The present graduation thesis “The shopping mall as an urban catalyst” explores the idea of an urban structure where working, crafting, living, meeting, and learning are entangled. The aim of this exploration mainly lies in the creation of a “skill city”, where groups that have not yet been fully integrated into the area under research can be the protagonists of a vibrant neighborhood, while the shopping mall from a place of consumption is transformed into a community core, a place of production and exchange. At the same time, this project is a continuous research on how an existing structure with its embedded values can become future-proof, ensuring it both remains a point of reference and accomodates change according to the shifting needs and demands. This aspect was examined under the scope of urban adaptability and its interplay with the notion of heritage; revealing design strategies that were implemented on the redesign of Leyweg Winkelcentrum. To conclude, the exploration of the new role that shopping malls, as urban centers, could adopt in an ever-changing context as condensers of public life, its diverse aspects, and social groups, as hubs for social interaction and as cores of community life can be regarded as the motivation for the development of this project.

This master thesis explores the application of the theories from Den Heijer's dissertation ‘Managing the university campus - Information to support real estate decisions’ in the context of analysing vacant shopping malls in revitalisation processes. The aim is to develop a decision-making process that can be used by decision makers to make time-efficient, informed and optimal decisions about the future concept of these shopping malls. Building on the existing knowledge, a new framework in the form of a step-by-step plan has been developed. This step-by-step plan combines the theories from Den Heijer's dissertation focusing on shopping mall revitalisations and extending them to the heritage context and thus the analysis of the past. By applying this new framework within revitalisation processes, optimal decisions can be made tailored to the project and the process can be accelerated. As a result, the vacancy rate of these shopping malls and its social and urban consequences, like an increasing number of crimes or the loss of identity are shortened.

The article discusses the challenges of revitalizing shopping malls as heritage sites in the 21st century, due to their vacancy and deterioration resulting from depersonalization. The proposed approach called "tabula scripta" embraces the existing layers and context, requiring a broadening and deepening of the profession of architecture to focus on sensory perception, particularly tactile experiences. The article highlights the homogenization of architecture due to a reduction in observation by designers and suggests the use of natural materials to convey age and multiple layers of development. The research project focused on the materiality and design of shopping malls, particularly the Lijnbaan ensemble in Rotterdam and the Leyweg shopping mall in The Hague. The results revealed the loss of coherence over time and the need for culturally sensitive interventions in the Leyweg mall. The discussion highlights the importance of site-specific design, particularly in the unique cultural context of the Morgenstond district in The Hague, emphasizing the need for interventions that account for specific materiality and reflect diverse community experiences.

The easily accessible location, the comfort of various facilities, the architectural quality and the space for meeting, all this created a new typology that could not be thought out of everyday life anymore. The mall gave a glimpse of a modern future, where the mall functioned as merely a place to shop; it functioned as a center for cultural enrichment, education and relaxation. However, it turned out that many
of these malls soon developed into commercial paradises. There was little room for social functions and meeting space, the only thing to do was shopping. An important reason for the failure of this typology may therefore be that shopping malls were never implemented as they were intended: as social beacons within the community. Use changed over the years, leading to many vacancies and a growing sense of social unsafety.

To preserve the existing typology of the mall, it seems important to strengthen its local relevance. Initially, the mall was designed as a social space, a place for cultural enrichment, education and relaxation. Somewhere along the way, this social value gradually disappeared; the mall is now mainly focused on shops. This research
tries to find which architectural elements can support the local relevance of the mall. It analyses the social value of the mall by the presence of place attachment. The level of place attachment is researched by different functional and emotional architectural attributes. Showing that the combination of diversity in public space, program, activity and people and more social safety will lead to a higher level of place attachment and therefore lead to more social value within an area.

With the changing consumer behaviour and the diversification of functions in and around malls, the execution of architectural elements in malls should be re-evaluated. This research focuses on current user behaviour and how it is affected by architectural elements. Therefore, the main research question is: What is the influence of architectural elements of a mall on its users? Literary research on environmental behaviour forms the basis for the observational study, in which the behaviour of users of malls is observed and linked to the characteristics of the architectural elements. It has been concluded that characteristics of architectural elements of a mall can encourage certain behaviour, such as where people tend to go and at which speed. This information can be used to increase footfall in certain areas, which can be beneficial for certain shops or the design of a mall in general.

