Amsterdam’s housing shortage, combined with spatial, ecological, and heritage constraints, has increased interest in timber topping-up as a strategy for urban densification without demolition. While technically promising, most topping-up projects prioritise efficiency and market logic, often neglecting resident agency and long-term social resilience. This graduation project investigates how timber topping-up can function not only as a construction strategy, but as a socio-material framework for collective learning, participation, and adaptation.
Using a research-by-design approach, the project combines site analysis, policy review, precedent studies, and community input. Case studies are critically analysed to examine relationships between resident agency, adaptability, reversibility, and construction accessibility. These insights inform a design framework grounded in participatory timber construction.
Applied to a case study in Kattenburg, Amsterdam, the project proposes a 50% topping-up intervention that integrates new housing with shared and productive spaces. Through a modular, legible timber system that supports incremental change, the design demonstrates how topping-up can contribute to socially and climate-resilient urban transformation. ... Read more

This thesis examines the historical development and contemporary revival of earth construction in architecture, investigating how vernacular building techniques are being reinterpreted in response to today’s environmental and social challenges. Through a comparative and historically grounded analysis, the study explores how earthen architecture—once rooted in collective, site-based knowledge—has evolved across regions and continues to shape sustainable design practices.
By combining historical research, visual analysis, and case study methodology, the thesis demonstrates that many so-called innovations in earth architecture are grounded in long-standing traditions. It highlights the shift from communal building methods to industrialized systems, raising questions about authorship, access, and the role of the architect in mediating between inherited knowledge and contemporary demands.
The findings argue that understanding the cultural and technical history of earth construction is essential to reimagining architectural practice in more ecological, inclusive, and context-sensitive ways.

Keywords: Earth construction, building techniques, sustainable architecture, vernacular architecture, building history.
... Read more