Our notion of the public sphere is inherently tied to Western ideas of democracy, as the domain where political decisions are being debated. However, the implosion of official communism and the consequent neoliberal onslaught have fundamentally altered the conception of public space. The availability of space in which public roles can be performed has been drastically reduced, as large organisations strive for political compromises with the state and with each other excluding the public whenever possible. However, spaces near symbols of national importance are inherently charged with political meaning, allowing citizens to position their claims for or against their symbolic values.

In Tallinn, the castle on Toompea hill still accommodates political power (government offices and the parliament), and the conservational approach at this UNESCO world heritage site preserves the medieval hierarchies. The open spaces surrounding the Old Town – the ring of old fortifications - are allocated for recreational use only, including private, commercialized venues as the result of the privatization process in the 90s. Therefore, politically charged events happen elsewhere, detached from the venues of the formal public sphere which, I argue, constitutes a democratic deficit in spatial terms.

Stages of Democracy explores how the immediate vicinity of the Estonian Parliament can be transformed through architectural interventions to accommodate spaces appropriate for performative representation, proposing a novel approach to design public spaces in historically, culturally, and ecologically important locations.

The proposed design aims to build upon the traditions of the site rather than replacing them; nationalising the private sports fields opens the opportunity to add to its uses by providing an appropriable infrastructure for public events. The main architectural intervention is a new theatre, which provides a protected indoor environment for the square to remain usable all year round. Built along an existing retaining wall and partially carved into the hill, the building’s volume is carefully placed to minimise its impact both on the available space for public gatherings and the ecology of the site. The external appearance of the theatre is defined by a large colonnade, which grants the square its public essence. The retractable seating units of the auditorium can be rearranged for various stage layouts and can be rolled out between the columns onto the square for events. The roughly treated bricks of the facade form an interlocking pattern, as if the monolithic Toompea hill got fragmented to little pieces, which then reassembled to form something greater than the sum of their parts. Atop the building, a tower serves as a beacon for ‘looking the president in the eye’, and as an appropriable infrastructure for the public to present their claims using the castle as a backdrop.

Two basic elements of architecture, the column and the tower characterise the project. At a place which is about the physical presence of humans, about seeing bodies and being seen, these vertical elements are important reference points. As suggested by the etymology of words like ‘capital’ (from late Latin capitellum ‘little head’), their origins lie in comparisons to the human body, and therefore relate the human scale (bodies) to the architectural (column) and the urban (tower).

MarketHouse is a hybrid building in the soviet microrayon of Mustakivi, Lasnamae, that integrates residential and commercial spaces, creating a micro-economy system of production and consumption.
This system elevates individuals, making them dignified and self-sufficient, while also fostering social interactions and a sense of belonging within their local community.
Integrating commercial shops into Mustakivi can significantly contribute to street animation, a quality that is lacking in the streets of the site. These shops attract foot traffic and create a sense of bustling activity. Furthermore, they contribute to the local economy, create job opportunities, and enhance the overall liveliness of the area. By promoting entrepreneurship and local businesses, Mustakivi can develop its unique identity and character, distinguishing it as a vibrant and dynamic neighborhood.
For my urban and architectural configuration, I found inspiration in the mat building typology, particularly drawing from North African cities and traditional patterns, whose forms, geometries, and spatial configurations echo the lively essence of animated cities. The volumes of MarketHouse follow a mat grid, which I’ve carefully manipulated to harmonize with the surrounding perimeter, in a combination of different and pure geometries.

The goal of this project is to join maker and artisan communities in one place. This location acts as a craftsmanship hub, catering to both artisans who sell their designs, and makers who share their knowledge with the community. Combining these two types of users stems from the idea that they can work as a complimentary unit. The artisans provide a sense of inspiration, demonstrating the beauty that can come from handcraft skills. While the makers provide the knowledge and expertise behind how things are crafted. The value of creating this kind of community is to nurture an environment of knowledge exchange and co-creation. Both program types act as nodes of inspiration for the local community to engage with skillful designers and traditional masters. Furthermore, they help remind people of the value of the handmade, and the beauty that can result from it.