This graduation project is a research into, and a design proposal for the extended part of the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam. Through literature research and interviews with its visitors, past interventions in this area of the Lijnbaan are analyzed based on these visitors' opinions. The design is a proposal for this part of the Lijnbaan. By recapturing the spirit and thought process behind the original design of this urban block, this design opens up this closed-off area, revitalising a part of Rotterdam which now remains underutilized.

The present graduation project entails the heritage re-design of a shopping center, specifically Winkelcentrum Leyweg in the Hague Southwest. The project aims to investigate a potential sustainable future for the shopping center that would be mainly based on one of its heritage aspects. This aspect was the spatial coherence with its urban context; hence the re-design focused on creating a system of spatial relations, legible and translatable to different scales, in such a way that the shopping mall could accommodate a change of function and yet maintain its consistency with the surrounding area. For that purpose, research was conducted, following the ‘research by design’ methodology and the space syntax method, also combined with observations in order to explain functional aspects, as the people’s movement and use of space. Subsequently, a method was developed to assess and test the spatial impact of previous and potential re-design interventions and a framework was composed to assist in the re-design of the shopping center. This framework focused on the spatial aspects of the mall’s urban identity that influence the continuity with the urban fabric. Attention was also given to the shopping center’s role as the heart of the district it refers to, its spatial significance, and its social function.

According to Henri Lefebvre (1991, p.341), ‘’the commodity is a thing: it is in space and occupies a location. The commodity world brings certain attitudes towards space, certain actions upon space, and even a certain concept of space.’’ So, a commodity and its consumption create a consumerist space. Consumerist spaces are designed to encourage consumption and were continually reinvented and reshaped to keep up with the most subtle changes in society (Chung, Inaba, Koolhaas, 2001). However, today's society is urged to move towards sustainable consumption patterns by 2030 (12th sustainable development goal). This project explores how Dutch post-war shopping malls could be adapted for this future, where a society would consume less. The project proposes to create a shopping mall, which is more embedded in a local context and more significant to a local community. The project especially focuses on textiles as a connecting element between the shopping mall and the local context (Tilburg’s history). Textile is used both functionally and physically. Functionally, the buildings are converted to facilities focused on the recycling, reuse, and repair of textiles. Physically, textile is used as an exterior finish of the building. The possibility to use textiles combined with solar films is explored.

The goal of this project was to preserve the heritage aspect of Post-war reconstruction era Malls, which frequently face vacancy and demolition. The concept of Authenticity in heritage was an important factor to consider while transforming the design subject. The final design took into account the authenticity of materials, cultural authenticity and authenticity of concept, staying true to the original ideals of the designers while future-proofing the structure and function of the heritage Mall. In this way, it built upon the strengths of the original design while providing current and future users with possibilities for future reuse, upgrading the building systems and utilizing its huge size as a tool to filter water and produce energy for itself and the surrounding neighbourhoods.

The mall was initially conceived as a community centre where people could converge for shopping, cultural activity, and social interaction. Nowadays, one lives generally in a consumer society where leisure is predominantly used to acquire goods or services. These might not reflect the complexity of users’ contemporary needs in functions such as shopping malls. A sign of this mismatch is that Dutch sixties malls face issues such as vacancy and deterioration. There is an opportunity for them to be adapted and redesigned to match socio-economic values. This research aims to determine if the Dutch postwar shopping mall typology is suitable for the contemporary needs of the users. If otherwise, a values-based redesign proposal will be developed with the users’ participation, which can be replicated to some extent for other cases in other contexts.

The built environment contributes in a large extend to the global greenhouse gas emissions. With a growing demand for new buildings another view on building products is required. This thesis focusses on creating a biobased sound absorbing panel made from a mycelium bound biomaterial derived from urban waste. The production method for this panel is 3D printing, since with this production method changing demands can be met.

In this thesis six experiments are executed regarding the development of a printable material from urban waste, the sound absorbing properties of the designed panel and 3D printing. To create a printable paste from urban waste, a couple of urban waste materials have been reviewed. Brewery’s grain came out as the most promising growth medium for mycelium. This material is mixed with flour and water to create a printable paste.

