Tourism has been more than ever integrated into a global chain and accessible worldwide. This planetary reach allowed small villages in pristine territories to be independent from the eyes of the extractivist industries and included in the economic development plans for the first time. However, this economic opportunity served as an instrumentalised discourse and exposed these areas to extended urbanisation, unsolicited industries and new forms of exploitation. This research delves into the multifaceted aspects of the tourism paradox: exploring the inherent link between tourism and infrastructure, including its impact on extended urbanisation, cultural-environmental exploitation, degradation and preservation opportunities.

With a specific emphasis on the indigenous riverine village of Alter do Chão in the Brazilian Amazon Forest, this research follows two main argumentative frames: It examines (1) the notion of tourism under the lenses of colonisation, to discuss accessibility and present the methods, designs and practicalities in which infrastructural development is implemented. Then, it advocates for (2) viewing the Amazon as an Altered Nature to explore the ongoing agency of local communities in the region. Finally, the project proposes alternative strategies for territorial planning, design and management, aimed at benefiting from the tourism industry to leverage agency and preservation of cultural and traditional practices.

Water has historically been the centre of human civilisation, with rivers serving as crucial sources of sustenance for daily life. Nevertheless, the recent multicultural impact on urban development has fundamentally transformed the perception of the river and led to its contamination due to the discharge of industrial and household trash. In Indonesia, urbanisation has caused the river to become a damaged geographical area, resulting in pollution and its misuse as a dumping ground. Contaminated rivers progressively pollute reservoir basins and risk the subsurface water aquifer, which serves as a source of residential water from wells. Furthermore, while the river possesses inherent purifying capabilities, it is unable to break down plastic effectively and instead releases microplastics into the sea, where humans and aquatic life subsequently ingest them.

The recognition of climate change and ecological crises in this Anthropocene period necessitates a profound and fundamental transformation in both tangible and intangible aspects. Hence, it is imperative to prioritise spatial modification and physical intervention with the utilisation of macro and micro territorial approaches, a comprehensive investigation of Java, particularly Yogyakarta’s river dynamics, can be conducted to gain a precise understanding of its inherent qualities. This research observed the ability to facilitate the recognition of its rights and enhance the intricate relationship between the river and human beings, in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of its characteristics and potential implications. Ascertain the spatial changes and physical impact caused by architecture, landscape, and urbanism that can contribute to the restoration of the river’s rights through borderscaping the territory.

The continuous immigration around the world increases ethnic diversity in major
cities. At the same time, the growing population, urbanization, and crowding in cities negatively impact well-being, bringing to the forefront the need for integrating restorative environments. In the context of multi-ethnic cities, there is a pressing need for integration to foster social cohesion and well-being. This thesis challenges these issues, with a case study of South Rotterdam, an ethnically segregated multi-ethnic area, with the reported need for improved quality of public space, safer urban environments, and opportunities for developing trust among residents. This thesis illustrates a methodology for designing public spaces that promote ethnic diversity by stimulating inter-ethnic social interaction in restorative environments.
I approach this assignment by proposing a network of public spaces that encourages participation in public life to stimulate social interaction, improving the social cohesion and well-being of residents in the area. To develop the network, I introduced a multi-method approach in both research and design, by integrating computational tools for urban design. Bringing together three disciplines, urban design, landscape architecture, and urban analytics, I propounded specific design strategies for the formation of the network and
the transformation of public space, toward inclusive restorative landscapes that promote diversity.
The outcomes of this project determined that implementing multi-methods approaches in urban design requires careful consideration and acknowledgment of the extent to which each method can be applied. However, there is great potential in advancing knowledge through different perspectives and creating innovative methodologies to approach such projects.
Finally, public space design has a promising opportunity to accommodate places that bring people together and increase feelings of belonging and trust, while embracing diversity. By reimagining the value of the street, I illustrate a strengthened public space that accommodates diverse activities in South Rotterdam, enhancing shared spaces and identity expression in public spaces.

