The post-war reconstruction period in the Netherlands marked a significant time for the housing industry, where demand and necessity resulted in ground-breaking innovations, and construction technologies advanced by leaps and bounds. The high-rise typology proved essential in tackling the housing shortage owing to the fast and affordable system-construction using abundantly available concrete. While these innovations enabled the creation of a large number of houses, solving the housing crisis temporarily, it was soon observed that the living conditions of these neighbourhoods were far from ideal. The creation of standardised units and floor plans afforded developers the ease of vertically stacking units to create a large number of dwellings. However the principal flaw in this planning strategy was the lack of consideration of how households function in reality.

As the government of the Netherlands plans to build up to a million new homes by 2030, it becomes pertinent to ask the question, will they be suitable homes? The large-scale construction and demolition that is required to achieve this promise will require an immensely large stock of raw material and natural resources. So how can these homes be made different from the ones that already exist? How will they mitigate the problems that plague the widespread post-war neighbourhoods of the country?

This project examines the post war neighbourhood of Westwijk, Vlaardingen and the spatial as well as social problems that it faced soon after its construction. To be able to densify such neighbourhoods in the future, a vastly different strategy needs to be adopted, to make not only the new homes as a safe, happy and inclusive environment for all its residents, but also to alleviate the condition of the surrounding neighbourhood and its residents.

Drawing inspiration from traditional housing topologies, and some greatly successful projects by architects such as Aldo Van Eyck, Herman Hertzberger and Charles Correa, transience emerges as a key aspect in their success. It exists not only in an absolute form such as ‘in-between’ spaces, but also as a concept of growth. When houses are designed to accommodate change, to encourage communal interaction, while allowing the freedom to draw one’s own boundaries, it leads to the creation of a 'society'. The formation of such a society is what is crucial to the upkeep of a neighbourhood, camaraderie amongst neighbours and the possibility of multiple generations being able to benefit from their family home.
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The evolution of human civilization, entwined with food, traces our development from hunters to settlers and now to a globalized food network. Carolyn Steel's 'sitopia' theory underscores the connection between place and sustenance. Brazil, a key player in the global food industry, paradoxically grapples with high inequality despite abundant resources. The journey from hunter-gatherer societies to modern agriculture reshaped our relationship with food, altering homes and communities.

Brazil's economic surge led to urban sprawl, resulting in housing crises like favelas, driven by uneven governance and inadequate infrastructure. Despite its abundant water resources, Brazil faces disparities in access, impacting millions. Food insecurity persists, affecting rural populations disproportionately.

This paradox of plenty amid scarcity underscores complex historical, geographical, and socio-economic factors. With a growing population and unsustainable agricultural practices, the looming crisis demands a shift toward sustainable food, water, trade, and housing. The question remains: where do we begin this crucial transformation? ... Read more

The exponential population growth of Navi Mumbai and the Global South results in urgency for housing, quality of life and resources. Maker Housing proposes through architectural design and spatial organization an alternative mode of living in these unique urban contexts. Gaothans is a Marathi word which is derived from the words ‘Gaon’ (which means ‘village’). Many of these villages have become under threat from urbanization to cater to the over demand in population. The project aims to use vernacular construction materials and methods to promote sustainable architecture and traditional craftsmanship to reignite to usage of original techniques. Due to India’s colonial past many artisans abandoned their ancestral trade to find a more sustainable and stable income. This damaged the self-sufficient village economy and integrated poor infrastructure into village and slum communities in Navi Mumbai.

Maker Housing proposes a design toolkit aimed to accommodate all urban conditions of the village and surrounding area. By investigating craftsmanship in every scale from brick to urban the project allows for identity and collective memory of the village to not only thrive but also protect its future survival.
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India has a cultural acceptance of gender-based violence which leads to unsafe situations for women. The cycle of violence is an ongoing phenomenon that has not given much room for improvement or prevention. But when a woman does get a chance to escape, the possibilities of a better life are minimal. Navi Mumbai’s development has a tendency for social inequality, spatial injustice, and environmental degradation. The project provides solutions to the negative consequences of the social and historical background of the issue. Building New Cycles will be able to be used as a toolbox to repeat at multiple places in the city. The main goal is to change behavior through neighborhood designs as a social catalyst. A neighborhood development has been designed to provide safety and reintegration to mistreated women. Developing an understanding of a well-integrated urban neighborhood from the viewpoint of diverse income groups. It offers the possibility to navigate between shelter and contact, group activities, and exploration in its intricate urban environments. ... Read more

The world is increasingly urbanised. Especially in those countries that are in rapid development, the migration to the city is extreme. This is the case for Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. Its population growth exceeds the number of newly built housing, and the housing that exists is unfit for a majority of the urban population. People create their own solution and move to informal neighbourhoods: neighbourhoods where they build their own houses and earn their money on the streets.