The goal of the project is to be a celebration of craftsmanship in every aspect. The program, the design, the detail, and the construction are all meant to be an architecture that reflects the mastery of craft and the ingenuity of makers.

In the immersive environments of theme parks nothing is what it appears to be. The architecture of such places relies on architectural manipulation, new technologies and
vibrant scenes to create a pleasurescape that would prolong the visitor’s stay. Reflecting on the touristification and disneyfication of Tallinn’s Medieval city centre, ‘The Quarry Theme Park’ is a theoretical and design exploration of deceit in architecture, questioning normative understandings of value, beauty and honesty.
The project argues for the preservation of the soon-to-be-depleted Vao quarry in the avoided and rather unattractive residential area of Lasnamae and its transformation into a theme park. The theme park, situated in the central area of the quarry, is conceived as a sequence of thresholds in a loop, whose purpose is to immerse people into the world of the quarry.
The project has three main parts: the parking, the main entrance, and a typical attraction entrance.
Taking Estonia’s national material as its theme, the park aims to bring awareness of the properties, uses, value, beauty and temporality of limestone through the architecture
and the landscape of the quarry by transforming it into an imaginative landscape. It argues for the value of deceit in architecture by bringing out the qualities of theme parks to immerse, surprise, make us wonder, instill imagination and make us suspend our habits and beliefs.

Tallinna Arkaad | Project description

Tallinna Arkaad (Tallinn's Arcade) is a project situated in Uus Maailm, a subdistrict of Tallinn characterized by poorly maintained buildings and streets and a lack of commercial activities. Despite these issues, Uus Maailm is poised for redevelopment, featuring good public transport access, nearby public buildings, and an underutilized square. The self-imposed ambitions for Uus Maailm include creating distinctive architecture, high-quality public spaces, and a mixed-use environment encompassing living, working, and recreation.

The proposed development is an arcade hybridized with a courtyard along an axis linking a public square to a train terminal. This design merges two popular public space typologies and integrates commercial functions, residences, offices, an embassy, a library, and classrooms, resulting in a dynamic mixed-use complex. The facade materials—limestone, wood, and glass—highlight Tallinn’s historical context while distinguishing between the inner and outer facades of the hybrid structure.

To manage the approximately 57,600 square meter irregular building, the volume is divided into four regular sections, with the irregular 'in-between' spaces developed as atriums. These atriums serve as distinct entry points, creating autonomous building sections. A general grid of 5.4 meters was applied, with slight variations in the arcade section.

Klimaforum is Berlins new interactive art, science and technology forum, located on a soon to be vacant heizkraftwerk site along the Spree river.
Commissioned by The German Ministry of Culture & Media, The City of Berlin and exploited by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the TU Berlin, several NGOs & private companies.
The Klimaforum will be at the forefront of the radical shift to a climate neutral society by shortening the road to a much needed debate about climate change.

This thesis is an exploration into architectural strategies that help build up the holistic care for children in paediatric facilities.

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.

This research explores the entanglement of relations of bodies and cities, in the heterogeneous contemporary city. Wherein, the othering of bodies has become an increasingly (problematic) complexity, due to its relations with obsolete embodiments of (historic) notions of power. The research question that is investigated, questions how we can create an architecture of affect, within the in-between relations of bodies and cities, that could establish renewed ideologies amongst bodies which may go beyond the practices of othering.
The research reacts and continues the work of earlier philosophers that have expressed on this entanglement, and probes how to go beyond theory to find applicability of these theories to spatial research and design.
Theories by Michel Foucault are put in relation to theories by Elisabeth Grosz and Donna Haraway. Herewith, the heterogeneity of cities and the in-between relations of power, bodies, architectures, and cities were researched in its potentials and applicability. Subsequently, following a positioning towards othering practices, with the use of the Greater City of London as case study.

The relations of bodies and cities are considered from the in-between of their relations, specifically determined by the model of relations which specify their conditions. What results, is a continuously changing accumulation of reciprocate processes that shape cities' heterogeneity. Conducted through relations of power, as institutionalism, hierarchical bodies-cities relations provide a systemics of othering within different layers and scales.