Venice and its lagoon are a place where the imaginary and the legends of man and water are thriving.
It is a place of profound history of cohabitation and victory, where time and movement have a different definition for people than in other parts of the world. It is the urban and landscape archetype of close co-existence between the domain of inland and seaward territories.
People, culture, and traditions always remembered and respected the legend of Venice and its creation, understanding the delicate boundaries and the frontiers of encounter between inland and seaward, preserving the reached balance between them and the population sustained on it.
Nevertheless, it is possible to notice that at a certain moment, the urge of becoming modern prevailed on the equilibrium between the two domains. The need for civil society and a global view on what cities should be, brought distance between inland and seaward while letting people forget the legend of Venice.
We could say that Venice always retaliated its own identity to itself and the rest of the world, modifying its description from maritime independent power, to artistic cradle of revolutionary ideas, to petrol-chemical industrial force, to mass-consumption product. Its definition came always from within, while now, with the approach of the climate crisis, for the first time Venice must deal with powerful externalities which are going to consequently redefine the Venetian identity from the outside.
This research by design tries to remember the legend of Venice of co-existence and adaptation to its landscape, finding new possible anatomy based on the binding of Inland and seaward pressed by the climate crisis worst-case scenarios.

The Cyprus island(s) of 2022 is divided into the North and South sides, on the Turkish and Greek sides, since the war of 1974. 47 years of an intentional post-conflict (bio)political process of erasure of the pre-war shared identity between Orthodox and Muslims that leads to a series of critical socio-cultural and environmental conditions. In order to counteract the impacts of this monologue, the project proposes a process of harvesting, decomposing, and reintroducing the components of past shared identity, between the traces of a post-conflict vilified territory. So, following this process, a series of care protocols exemplify an alternative way of occupation the settlement and the landscape of these kinds of territories, for the future. The notions of time, exchange, and attachment are the key elements of these alter-protocols.
This paradigm is being assembled based on a cultural identity that is built during the years and constant current experimentation (scientific or not). An action, and reaction between human entities and other ecological elements following a biodynamic calendar. So, the protocols’ times are both linear and circular, with the random times of events revealing another kind of interrelation between the multiple components. Furthermore, it acts on an “ownerless” land, which obtains different agencies during this process. It is the shelters’ land, the survival land, the shared land, or the human-less land. The actors build their shelter, live collectively, and work with the landscape in order to co-create but also develop the paradigm of symbiosis. This system is accessible seeking to influence local actors and visitors. So, the permanent actor hosts an ephemeral actor in order to co-create together, products and art, temporarily integrating them into a new way of life. This is an expanding process, as the ephemeral visitor becomes permanent and the paradigm is embraced by more actors.

Over the years, the Anthropocentric societies are to blame for the problematic urban environments they have created. Within the current paradigm, our destructive behavior towards the natural environment has caused a major decline in biodiversity. To restore the ecology in our contemporary urban environment, we require a turning strategy. This is where the Third Generation city framework emerges: a city aiming to learn from the mistakes made in the urban environment, followed by restoring them. Within the spectrum of restoration, it aims to restore the natural environment & creating ecocentric mindsets.
Due to their post-anthropocentric characteristics, brownfields can be seen as the seeds for the Third generation city, as wildlife often returns to these sites due to the absence of human activity. Therefore this thesis introduces architecture as a regenerative act toward the socio-environmental context of these brownfields. In one of London's most socio-environmental deprived areas, the representative brownfield development aims to actively regenerate the deprived neighborhood, becoming a statement in the city as a learning center. Here, visitors & local communities can learn how to support London Ecosystem with the effect of stimulating Ecocentric mindsets, while the design & material conditions of the architecture simultaneously stimulate the ecological development of the brownfield site.
Multiple of these ecological brownfield developments can influence the larger urban organism and become the driver toward an Ecocentric, Third generation London, restoring the balance with the Anthropocentric urban environment.

The Tietê River Basin, in the State of São Paulo, Brazil, has been shaped throughout centuries into a highly-industrialized agriculture landscape. Originally almost entirely covered by the Atlantic Rainforest, a rich tropical biome that stretches through most of the Brazilian eastern coast, the basin is now mostly covered by urbanized landscapes, associated with spaces of intense production. First heavily altered by the coffee economic cycles during the 19 and 20th centuries, the Basin has since then been deprived of most of its natural ecological conditions and has lost its ability to regulate and support ecological cycles in this region of southeastern Brazil. Since the 2000s the basin has been going through a process of specialization in the plantation of sugar-cane by extensive monocultures, mostly for biofuels production (alongside the rest of the hinterland of the State of São Paulo). The sterilization of the land and changes in land-use patterns across the region and other neighboring areas by industrial agriculture (such as the Amazon and Atlantic forests) are disrupting to micro and macroclimates, and the effect of such intense exploitation of the soil is already clearly noted in the form of catastrophes. Some of the countless externalities observed in the region are shifting rainfall patterns across the continent, heatwaves, cold spells, wildfires, and issues directly related to health, cause by, among other reasons, the intensive use of pesticides in the latifundia. As the new climate conditions increasingly become a reality, conventional land use patterns must be challenged. Natural resources and the capacity of natural systems to bounce back must be protected. Looking for possibilities of economic stability, in synch with the environment and welfare through the creation of new production systems, distributing the gains and burdens of climate change are among the goals of the project. A literature review, a series of cartographies, and research through design are some of the methods chosen as an attempt to research ways in which the peri-urban landscape of the State of São Paulo can change during the upcoming decades. This project arguments for the necessity of revaluation of the current pivots of the Paulista economy, currently based on the accumulation of wealth by extractive industries and agriculture, and what changes to the urban and peri-urban fabric would be necessary to accommodate this shift.