While the conditions in the informal settlements are far from optimal, people can live their life and create their own opportunities. Somehow, they make a living that they cannot make in formal housing units: either due to the rent they cannot afford to pay, or due to the inability to earn an income in the way they do in the informal neighbourhood. In this way of living the life in the informal neighbourhoods, temporality plays an important role. People are versitale, can adapt to different situations, different circumstances. They can build up a process, starting something from scratch with the resilience to improve it, one step at the time. The streets are vital: pedestrian flows are economic opportunities. Converting any moment, any place into an opportunity that fits the situation the best: from a kitchen to a shop through the window, from a outdoor stall to an outdoor cooking spot, from a place of moving and travelling, to a place for gathering and meeting. Spaces can transform, dwellings can transform, adapt to circumstances, adapt to serve the opportunity that seems most succesful. It is this temporal element that makes them resilient.

But these people are also vulnerable. With the current neighbourhood conditions, a lack of good quality housing, a lack of a well patterned street-network, a lack of services and hygiene, a lack of legal ownership, the dangers are clearly visible: fire, flooding, eviction and disease are potential enemies, created by their living situation. These people, of which there are so many in a city like Addis Ababa, deserve a home that caters their needs, actively engages them to use their abilities to improve their neighbourhood with the right acces to services, streets, economic opportunties. How can we use the theme of temporality to create such dwellings?

In this project, a built environment is envisioned that combines the informal way of living (earning an income, having social relations), with a good quality of dwelling. It provides a framework in which people can built their dwellings tehmselves, keeping them affodable, and being able to constantly adapt the home to what they need most. It generates outside space as well as people flows on lower as well as higher levels to increase the economic opportunities for all of the people living in the area. ... Read more

The research project deals with the negative results of the current affordable housing scheme (IHDP) in Addis Ababa, combining urban upgrading and densification strategies to re-imagine the future of these neighbourhoods. ... Read more

Addis Ababa is a city experiencing a huge population boom, and where the vast majority of housing can be classified as “slum”. State-owned kebele housing, which houses an estimated 40% of the city’s inhabitants, has very low rents but is not maintained, leading to deterioration. Thus, the city is left with a severe shortage of adequate housing. Current state-led developments intended to alleviate the acute housing problem do not address the specific situation of Addis Ababa, and do not allow for the flexibility and adaptability that is required by residents. This research and design project focusses on a specific site in Gerji, owned by the Federal Housing Corporation, and proposes a new model for mid-density, low-rise development which is specific to the context of Ethiopia and suitable for the varying and different living patterns of people in Addis Ababa. The project includes ethnographic research, looking into the lifestyles and daily habits of local residents, as well as documenting their homes and living spaces. Further research was conducted into vernacular and historical building styles and construction methods present in Ethiopia, which was used to inform the design and better understand the specific context of Ethiopia. The research concluded that many different living patterns must be accommodated in a new development, and that this should allow for flexibility and adaptability as household incomes and expectations change over time. Moreover, homes should be suitable for the climate and materials and construction techniques should be informed by local customs in order to aid social sustainability. Finally, tenure options, functions and typologies should be mixed to create a diverse and resilient neighbourhood. The proposed design addresses the research by offering three distinct typologies of building, all of which offer the flexibility needed to allow for different functions and uses. These three typologies are aimed at different sectors of the community and are proposed to be offered in different tenure models. The design is simple and uses adobe bricks and laminated bamboo lumber as its main construction materials. These both use raw materials that can easily be sourced locally and can be processed cheaply on site, using local labour. Ultimately, the proposal achieves a density similar to that of local state-funded housing developments, known as “condominiums”, suggesting that this more varied and site-specific approach to tackling the housing shortage is feasible for Addis Ababa. Adopting such an approach, which looks to local customs and vernacular styles for inspiration, is a radical alternative to the unsustainable route currently being taken in Addis Ababa. ... Read more

A solution to the urgent need for new urban housing that could translate current social cultures to the physical environment is essential to avoid further ghettoisation and provide sufficient accessibility of amenities, infrastructure and employment. Seeking the balance between resiliency and efficiency at a low environmental cost requires adopting modular, adaptive and resilient design principles that would enable affordable quality housing. For instance, the sites and services scheme could provide such a solution combining efficient use of resources and community participation, that can greatly increase the market value of the house and adapt it to users’ own needs. Circular strategies are being pursued mainly in Europe, however, are often already present in the informal sector of developing countries.
Applying alternative building principles in a developing country such as Ethiopia sets a new set of challenges in comparison to a housing scheme developed on the same values in the western world. Different conditions may be already present and therefore not necessary to recreate, for instance, the strong social network embedded in the informal sector. The goal of the design project is to explore the potential of various alternate circular strategies and solutions in low-income neighbourhoods such as Kolfe, Addis Ababa. ... Read more

