This thesis explores how the built environment can be designed to offer the potential to be activated by young, fluidly housed adults in Brussels—a group that continuously navigates unstable living conditions, from temporarily staying with friends or family, to occupying squats, to occasionally sleeping on the streets.

The project adopts a mixed-method approach, placing active processes of care and collective agency at its core.

It begins by contextualizing the broader issue of ‘homelessness’ and the specific urban conditions in Brussels. Building on this, the thesis uncovers the socio-spatial realities of young fluidly housed adults through a needs-based approach. Using literature review, ethnographic mapping, and informal conversations, it identifies eight key satisfiers and four interconnected systems that have the potential to improve liveability for this demographic.

These socio-spatial needs are then spatialised using three methods. First, ethnographic mapping in Schaerbeek West and the broader ‘Poverty Crescent’ identifies existing socio-spatial conditions with potential for bottom-up activation. Second, pattern language is applied to connect observed patterns of care and resistance with the previously defined satisfiers, enabling these insights to be scaled across multiple levels while highlighting the top-down actions needed to support grassroots initiatives. Third, environment-behaviour studies—specifically angular choice and angular integration analysis—are used to identify five key intervention sites within Schaerbeek West and to operationalize this process that can be applied in other contexts.

In the final phase, design explorations are carried out in the five identified locations to test how the previously defined patterns can be applied to shape the urban fabric through careful interventions. These explorations aim to create environments that young, fluidly housed adults can actively engage with and adapt to meet their needs—demonstrating how the built environment can foster more just and adaptable spaces that form an infrastructure of collective care and agency, ultimately improving the liveability of young, fluidly housed adults in a tangible way.

Addressing the housing crisis requires both long-term, top-down reform and immediate, ground-level action. While this approach does not resolve the systemic challenges of the housing crisis, it enables urgent, bottom-up improvements in liveability by placing young, fluidly housed adults at the center—as agents of care driving this transition. Both pathways are essential: one demands time, while the other can begin right now.

This booklet describes the process of work carried out by a group of students within the On Site Studio of the Department of Landscape Architecture at TU Delft (Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences)in the spring of 2024. The students
have different academic backgrounds in either architecture, urbanism or landscape architecture and have been divided into dynamic sub-groups focusing on different approaches to analyse and design, but the work is the result of an effort by the group as a whole.

As the title of the studio ‘ON SITE: Scenes in Stadspark West’ suggests, this project took place in Stadspark West (SPW), a unique location in Rotterdam, however it is not an officially recognised geographical name. The initiators behind SPW refer to it as ‘an idea’ and ‘a fictional park that actually exists’.

This document is divided into three elements, the first part, Analysis and Research, deals with the embodied on-site analysis of the site and the theoretical research that underpins this analysis. The main aim of this part is to get a better grip on the multifaceted area of Stadspark West and to find better ways to describe, define, discuss and work with this area from a landscape architectural perspective. The second part of this booklet focuses on exploring and transcending the outcome of this analysis to a wider audience. In the project we achieve this goal by designing an intervention in the landscape. As the findings of our analysis have come from our first-hand embodied experiences, the aim is to present and extend these impressions from the same perspective. In the final part we use these findings to create an overall vision for Stadspark West.

There is an imbalance in the nitrogen cycle, mainly caused by an increasingly intensive agricultural sector. This leads to the degradation of nature and the loss of biodiversity. Measures have been taken at European level to reduce the amount of nitrogen emitted by the agricultural sector, but this has caused a backlash as farmers in many European countries have protested strongly. Many farmers fear for their future and something must be done to safeguard their livelihoods and the quality of Europe's nature.
To address this, we propose a vision for 2150 in which the food system of north-west Europe shifts from intensive agriculture to a regenerative, small-scale and collective farming system. We envision diversified and rotational land use to close nitrogen cycles and thus reduce the burden on the climate, giving the soil space and time to regenerate so that nature can thrive. Food and bio-based materials will be produced locally and seasonally, making food and material consumption more transparent and integrated into the daily lives of communities, transforming peri-urban and rural structures and the way we live in them. This regenerative production system, coupled with new incentives, will provide affordable food for all, while being more circular, organic, sustainable and fit for the future world we envision.
To enable diversified farms, farmers will share facilities, tools and land to enable soil-based crop rotation. This will have an impact not only on the local diet, but also on the food and materials produced. Focusing on local production also means introducing other collective infrastructures that increase local and regional flows. It also means reducing some of our international infrastructure while increasing knowledge flows between countries to empower people in the Global South to process and produce food locally, thus ensuring a more equitable distribution of resources. Finally, at the heart of the strategy is the conservation of nature, which will shape the boundaries of the newly structured peri-urban rural agricultural landscape. The existing boundaries of the built environment will remain, with the emphasis on densifying and transforming our current structures rather than expanding them.
In order to visualise the vision, we selected three pilot projects based on three different typologies and existing infrastructure: Nijkerk (sand, rural, a practical school and a milk processing unit), Utrecht (clay, urban and distribution centres) and Bodegraven (peat, peri-urban and dairy related businesses). These pilot projects show the necessary landscape transformation over time with the introduction of regenerative agriculture, food and material hubs along with food production within city boundaries, working towards a sustainable landscape and local diet.