In a world that is constantly changing, architecture and the building practice are typically rigid and static. The landscape architecture approach inherently copes with dynamics. The notions of palimpsest and process are explored regarding the case studies of river Aire, Marker Wadden and park Frankendael. These principles are translated to architecture, specifically to the transformation of existing buildings. The theory is combined with research on contemporary building practices, such as site-derived architecture, wabi-sabi, adaptive reuse and building for uncertainty. The case of Keileweg 26-28 is used to explore the research findings by design. The half-vacant building has an eventful history and a variety of actors. This results in a building that grounds on the palimpsest, embraces decay and has space for life and unpredictability.
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As space missions become longer and more complex, the psychological impact of isolation and confinement increases, making the support of astronauts’ mental health increasingly important. This thesis investigates how to design an analog habitat that creates a spatial experience supporting psychological well-being.

Analog habitats, Earth-based facilities for isolation training, already prepare astronauts for the confined living and working conditions of future missions. However, in this project, they are also approached as experimental platforms for testing architectural strategies that would be difficult to pursue in space.

Privacy and stimulation are selected as two key challenges because spatial conditions strongly shape them. Design experiments explore how architecture can respond to these challenges.

The thesis shows that architecture can balance practical requirements and psychological effects in isolated and confined spaces, turning these tensions into a supportive spatial experience. Three design proposals explore different design responses to privacy and stimulation, from the overall organization of the habitat to the reinterpretation of basic architectural elements. Across the proposals, textiles emerge as particularly promising for future analog missions and space habitats because they are lightweight, adaptable, and currently underused in space missions.

The next step would be to develop the proposals into full-scale prototypes and evaluate them during inhabited analog missions, using existing isolation environments as a baseline. Such testing would examine whether the design strategies developed through the proposals produce meaningful effects on well-being when inhabited. The findings could contribute to future space habitats, and potentially expand architectural knowledge for Earth-based environments shaped by isolation or confinement. By using the analog habitat as an extreme case, the thesis also informs architectural education by suggesting that the psychological effects of spatial decisions should be considered throughout the design process. ... Read more

The lack of connection between the city and the Manzanares riverbank represents the project’s exoskeleton. The use of the Manzanares as a laundry historically and the metaphorical use of today expose issues related to the relationship between the water, its use and its connection to the city’s inhabitants. Approaching the topic from the water’s point of view, it unfolds along its multiple courses as a narrative thread unveiling its arcs, which all resolve in the Manzanares river. The site location has been selected according to the historical importance and only few soft boundaries between hard borders created along the river by the underground M30 highway. The lack of connection to the river of Manzanares could also signify a detachment to one’s own unconscious according to Jung’s theory regarding water as a metaphor for the stream of the unconscious. According to Peter Sloterdijk architects are designers of immersion. For humans, one of the most primal forms of it is the immersion into water.

One of the most obvious yet unexplored and historically overlooked promenades is the Manzanares river in Madrid. The project represents a set of architectural interventions along the riverbank that create new links to the city while also proposing continuation of the . Choosing the area around the Segovia bridge as the main site for unveiling the connection to the water as is linked to the historical importance of the bridge crossing, to the physical connection to underwater stormwater tanks and a tangential point between the city of Madrid and the river. While the M30 highway is hidden under the new MadridRIO project and has represented a rejuvenation of the riverbank, it also created a hard border that delimitates the river from the city and the experience of it. An exception of this issue represents the area around the Segovia bridge where, due to engineering issues and previous urban planning, the Manzanares could essential break free and explore the soft boundaries that a riverbed can offer to the city. ... Read more

The thesis challenges conventional notions of the social and explores the intricate relationship between humans and the imminent commons. It confronts the consequences of neglecting the imminent commons (water, earth, air) in urban environments, urging a re-evaluation of design principles. The research reveals ecological risks from prioritizing human desires in land use and proposes innovative solutions in the agri-food system to bridge rural-urban divides with the main research question how can architectural intervention through productive landscapes bridge the gap between city and land, people and food? Advocating for sustainable cities, it highlights the reliance of London on an unsustainable global food network. The project reimagines the Newham city farm, which happens to be a part of the Beckton Park redevelopment Plan. By challenging commodity-driven perspectives, the design explores the intrinsic eco-social value of land and the detrimental impact of unsustainable agriculture and food miles as it focuses on the interplay of material and immaterial flows in our daily lives, with design shaping our interactions with the environment.

