgium, an institution with the image of authority to take up a social role of challenging the current social structure of the city and eliminating the boundaries between communities in a way that the future generation and the bank itself can be benefitted from its renovation.

The institution in this case is the Delft University of Technology, which will make its appearance through a building to be situated in Delft’s historical center, suggesting the university’s physical return to the city after a hiatus of some eighty years. The agent of this return will be a complex of 'spaces of collection' for the accommodation and display of artefacts in various university collections. An opportunity is seen to provide an elaborated place of social and intellectual contact between the university and the public, affected by objects and realized through students, citizens and visitors.

The new design for the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art (VMHK) endeavoured to provide a contemporary interpretation of the nineteenth and twentieth century warehouse architecture, translated into a contemporary art museum. The 'Warehouse for Art' symbolizes its role as a repository for the museum’s knowledge and art, while at the same time identifying with the genius loci of the former port identity found along the Scheldt river and its surrounding brick buildings. This industrial character is neutral, but not as aseptic as a characterless white cube and does not lose itself in architectural caprices. Moreover, the design its flexibility makes the building adaptable for its upcoming function as a museum and the ones after, thus making it future-proof. Simultaneously, the design questions the conventional notion of a contemporary museum, aiming to transcend its exclusive institutional character and function as a public building instead. Within this pursuit of an 'anti-museum', the warehouse exemplifies a departure from the typical museum typology. Instead it represents a typology that contemporary art museums have discovered in industrial heritage and can fit into newly constructed buildings of the twenty-first century as well.

Through the theme of the "Festive City" the project aims to explore the qualities of the architecture of the city and offer new insights into what it could be. More specifically it looks at: - How can the architecture of the city encourage social interactions of different scale and forms? - How can it be enriched by gaining a theatrical character? - How can it contribute in creating a collective memory and identity for its citizens? The resulting proposal is a new kind of cultural institution, one that strives to respond to the complexity of the city and explore the aforementioned questions.

The shortage of affordable housing is the biggest challenge of today’s Mumbai. These days, more than a half of the population of Mumbai dwell in the informal settlements, dealing with poor living conditions and low standard of living. Since the nation’s Independence in 1947, India experienced different approaches and policies towards slums: Slum Clearance Act (1956), Slum Improvement Program (1971), Slum Upgrading Program (1985). All of them in some sense are products of evolution of many schemes before11. Eventually, it became obvious that these strategies failed to achieve the required demand due to different reasons. Being unable and unwilling to provide the Economical Weaker Section (EWS) with the adequate housing and with the aim to resolve the problem of informal settlements the state government passed the reins of control of the housing issue to the market. After the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme was introduced in 1995, it quickly became popular among the private sector due to the abolition of restrictions on profits. However, while chasing the profit developer ignored the necessities of the urban poor. Proceeding from the ideas of extreme densification, the redevelopment consumed the whole complexity of existing social and economic networks, which is crucial for the inhabitants of the informal settlements due to the social engagement and income generation. The developer-centric approach neglected the fact that most of the working population of Mumbai is involved in the informal sector, which apart from dwelling is also consists of working areas for the urban poor. Their plans lack of spaces containing different forms of small-scale labor, which play an important role in the informal economy. Therefore, it requires an innovative approach towards dwellings’ design. In chase of higher FSI, the stakeholders did not take into account patterns of social activities. Therefore, it lacks both outdoor spaces and places for gathering that could reinforce the sense of community. Sticking to the same strategy of redevelopment, which provide people with shelters instead of adequate housing is a contradiction to the goals of the Sustainable Development 2030 of the United Nations Habitat commission, which addresses the topic of the housing problem in the Urban Global South. If we do not want to repeat the fate of the Kowloon Walled City, which was demolished due to its unlivable conditions, it is time to reconsider the approach towards housing design for the urban poor.

The theme of the studio is ‘Space of Collection’. The aim is to design a type of space embedded into the context of Delft’s city centre through research and experiment, which is not only to solve the problem with a place for the collections of TU Delft, but also to build interactions between university and historical city as an ‘Urban Institution’. Therefore, there are two keywords for the project, one is ‘Collection’, the other is ‘urban institution’.