The impedance tube B&K 4206 is used to discover the acoustic properties. For the 3D printing a UR5 robot in combination with a LDM WASP extruder 3.0 XL is used. To control the robot movement, Rhino with Grasshopper in combination with the plug-in Robots is used. For understanding the acoustic behavior of the panels, multiple variables regarding printing and design parameters have been tested.

The final product of this research is a 3D printed panel which can be made with a mixture of brewery’s grain, all-purposes flour, water, and mycelium from the Pleurotus.

Redesigning from the permanent, in which the people using the building need to be more adaptable instead of designing a flexible building was the starting point for this graduation project. Therefore the following research question has been formulated: How could the space plan of a monument like the Koudenhorn be redesigned to accommodate changes in use over time?

Designing a building for the future means giving a definitive form to something for an unpredictable amount of time. One could say that the task given to architects is to design buildings that are constantly subject to change. Taking this into account, adaptability is one of the keywords coming to mind when facing the unpredictable. Therefore it was the aim to conduct research into redesigning a space plan in such a way that it can accommodate changes in use over time.

This project is part of the graduation studio Vacant Heritage of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology. The ongoing research and design processes of this graduation project are documented in the project journal.

How will we live together? With this graduation project a strategy has been developed to transform vacant heritage into cyclifiers, buildings that have a positive impact on their environment by creating a way of living together in balance with nature, humans, and buildings. Social public functions with a focus on healthy living, as well as a wide variety of housing types, create social interaction and the possibility for personal growth within the building. The concept of urban metabolism has been used in order to define and close cycles, on both the building scale as well as the surrounding neighborhood scale. In this way, a heritage project is created that has a positive impact on its environment.

The deficit of suitable housing in the Netherlands is increasing, while the vacancy rate of office buildings and other non-residential buildings is high.
Transforming these vacant buildings is a sustainable and smart method to meet the housing demand. In order to transform buildings properly, their values need to be taken into account. In heritage preservation, a continuous and recurring question is how to determine values worth preserving. This paper focusses specifically on the valuation of layering of time and the importance of this valuation related to the preservation of heritage. Using the police headquarters in Rotterdam as a case study to provide a framework for future use to value the layering of time in heritage buildings. Answering the research question: How does the layering of time express itself in the facades of the police headquarters in Rotterdam, and how does it influence the perception of the building?
The tangible layering of time from the van der Steur period is only still visible in the proportions of the facades. The tangible layering of time of the redesign from Struijs are mostly valued by their concepts. The intangible layering of time is only made tangible in the current building in the memorial points. There is an opportunity to make the intangible layering of time more tangible in a new intervention to the building, using the valuation of this paper.

The project “Activating the glass box” aims to find out how the existing built heritage can be not an obstacle, but the key to the comprehensive dense city of the near future. It showcases the contextual design approach and opportunities for the unlisted 50’s-60’s international style office buildings - “glass boxes”- whose potential is not yet widely seen today, especially in the context of densification. The project puts a focus on a building’s adaptability for different future uses as a resilient solution to urban densification.

The vacant former police office building at Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam has become a testing ground to find guidelines for dealing with an existing building and reviving it for as long as possible.

This project is a part of the Adapting 20th century heritage studio that deals with vacant police buildings in the Netherlands. The police want to adapt their real estate to the new organization and the changed structure of the services, with larger teams, in fewer places, and more digital presence. This reorientation to denser locations is also taking place outside of police institutions on a larger scale, both nationally and globally. It is estimated that by 2050 nearly 7 out of 10 people in the world will live in cities. Denser construction reduces transit emissions by adding more stories and provides more livable and usable area in the same amount of space.

With my research, I was looking for ways this site could contribute to the future challenges of densification in central Rotterdam. There are 4 scales of impact this building could have: urban, architectural/heritage, social, and technical. The strategy of each scale developed for this building is an outcome of the research.