The design aims to reconnect the social and ecological aspects through productive landscapes as it establishes three pillars: productive landscapes as social spaces, restoring the experiential connection to land, and fostering eco-social production, paving the way for a sustainable future. ... Read more

Preconceived notions about the scope of architecture and its definition as a purely spatial dimension produced or analysed through one-to-one translated two-dimensional images and drawings do not convey the true experience of space. It lacks movements, emotions, human activities, memories, experiences and perceptions. Perceptions that transcend vision, however, are more of an issue for the film industry, which strives to provide sensory experiences for the immobile viewer. This study asks questions about experiential space, explores modes of narration, questions sequence, time, and spaces, and attempts to define it through theories that intersect with film and architecture. Ultimately, the reading of cities, typologies, and design approaches is based on the accepted value system inherent in the entire research, which is defined as "cinematic architecture". It demonstrates, through material examples, that certain architectural ensembles due to their spatial and ideological configuration can be more cinematic than others. On the other hand, also London was analysed with these acquired lenses.
Urban stories of metropolises, especially the ones like London, which have gone through various phases of destruction, show a constantly changing, dynamic character. This character allows us to consider the city in terms of narratives and scenarios rather than as a fixed city image. Especially in the period of urban change in post-war London, the utopian idea of connecting the city through elevated walkways is a focus of this study due to its experimental nature, morphology, and ideology associated with "cinematic architecture". Had the walkways been fully realized, the structure would have been a means to experience a city from a particular vantage point, located at the high level of the city. But the disconnect between the remaining pedways and their fragmentary quality is also an opportunity to think about complementary stories. The unfinished quality of these structures allows us to pose the "What if?" question. What are the events and emotions this kind of typology which is neither a building nor a landscape could trigger? How can elevated walkways narrate London`s story and redefine its identity through a visual and emotional connection to the city?
Based on the theoretical framework, these structures became a testing ground to show the subjectivity of perception using a method derived from Bernard Tschumi's manifesto "Manhattan Transcripts”. This test was expected to show how the fragmental approach to the architectural entity, similar to framed film images can narrate a story that each reader as each viewer can derive its own meaning. The design resulted in an intervention montaged into the city view of Blackfriars, where one of the leftover pedways is located. Its program is shaped based on the actions that these spatial, and urban qualities generate. As if the actions of viewing, walking, and performing carved a space for their movements.
All in all, the research consists of the theories that define "cinematic architecture," the testing of the theory, and the application of the theory that is the design proposal.
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Urban foodscapes project addresses issues concerning the food supply chain in London. It aims to combat problems created by current agri-business practice such as long, complex logistical chains, food waste, carbon emissions, wasted water, energy, labour and land scarcity. Foodscape, being both global and local, lies on the intersection of multiple material and immaterial flows, therefore the problems it creates cannot be solved by one discipline alone. The research unfolds the most pressing issues concerning the food supply chain and proposed urban strategy attempts to find ways to improve the system by integrating social and technological aspects to close food-related material and immaterial loops by looking into urban synergies to limit the waste of resources and create new social opportunities that will constitute a framework for the future projects of this kind. ... Read more

When the British arrived in the colonial countries, they had the opportunity to adapt the architecture of the local culture to their needs, but centuries later, when the ethnic groups arrived in “postcolonial” London, they did not have the opportunity to have a manifest effect on the built environment and neither the development of the city consider this situation as a problem to tackle. Today, years into the process of decolonization, the situation is still not much different. This occidental acceptance of people separated from their way of living, their culture reflected in the urban structure, creates the hybrid urban environment that hides the existence of different cultures. This oxymoronic thinking concerning diversity creates the complex mechanism of merging cultures, backgrounds, and customs and hides everything different or other. As a result of this situation, it is possible to point toward placeless cultures in the city of London. People or locations that are culturally significant without any material or immaterial connection to their urban surroundings. They maybe are located in the cartesian urban space of London, but they are placeless in the imaginary and mental view of the city. We need to abandon the occidental approach in architecture as we develop our neighborhoods to create a city that belongs to everybody and nobody, to create a city where everything is placeless and placeness.

