The goal of the municipality of Amsterdam is to build 150.000 houses before 2050 within the borders of Amsterdam, combined with the growing number of loneliness in Amsterdam, could result in both mental health problems and social problems. When these new houses are not planned properly, the quality of living in Amsterdam will drastically lower. Due to these problems, this research will focus on the relationship between neighbours and residents of large-scale city blocks. This will be done by researching and improving the social interaction between neighbours to lower the levels of loneliness and ensure a feeling of ‘home’ within a large-scale city block. The main research question will therefore be: How can large-scale city blocks be improved to create more opportunities for social interaction between neighbours?”. Ultimately, this research aims to find design guidelines that can be used to design a large-scale city block without undermining the unique qualities of the project.
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In the past the main focus within the world of real estate was on energy performance; a lot of high quality insulation, many solar panels and a super heat pump make sure the BENG-requirements are met. However since we are achieving the BENG more and more easily nowadays, another aspect is becoming increasingly important: the environmental performance. From 2025 residential buildings have to meet an MPG-value of 0.5 €/m2.year, which is expected to be definitely doable for most of them, except for apartment buildings. In the near future the designs of apartment buildings need to be adjusted to decrease the environmental effects caused by the materials during their whole lifecycle. This contains the replacement of familiar traditional materials like concrete for innovative biobased materials for example. Besides, these materials should no longer be demolished after 75 years, but be constructed demountable to make sure they can have a second life. Furthermore form factors will play an important role in this process; lower floor heights, bigger GFA’s and more efficiently shaped footprints are needed to receive the required environmental permit in the future. This report is about the feasibility of apartment buildings meeting an MPG-value of 0.5 €/m2.year and the consequences that go with the improvement strategies that are needed. ... Read more

Lebanon has been dealing with a multitude of challenges over its history. An massive port explosion in 2020 caused a rapid decline of the Lebanese valuta. The inflation caused an increase of the food prices with 400% since Lebanon is very depended on its food imports. This left people from lower income classes unable to afford proper nutrition. Ironically, the Lebanon is one of the most arable countries in the region, but the people lack the proper tools and knowledge to preform agriculture in a efficient and sustainable manner. In order to reduce the peoples dependence on the food prices, argriculture education is needed in the areas where the people suffer the most. Therefore, the project encompasses an agriculture campus which combines formal and vocational education. The school aims to teach it’s student about sustainable ways of doing agriculture in an urban setting, focusing on the enhancement of biodiversity. The campus hosts both primary and secondary education and teaches agriculture as the main addition to the general classes. ... Read more

During the past decade, durability and sustainability has become more and more important in the building industry. By using no steel reinforcement, which has with high carbon emission and is sensitivity to corrosion, the structure should have a longer life span with less maintenance and a lower carbon footprint.
To get more information on unreinforced concrete structures, a literature study is done, focused on old Roman structures made out of Roman concrete. Besides historic concrete, research is also done on modern concrete and its capacity.
The new bridge is designed for the "Hoofdvaart", a canal in the polder called, "Haarlemmermeer". The design consists of three arches are connecting the two abutments and two piers. In the connection of two arches, above the piers, so called flood openings are placed. Romans used flood openings to let water pass, but in this case they are used for the reduction of weight. Wooden piles form the foundation to the stiffer sand layers. Calculation of the design is done in a few steps. Firstly, the original design, as explained above, is calculated. Results show stresses, that are more than 7 times higher than the capacity of the concrete. The biggest contribution to the stresses are coming from self-weight and load model 1. Load model 1 is a heavy vehicle placed at the most unfavourable position of the bridge. Lowering self-weight is an option, but load model 1 has fixed values, so they cannot be lowered. Next, six optimizations are designed and calculated to create a structure that should fulfil the requirements. It turns out that the structure still exceeding the capacity by approximately 28%. After these optimizations can be concluded that for the given location, this design is not totally satisfying. To find out what contribution soil has to the structure, a few extra calculations are done for the last optimization. Based on overall calculations, the conclusion is that the top soil layers of the "Haarlemmermeer" are not capable of generating enough horizontal support for the unreinforced bridge. To finalize the design, a cost analysis and Life Cycle Analysis, LCA, are made. In both analysis a comparison is made between the new design and a reinforced bridge over the "Hoofdvaart" in "Nieuw-Vennep". The cost analysis show a difference of approximately "170.000,- in advantage of the new design. Especially the material costs of steel and pre-cast elements in the existing bridge, contribute to this difference. So an unreinforced structure has less labour and less material costs, compared to a reinforced structure. Of course this difference is also depending on the type of structure and the design. The LCA shows around 30% less carbon emission for the new unreinforced bridge, compared to the existing reinforced bridge. Especially material use and demolition contribute to this decrease. This shows that an unreinforced structure is 30 to 40% more sustainable than a reinforced structure.
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