MHKA (Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp), is a museum established in the 1970's. Given spatial and characteristic requirements, it is seeking for an expansion and reestablishment in the wide art scene in Antwerp. The MHKA has deep roots in the city itself, including public inclusivity and how people have been experiencing art in various ways. From open public events, to temporary exhibitions, the museum centralizes itself around this ideology and wills to expand this to a greater scale. The new museum, VMHK, is a result of this will. From facilitating isolated art galleries to open forums on different levels, the museum is a place to gather, discuss, experiment and experience. With adaptable spaces that host a variety of public activities; the establishment seeks to act as a ground for inter & intra dialogues for the people, for the art and for the city. It becomes an unfiltered, common ground that embodies the institution's stance and character towards art & people.

This project focuses on the architect’s attitude performing in non-urban landscapes. As a case study the landscape of the Reitdiep river in Groningen (NL) has been intensely researched. Here, a strong interaction between myself and the physical landscape has been informing the design process. Through defining characteristics of the landscapes by iterative visits with observations, interviews and archival research sensory information and more factual based information of the landscape formed the understanding of this landscape. Altogether, the definition of a set of characteristics creates a thorough and balanced understanding of a place stored in memory. This memory can be expressed in personal, communal and historical lenses. The characteristics are always present in physical and mental constructs. The design project intends to allow these to enter, to live and to harass the structure. In the contemporary Ommelanderhuis sensory presence can be found between abstract and detailed scale levels. For exam¬ple, in entering the building one will be confronted by the subtle relief of the landscape, confronted by seasonal change of drought and intense showers. This example of sensory presence is something in which rituals are leading factors. The Ommelanderhuis is a political place where citizens, politicians, policy makers, environmental experts, farmers and creatives come together to speculate about the future landscape.

The graduation thesis deals with the architectural redevelopment of the National Bank of Belgium. It examines how this refurbishment can benefit the bank, the city of Brussels, and its inhabitants. Built to its limits, the introverted character of the complex reflects the historical need to secure Belgium's financial reserves within its walls. Since its completion, however, there has been a fundamental change in the demands placed upon it. Industrial functions, such as printing and storing currency, have moved out of the city or abroad. At the same time, finance is becoming increasingly digitised. In response, the National Bank decided to redefine itself physically. The proposal examines the optimisation of space through various changes to the layout of the offices to fit the bank's desired programme, as set out in the competition brief. The project recognises that the reduced surface area required by the bank allows a large part of the site to be given over to the city. The proposal not only suggests not new uses but new spaces that become part of the urban fabric, establishing connections and refuges for urban life, both public and private.

Located in the hilly landscape outside Maastricht, the guesthouse in the valley could be described as a deep contextual project; a small building in the larger countryside. Inspired by the local material culture and made from the very earth of the Limburgian farm routes, the building is dedicated to those who affiliate the action of walking in nature as a festive practice. Consisted of one common lounge/dining and an accommodation wing, the project aims to unfold different ways of experiencing nature by emerging the equal participation of all the human senses. From the large openings and the cave-like interiors to the intimate sleeping rooms and the beautiful surrounding. It is a place where modern walkers,visitors or simple nature lovers can experience the self-restoration process of nature, and through that practice, achieve their own self-healing as well.

In summary, the design proposal is a new building for the contemporary art museum the M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerpen), which in the future will be the Flemish oriented contemporary art museum VMHK (Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art). The project location is the existing court of appeal on the Zuiderdokken in Antwerp. The existing building will be demolished because of spatial and technical requirements and will make room in my proposal for a new museum: The building arises from the park, which the building faces. A landscape slopes up to the building's public ‘forum’ space. It is a raised level, where one can look over the flood defenses onto the river, while the art handling truck enters the building underneath. This artificial landscape, which forms the base of the building, consists entirely of recycled concrete, with various repurposed aggregate materials. Above the forum space rises a large volume, a biobased box, with all the 'silent program' of the museum. The careful placement of circulation cores allows for large art spaces.

