This book marks the commencement of a series of projects and initiatives initiated by the Research-on-Education-Innovation programme at the Faculty of Architecture & the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, at the conclusion of the 2010s. These initiatives, including the call for contributions to this volume, sought to address pertinent questions that would engage the interests of our colleagues.

The primary objectives of these inquiries were to foster innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches in architecture and built environment education. We sought to bridge the gap between theory and practice, encouraging students to engage with both historical contexts and contemporary challenges. Additionally, we explored the potential of educational settings as laboratories for spatial and societal transformation.

Furthermore, we examined the development of technical skills and academic skills, such as critical thinking and reflection, among design students. Finally, we addressed the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the need for flexible and collaborative learning frameworks and learning environments.

Many colleagues responded positively to the call for contributions. After several rounds of review and feedback by the book editors, the submitted papers have been organized into two thematic parts of this volume.

We extend our sincere gratitude to all contributing authors for their support and patience, and to the 4TU Centre for Engineering Education, which warmly supports our Faculty’s Research-on-Education-Innovation programme and this book project.

As a university committed to blended learning and open education, TU Delft encourages and supports staff and students to use, create and publish Open Educational Resources (OER) to enhance the quality of teachers’ and students’ experience, provided that resources used are fit-for-purpose and relevant. The use, creation and publication of Open Educational Resources (OER) are consistent with the university’s policies and values. This policy puts the TU Delft on a trajectory towards a teaching practice in which the use of Open Educational Resources is the norm, not the exception. We value when other institutes start using the resources developed by TU Delft staff. TU Delft will include the development of OER in its framework for rewarding and recognition. Staff and students are free to use Open Educational Resources (OER) to support teaching and learning, including text, images, audio or video resources, animations, data or software and other (digital) resources. Staff may also use a wide range of self-generated teaching materials to support high-quality teaching, including teaching notes, handouts, audio, images, animations, multimedia materials, data, software and others.

We have selected seven contributions for this issue of Spool, four from the Eastern Mediterranean basin (Istanbul, Beirut, Acre and Jaffa) and three from Atlantic Europe (Bodø, Matosinhos and Gafanha da Nazaré). Roula El Khoury and Paola Ardizzola address the post-civil war reconstruction of Beirut in Lebanon and reveal how neoliberal models of development resulted in a generic city. Adem Erdem Erbas uses the Istanbul port heritage area in Turkey to showcase how GIS helps to consider underground cultural inventory from a historic landscape perspective within the framework of the conservation plans. Ana Jayone Yarza Pérez explores the potential of adaptive reuse evaluation procedure in the Old City of Acre, Israel, as a means to deal with development and gentrification in this World Heritage site. Komal Potdar explores the historical evolution of the old town, cultural geography, and the current state of exclusion and gentrification in Jaffa, Israel. She underlines the need for discourse on socio-spatial analysis and assessment for decision-making processes for urban heritage design. Diego Inglez de Souza and Ivo Pereira de Oliveira reconnect architectural history with social and industrial accounts as a strategy for understanding the relationship between infrastructure, fishing, and urbanisation by studying the emblematic case of Matosinhos, Portugal. André Tavares seeks to trace the links between fluctuations in the natural cod resources, the technologies used by fishermen to catch and process the fish, and the development of coastal landscapes and the urban form of the fishing port Gafanha da Nazaré, Portugal. And finally, Fatma Tanis uses an interview with architect Daniel Rosbottom from DHDR to provide insight into situated architecture in port cities by addressing a library and concert hall project realised in Bodø, Norway.

Four Dutch Universities of Technology decided to collaborate as 4TU.Bouw Center of Excellence for the Built Environment. This issue of SPOOL is dedicated to the last batch of 4TU.BOUW Lighthouse projects . ‘Lighthouse projects’ aim at promoting and starting up imaginative research projects, delivering tangible results like demo's, mock-ups, prototypes, test runs, lab environments and so on.

Geodesign is a GIS-based planning and design method, which tightly couples the creation of design proposals with impact simulations informed by geographic contexts. Geodesign as such comprises a set of geo-information technology driven methods and techniques for planning built and natural environments in an integrated process. It includes project conceptualization, analysis, design specification, stakeholder participation and collaboration. This academic publication brings together a wide variety of contributions from authors with backgrounds in urban planning, landscape architecture, education and geoinformation technology presenting the latest insights and applications of geodesign. Through focusing on interdisciplinary design-related concepts and applications of GIS international experts share their recent findings and provide clues for the further development of geodesign. The book originated at the Geodesign Summit Europe (2014) held at TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment preparing grounds for in depth discussions and future collaborations. This is important since there is still much work to do. Not only in the development of geo-information technology, but especially in bridging the gap with the design-disciplines.

Social, cultural and technological developments of our society are demanding a fundamental review of the planning and design of its landscapes and infrastructures, in particular in relation to environmental issues and sustainability. Transportation, green and water infrastructures are important agents that facilitate processes that shape the built environment and its contemporary landscapes. With movement and flows at the core, these landscape infrastructures facilitate aesthetic, functional, social and ecological relationships between natural and human systems, here interpreted as Flowscapes. Flowscapes explores infrastructure as a type of landscape and landscape as a type of infrastructure. The hybridisation of the two concepts seeks to redefine infrastructure beyond its strictly utilitarian definition, while allowing spatial design to gain operative force in territorial transformation processes. This academic publication aims to provide multiple perspectives on the subject from design-related disciplines such as architecture, urban planning and design, landscape architecture and civil engineering. It is a reflection of a multidisciplinary colloquium on landscape infrastructures held at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, preparing grounds for in-depth discussions and future collaborations. The authors explore concepts, methods and techniques for design-related research of landscape infrastructures. Their main objective is to engage environmental and societal issues by means of integrative and design-oriented approaches. Through focusing on multidisciplinary design-related research of landscape infrastructures they provide important clues for the development of spatial armatures that can guide urban and rural development and have cultural and civic significance.