At a fast pace, the urbanization level is increasing worldwide and the projections indicate that 2/3 of the population will be living in urban environments by 2050. This implies many concerns, more population and urbanization, nowadays, are directly translated to more consumption counting to the inflated orb that lingers all the climate changes matter. The Built environment is directly connected to most of the damage caused by global warming, counting at least 1/3 of the total emissions.

Urbanization brings a series of problems that make the subject more complex and a sensitive topic that accelerates the global warming effect is the devastation and the conflict of the urban, opposing and dominating the green and blue territories. Recent research has analyzed and noted that the overall quality, and quantity of nature, encompassing fauna and flora are decreasing worldwide. In the Netherlands, since urbanization started to take place and dominate the lands, nature has reduced to approximately 15% of its original state, and with that, a chain of reaction emerges. Humans, by making nature grey, are leading to a general complete problem that confines the entire earth’s balance in terms of ecology: fewer species, and less variety of flora, conducting to other kinds of crisis, such as food, air, water, and weather.

Recent efforts are displaying that the urban lands, apart from being the human biotope, should encompass and blend with the natural environment. For that is necessary to change current scenarios and also consider bringing nature into the design process, which can cause a myriad of benefits and revert the damage that has already been placed. Simply balancing and offering more space for fauna and flora in the cities, the biodiversity can take its path of growing again, not only that, but combining a set of strategies could likewise be used to improve the life quality in the cities, managing weather and lessening the weather stress, and by that, mitigating the effects of the climate changes.

The Baltic Sea region is facing multiple ecological and socio-economic challenges that will significantly influence the coastal communities and habitation on the coastline in the future. Eutrophication, decline of fish resources, climate crisis, and sea-level rise are the effect of irreversible anthropogenic actions in the region, which demand to rethink how the sea and territories around it are used now and can be adapted to ensure sustainable development and healthy marine and coastal ecosystems in the future. Besides the environmental challenges in the region, coastal territories along the Gulf of Riga are also experiencing socio-economic restructuring due to a decades-long population decline that is projected to continue in the future. However, in the existing planning documents and development projects the notion of shrinkage and climate adaptation is underrepresented, questioning the acceptance of these irreversible, yet unpredictable processes. Considering these specific local conditions, the adaptation of the existing habitation patterns on the coastline of the Gulf of Riga asks for a specific approach that not only considers the long-term impacts on the natural processes and ecosystems, but also takes into account the depopulation, possible challenges of long-term maintenance and use of these spaces, and the strong cultural connection with nature. The thesis proposes an approach on how to address the climate crisis and shrinkage on the coastline of the Gulf of Riga by using the acceptance of the physical and socio-economic erasure of the coastline as spatial planning and design tool. This approach allows reconceptualizing the notion of sedimentation, discovering and using local material and non-material anthropogenic sediments as the main design elements in the transition of the coastal surface. The multi-scalar design projection envisions the possible transformation towards sustainable degrowth in the region of the Western coast of the Gulf of Riga and shows this transition on an urban scale in the coastal village of Roja. By reinventing the economic activities in the port towards more localized resource use, it is possible to maintain the port infrastructure and provide economic possibilities for the remaining inhabitants. However, the erosion along Krasta street and population decline will continue in the future. As the erasure is happening in a long period of time, the local inhabitants need time to adapt, therefore the project composition along Krasta street in Roja proposes infrastructure and landscape elements to be finite, deteriorate in the landscape, and have a significant cultural meaning. By not intervening in this process and transforming previously inhabited spaces along the coast it is possible to transition towards a more natural coastal landscape with specific anthropogenic material sediments that perform as a reminder of human actions in past.

Ori-act is a toolbox using the principles of origami and cnc milling in order to provide inhabitants of depreciated neighborhoods in Rotterdam the means to build a physical platform to carry out their initiatives to reactivate their neighborhood.