In last decades, the housing sector have been going through profound transformations imposed by the society’s changes. The number of city dwellers is increasing all over the World, especially in the Global South where the shift from rural to urban life is still ongoing. Nevertheless, the resulting strategies to cope with the challenges that are following this escalation have often proved to be ineffective, leaving part of the population in miserable condition, unable to access proper housing and services. Particularly in developing countries, the lack of proper unifying urban strategies has led to the proliferation of gated communities, both formal and informal. As a result, a fracture between public and private space has been created. The aftermath of this phenomena are the lack of security and the communities’ alienation. Also, the call for progress, the attempt to build a modern ideal city and the pressure from the housing market have led to the erasure of the existing historical fabric, thus both tangible and intangible heritage. Therefore, the thesis’ pivot is the border-boundary condition and the transitional spaces as the crucial threshold toward an integrated and cohesive system, regarding physical transition, income groups, and technology. The project envisions an area where different income groups can come together, providing a regular and varied scheme, together with special urban condition. The in-between spaces, translated form the one observed and studied on site, provide a physical transition from public to private space and from existing to new architecture. Likewise, the technological feature aim at providing a solution which can be adapted and work in different conditions. The final intent is to realize a neighborhood where the local community will be supported believing also that this will lead also to the support of the incoming fabric as well. ... Read more

The project investigates the possibility of integrating new technological processes into the public realm in the city of Prague. This will act as a statement against the legacy of the new industrial capitalism, which has disconnected production, distribution and consumption spaces in the city. The focus is the design of a grocery re-distribution center as part of a larger network of sub-centers which make use of the shared-economy system and the Internet of Things (IoC)7. This emerged from the growing pressure to find feasible, environmentally friendly solutions for last mile deliveries and to keep up with the current market trends of same-day or 24 hours delivery. This process will deploy a paradigm shift in the architecture of storage and delivery on the one hand and on the other it will help Prague transition to the status of a Smart City. ... Read more

he way traditional culture prevalence is very inefficient with Cuba traditional libraries. Their common carrier of traditional culture has low accessibility to public. The traditional culture prevalence is in danger. Media Technology has advantage of accessibility to public. It's not just threat to local culture. It is opportunity to promote the traditional culture prevalence. ... Read more

How will we spend our days in 2050? when rethinking all parts of our current daily routines, we may ask ourselves why we spend it the way we do. i want to state that we should base our future daily routines on intervals of work and rest, consuming our prosperity as free time. my project stimulates these new routines and thereby offers a system of mentral breaks, as a socially accepted part of our future routines, and part of the urban structure.

the design is based on an ensemble of a tower, a square and a block. these volumes don't only respond to their direct surroundings, but also relate to the human poses 'standing', 'laying' and 'sitting'. these poses then again stand for the type of functions they host. the tower of talks is the standing and active one, hosting social functions such as room for debate. the square is the laying one, hosting baths and space for contemplation. house of rituals is the sitting one, offering treatments. When you are moving through the complex, the experience is an important part of it. Looking at the city from a different perspective- the city becomes somewhat unreal. The layers of materialisation show this distanciation, but also the contrast between the human scale, and the imposing spaces, referring to the ancient bathhouse. It is claiming back room for human relaxation and mental rest.

We can handle the good life, if only we take the time.
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The thesis focusses on the architectural investigation of modern food production techniques. Feeding our cities becomes an increasing train on our environment and our society has never been as much disconnected from the origins of the nutrition as in our current time.

The thesis proposes a food production laboratory at the border of Amsterdam. Good infrastructural connections and the proximity to a high density city stimulate the interaction with the way our food is grown and locally accessible. ... Read more

The focus of the graduation studio AMS MID CITY is creating future scenarios through architectural design with as a testing ground the city of Amsterdam in 2050. The posed problem I encountered during my research on work in the future and the city is that the pace of the revolution of works grows faster than ever. So individuals have been forced to adapt to social progress and technological development. A lot of new business will start during the transition period. However, a lot of people working in traditional, lowskilled jobs will lose their job because of replacing by robots.

The ambition of my project is to help people adapting to the new age in terms of the job (re)start-ups.

Our group site location is on Zeeburgereisland, the outskirt of the central Amsterdam, isolated to the mainland for decades. In our group vision we are going to make it isolated but well-connected, a pilot and self-sufficient. In our site, there are 40% of social housing out of the whole housing amounts. It means a lot of people living on the island are lowerclass. They are mainly engaged in low-skilled jobs (about to be replaced by technology in the future), due to their limited educational resources. In 2050, a large proportion of people will need the occupation transition.

The design brief resulted in the design of “an [Re]startup Hub”. A future [Re]start-up hub, which works on educating and integrating the skills and abilities of different people, so that they can learn from each other, and create job opportunities. The value of places will shift to the promotion of networking, socializing, collaboration, hyper-individualized learning, and will be spaces where serendipity, unplanned encounters, unanticipated opportunities, and coincidences can occur, encouraging diversity activities, communication, and creativity.
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