The design is composed of 3 connected layers of togetherness with different levels of publicness which I categorize as communality, commensality, and conviviality. While communality of the project is completely public, the publicness of the building decreases with commensality and conviviality but still keeps the aspect of togetherness. They are not completely separated, on the contrary, they feed on each other. The layers of the project bridge with each other in different ways. This connection happens, either by the literal circulation of people and goods or by other means such as the visual connection or change in temporality. Hence the design pushes people to gather not only through planned encounters with the program it offers but also through incidental encounters that happen along the connections of different functions.
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London is the product of hundreds of big and smaller cities and villages that collided, merged and blended during the course of time. Each of these places used to have its own Highstreet, the commercial and social heart of the settlement. Contemporary London now has 600 former High streets; scattered all over London’s perimeters. These Highstreets are without doubt diverse, but do share common characteristics, contemporary challenges and opportunities. Exploring these facets we might discover a new canvas for the London urbanist and architect to draw on; impacting London throughout. Highstreets are divers and most certainly every single one is different from the others. But it is possible to distinguish types. The connected high street chains many historical settlements that now form London its outer boroughs and connects them which the center of the city. These high streets have a dual character being both mobile and social/commercial centers for the city its boroughs. However, as London has grown to become the metropole as we know it, mobility increases to impede the social functionality of the connected high street. Decreasing mobility does not seem a reasonable solution. Rather, the imperfect edges, transitional areas and left-over pockets that typify high streets like the Tottenham high street can be used to reposition the high street making it a interactional and social public space. ... Read more

In London street art is still formally perceived as an act of anti-social behaviour while it gains more and more acceptance and admiration by people. The fact that it remains illegal means a great wasted potential of inhabitants’ creativity and will to participate in creating public spaces. While street art may mark places that are neglected or struggling with some socio-spatial issues, it points also those where locally there is a lack of space for individuals’ self-expression. Being informal and spontaneous rearrangement of urban scape, it is a manifestation of tension between public and private in the street. It might be perceived as an argument in claiming for more democratic public spaces. The goal of the research is to learn how the socio-philosophical space is being produced and what position in the process of creating and rearranging urban places street art takes. To achieve that there were analysis conducted to gained knowledge about street art – to find places where it appears, to determine crucial material and immaterial parts of public spaces that are essential for the phenomenon, to establish relations between artworks and with other elements of the street, and finally, to recognise what are the features and individual characteristics of street art. The conclusions made during the research would be a backbone for the process of designing the architectural space in the spirit of street art. Having developed transposition of the gained knowledge into the code of architecture, there would be a proper site chosen and an architectural programme developed to fully exploit social potential represented by street art. The design might initiate re-defining the term of gentrification and make a contribution in the process of democratisation public space. ... Read more

London’s ambiguous edges have turned into an area of negligence as they are simply not considered anyone’s responsibility. Its final ends are places where allocated amenities considered as burdens can no longer be pushed further outwards. However, simultaneously, it is where Londoners take advantage of this negligence and escape the city to answer their own alternative needs and desires themselves. Together these actions result in an edge condition where we no longer recognize the city, but yet, it is the only place that confronts us with what the city really is. It is a place of both belonging and estrangement. This project explores an alternative approach to the current undirected piecemeal development that is taking place, by objectifying the conflict with London’s ambiguous edges. Thereby, the architecture of the edge becomes the physical encounter of the psycho- geographic condition, and aims to activate the heterogeneous zone through a more responsible way of building. It does not question the condition, nor takes a position in the ongoing debate about the future of it, but addresses its articulation through a series of fragmented interventions as part of an open-ended strategy. ... Read more