The worldwide trends of depleting natural resources and increasing generation of waste create challenges concerning the development and growth of our cities. Urban growth is enforcing these trends, resulting in growing problems and reaching limitations to the growth of our economies. In this thesis, these worldwide trends will be challenged in the city of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The concept of circular economy is used to improve residential waste collection and treatment to close loops and reduce environmental impact. Amsterdam is a fast growing city and has many spatial challenges related to this growth. A new more integrated system for residential waste treatment and collection is needed. In this way, the city can live up to its high circular ambitions and reach their set goals in a short time frame. To conquer these challenges, a link between circular economy and urban design is made. Circular concepts can now be translated to urban systems, creating possibilities for urban integration. In this way, circular economy becomes part of the city, interacts with other systems and circular economy evolves in a economic, social and environmental concept which contributes to sustainable development of our cities in the future. The circular proposals are integrated in Amsterdam, taking into account the great diversity in urban forms and possible connections to existing systems. This all results in a list of recommendations for the municipality on how to improve their vision and continue with their circular ambitions. The main recommendations concluded from this research are: 1. Waste treatment and collection should connect to existing urban systems, creating more support and integration within daily lives. 2. Circular economy does not have just a economic value. Circular waste treatment can contribute to the city, strengthen communities and improve living quality . 3. The value of circular waste treatment needs to experienced by the residents themselves. It will contribute to the motivation and will support a change in disposal behaviour. 4. Separate waste collection should be available for all the residents of Amsterdam. It will require large investments in some parts of the city. However, by making clever use of existing structures, improvement can be made fast and without tremendous costs.

The graduation project ‘Vedeelhus’ - a place of integration seeks to explore spaces of encounter in inner city neighbourhoods. The effect ‘a place of encounter’ could have on a neighbourhood with a need for integration. The graduation project is located in the inner city of Cologne, Germany, at a small square called ‘‘An der Eiche’’. This project reflects on the current refugee situation in Germany with a special focus on the local conditions in Cologne and the upcoming question of integration. The graduation project considers the long history of the city, the neighbourhood and the immediate surrounding. Through this and the analyses of the current situation of the city and the neighbourhood the identity of the place will be further defined. The specific urban fabric, local traditions and public life of the city and the neighbourhood should be considered. Cologne as the oldest city in Germany (dating back to Roman times) and its history of a religious capital in the middle Ages need to be explored. Furthermore the city needs to be seen as a town of people, shoppers, students and tourists and as a multicultural city, with up to 30% of inhabitants in the inner city with an immigration background. The Master Thesis aims to explore spaces of encounter to bring different residents of a certain neighbourhood into contact. To provide a place of integration, different user groups --- locals and newcomers- have to be addressed.

Festive moments and the built environment have, throughout history, had great influence on each other. Festive architecture has always been concerned with building narratives. It has the ability to communicate political, emotional, social or cultural messages and even change peoples perceptions. In the contemporary built environment of our everyday lives however, this powerful tool is often forgotten, resulting in rather 'flat' architecture that allows us to remain detached. This project aimed to challenge this flatness of everyday working life by questioning the separation between festive and everyday moments. Extensive studies into the vocabulary of festive architecture created a toolset that was used in the casestudy of an academic library. The project carefully stages an assemblage of spatial experiences. Each experience strives to support the actions within the space by influencing how people perceive the atmosphere, the context, each other, their own aim and the role of the building in society.

This year, the Interiors Buildings Cities graduation studio has revolved around the topic of the Future Bank. The project addresses the transformation of the National Bank of Belgium set in Brussels, consisting of a vast triangular urban block of 90.000 m2. The bank, designed by Van Goethem just after the Second World War, is an imposing building with a 200 meter long columnar façade rising up from the adjacent boulevard. As the city of Brussels has declared itself a doughnut economy, the city is moving away from traditional forms of economics. The city is no longer aiming for unending growth, but aiming for stability, equality and wellbeing. Therefore the bank needs to be reframed within it’s new economic and societal context. What image does the bank want to portray in the 21st century? Here the project began with the grass route movements, counteracting the heavy façade by creating more intimate spaces within the colonnade. This translated into reframing the bank into several parts with a new end stretching out towards the city. This allowed for more intimate spaces to be created within the vast urban block, creating a new public and inviting face of the bank. A new face in the city.