On the urban scale, the building is to become a landmark for the street and have an active and inviting plinth. Regarding the architectural/heritage scale, the majority of the original building is reused, recreating the original lobby, and a new extension on top is introduced. New functions - restaurant, cooking school, shop, urban farm, co-living and roof terrace with rentable bar for celebrations - will have a positive socio-cultural impact, providing locals with fresh food, education, job opportunities and making the neighbourhood more inclusive. Adaptability for different uses over time will be introduced on the technical scale by implementing Open Building principles and introducing new, more spacious, vertical circulation cores in the places of the existing ones. The project’s flexibility limits were tested. For this reason, four subjects were looked at in more depth: program, storey height & installations, raised floor and the facade, yielding interesting findings.

To conlcude, this adaptive reuse project introduces the abovementioned solutions as a strategy that addresses impact on the urban, architectural/heritage, social, and technical scales. The design’s goal is to activate the building, guaranteeing its long lifespan by re-connecting it with the street, introducing environmentally and socially impactful program, establishing an architectural landmark, all while implementing adaptability for different future uses.

This project explores sustainable redevelopment strategies for vacant heritage. It explores the opportunities for stakeholder participation in heritage activities, the importance of which is stressed by, i.e., UNESCO, the Faro Convention, and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. The project experiments an innovative systematic approach for heritage façade redesign, filling the academic gap between participatory design approaches and heritage building redesign. It employs a combination of methods structured by sets of divergent and convergent phases. Innovative methods of cognitive mapping and 2,5D model game are tested in the research respectively for inquiry and design testing, the two key participatory stages. The research outcomes include locals' initial perceptions and remembrance of the site. The key findings are the common ground and reasons in their scenario preferences, which lead to the final redesign on creating Sensitive Surface, Inclusive Core, and Attentive Home. In this way, the redesign meets locals' functional, spatial, and psychological demands, thus being well perceived and inteprete by them. Locals would like to come to the site, meet others, and enjoy themselves. The isolated building would then be transformed into a great joint in the community, maximising the social and community values.

Window openings allow communication between the interior and the exterior, but they are also elements that allow the user to control several aspects such as the light, sound, air, and privacy. Although people spend a great time inside, windows do have a strong relationship with the outdoor space and can influence a building’s openness or closeness. This relation has changed during the years with the introduction of new window opening types. (Orvell & Meikle, 2009). When referring to openness it cannot be thought about as visual transparency alone. In fact, it is related to all senses. It can be seen as the medium to regulate the functional between interior and exterior.” (Ayoub & Koba Yashi, 2001). This paper is part of the graduation studio Revitalising 20th century Heritage, aims to research the
process of assessment of the role the window openings present in the three buildings of the Rotterdam Harbour Police station play in defining the building’s openness or closeness. This research is positioned in larger research on how window openings help define a building’s openness or closeness towards the surroundings and creating a helpful ‘design options palette’ when having to intervene in a building’s openness or closeness. The research concludes that most of the windows present in the oldest building present a high openness, as well as in the 1994 building. On the contrary, the 1940 building presents window typologies with a high closeness. However, this research needs to be further developed in relation to other elements.

Concerning the built environment, some spaces in and around buildings symbolise the edge and intercommunication between two opposites and are therefore difficult to define. These so-called in-between spaces represent a threshold between polarities, such as inside and outside or private and public. The Harbour Police Station in Rotterdam consists of three buildings and has multiple inbetween spaces, which include several entrances, doorsteps, windows, dormers, balconies, and a fenced perimeter. Since the new program will be more publicly oriented, the in-between spaces of the redesign need to attract passers-by, rather than obstructing them. Based on literature, archival drawings, personal observations and questionnaires, the influence of the materiality on the perception of in-between spaces is analyzed. Accordingly, the human perception of a building façade, entrance or window that attract passers-by can be expressed through perceptive descriptive qualities such as friendly, inviting, and pleasant. The research shows that this is influenced by the warmth, openness, and lightness of the in-between spaces. A warm materiality is perceived as pleasant and comforting and it indirectly excites to go inside. Furthermore, either big or many openings will create a more transparent building, that matches with public functions. Namely, the function should be clear on the outside. In line with this, an open façade and enough lighting contribute to a better visibility and draw attention to the building and its interior. Accordingly, it is particularly important that one can easily understand where and how one can enter. In summary, the materiality of the inbetween spaces contributes to the experience of the appearance and the perceived function of the building. In the case of attracting buildings, the inbetween spaces should be represented by clear accessible entrances, multiple or large windows, and warm colours, materials, and lighting.