On June 14 in 2017, 72 people lost their lives and hundreds of families were left homeless as the Grenfell tower block caught fire in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea within the inner-city of London. The tragedy has shaken the society, highlighting the conflict between privileged and unprivileged within the city’s society, as most of the victims were ethnic minorities living below the poverty line. The research aims to analyze and unfold the underlaying issues relating to the fire, looking at the social as well as spatial condition of the Grenfell Tower’s surrounding area. The research draws upon Charles Booth’s poverty maps from over a century ago as well as current Deprivation maps and Space Syntax theories, intending to understand the geometry of poverty in the city. Through the specific case of the Tower fire, the relationship between social and spatial tension will be addressed. Eventually, this paper also suggests an architectural intervention, in the form of a memorial on the authentic site of the fire. The design solution could hopefully bring justice to the people affected by the fire and point the society towards hope again. ... Read more

Every human being is driven towards creating its own bubble, self-contained worlds, islands. It can be equally seen on the urban level where this insular condition is a proliferating phenomenon. The contemporary city is characterized by the widespread propension of certain metropolitan fragments to detach themselves from their continuum of the city. Driven by the increasing dependency on logistics, this condition becomes a globalized urban form. It tends to become the privileged form of spatial organization in the contemporary city. Ports being its most accomplished version, by their monumentality, radicality and juxtaposition with the city. They tend to become territorial exceptions, ground exceptions, urbanization exceptions, time exceptions and legal exceptions at the heart of the city.

This is particularly visible in the cities neighbouring the port of Pireas, that has for some years been the site of an impressive transformation since the port was acquired by the Chinese. Since then, the port grows exponentially with the ambition to become the main commercial door to Europe for Asian importations. To accommodate ever more docks, the port progressively cannibalizes any available coastline. Gradually, the city finds itself encapsulated, trapped and asphyxiated by a large infrastructural barrier, without any access to the sea. The ports, supposed to be windows on the worlds become constrictive elements. The city of islands is at risk of becoming a city of conflicts. We need to find ways of diffusing that tension.

This project suggests an aggressive welcome to the urban condition created by the port while proposing to reclaim Pireas’ relationship with the seaboard. As the waterfront of the cities is turning into an infrastructural product, the new boardwalks may become perpendicular lines. This project investigates this hypothesis. It thus proposes a perforation through the infrastructural barrier from town to sea in an underused interstitial space of the port. It invites us to re-imagine the spatial relationships between architecture, landscape, energy and infrastructure in ports. ... Read more

Technological advances over the past centuries have greatly improved our quality of life. However, when we look at historical centres with their vernacular buildings, we seem to prefer them to the modern ones. According to Amos Rapoport there are three types of societies; primitive, vernacular and the modern. Each of these societies operates in such a fundamentally different way that we cannot understand their architectural differences just by comparing their looks. We need to delve into the characteristics of these societies to understand the different appearances (Rapoport, 1969). Materials could suddenly come from everywhere and building components were standardised because of mass-production (Salingaros, 2014). The buildings became more anonymous and less an expression of the place (Golden, 2012). The relationship to nature changed, modern society went from a symbiosis to a dominating role in which it exhausts nature and creates waste and toxins. Gradually, society is discovering the negative sides of this industrial efficiency. With the upswing of sustainability awareness we recognise that our ‘throwaway society’ is no longer acceptable (Chapman, 2015). We demolish recent buildings that seem to be fine and there is a growing number of vacant office buildings (Gemeente Amsterdam, 2013). At the same time there is a shortage of housing, but demand and supply do not seem to match because there is a lack of flexibility and attractiveness. To prevent future vacancy we need to focus on transforming the office areas into mixed-use urban areas instead of mono-residential areas. In redevelopment, there are many considerations what to maintain and what to demolish. How few interventions can we do to achieve this intended quality? How can we reintroduce attractive vernacular qualities in existing office buildings to transform them into attractive, vibrant, multifunctional and resilient urban areas? Through the research, I discovered three issues with modern society's approach to building, resulting in three design objectives: AESTHETICS | Creating lively, local and personal facades. FUNCTION | Making change in function and preferences possible. TECHNOLOGY | Using biodegradable materials. ... Read more