Following the potential of heterogeneity, the essay proposes an intensification of the cities' heterogeneous conditions as diffusion of in-between relations. Consequently, the conditioning, strategization, and operationalization of the in-between was investigated, to determine how a reconstruction of the in-between through architectural intervention could be affective.
As a result, the essay proposes architectures of fragmentation that reuses the divergence of (existing) in-between relations, to complexify the concatenation of processes. With additionally, the materialization of constrasting experiences and sensations, to have the potential to establish affective (architectural) relations with bodies.

Within my graduation project "In-Between Others", the architecture re-establishes relations between dichotomies of different typological bodies (human, urban, architectural, power), exploring the potential of (spatial) in-betweens. While simultaneously, it reflects on the relations of bodies of others (urban, machine, natural, animal, architectural). With this, the conditioning of bodies' confrontations, in order to control their conceptions and performances. Ultimately, to establish the beyond of othering, both through, as within, (spatial) disciplines.

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.

In the case of the 2017 Grenfell Tower, the fire affected those who were already socio-economically underprivileged. Many residents of the Grenfell tower did not just become homeless or lost personal belongings, approximately two-thirds suffer from post-traumatic stress. Such layered and systemic disparities in the built environment as well as their consequence are often obscure due to systems’ complexity and dependency on external influences. Disparities and potential effects remain largely hidden.

Disparities have been found to be particularly present on six planes: sound, reflection, social, exchange, recreation, and accessibility. Together the disparities on the planes form an assemblage of disparity. The asymmetric condition of disparities depends on the degree of affluence and deprivation of the analysed territory or machine. Disparities express themselves as asymmetric membranes, which can be both material and immaterial. To a largely extent they determine the accessibility to the membrane’s territory – which may or may not perpetuate existing disparities.

The intent of the design is to address the existing dichotomy and polarity between territories of affluence and deprivation, to challenge asymmetric membranes that perpetuate deep-rooted disparities. The middleground acts as its own agent, its own territory, that provides continuous impulses challenging existing disparities. The middleground itself, ironically, also consists of a sequence of asymmetric membranes. These membranes, however, intend to address and potentially disrupt the disparities found on the six planes.

The middleground aims to challenge the trends of perpetual inequalities, fragmentation, and exclusivity. Designing the middleground as a multiplicity of membranes creates a sequence of spaces that mediate in varying degrees between public and private. This proof-of-concept intends to show how the middleground approach can promote inclusivity on the various planes considering the multiplicity and complexity of disparities.

Spatial (in)justice is characterised as the geography of social (in)justice. The city is a network of ecologies composed of infrastructure, economic ideologies, and wealth. The inequalities that emerge as a by-product of these systems highlight the injustices in London evolving from social, economic and spatial patterns in the form of gentrification. This research positions the London metropolis as a demonstration of political power structures. Derived as a result of neoliberal policies implemented since the late seventies and thus becoming a driver of social class inequality. The relationship between architecture and socio-spatial conditions will be addressed in this research and effect, an architectural intervention will be proposed as a solution for gentrification.

A personal problem of dissociation has become the catalyst for a schizoanalysis on the levels of the corporeal, the clinical, and the collective, that uses a philosophical understanding of the unconscious to materialise a design for an urban psychiatric clinic for dissociative disorders.

The project can be defined at the intersection of urban landscape, architecture and infrastructure as a resolution of not only social flows but also the systems and elements of the material flows, which once shaped London. It aims to formulate new social urban programs where the distinction between the site, the architectural edifice or the urban space blurs.
The project is located in Abbey Mills, near River Lea in East London, which once an industrialized territory with the contaminated and neglected nature of interstices to supply central London. It aims to transform this contaminated space into a new public space, ecological land for Londoners. This required careful detection of the elements of artificially crafted land form, both evident and hidden, in order to weave continuity by the intervention of linear infrastructures as a new connective tissue between the contexts, and between its past and future for urban resilience.
The 150-metre-long linear apparatus traverses the site from the underground to the river, resonating with subterranean and superterranean conditions, allowing people to enjoy nature. Therefore, this apparatus becomes an ecological corridor that induces various experiences from functional programs to education and leisure activities. For the material choices and materiality, materials such as soil, stones, and steel sheet piles are collected and reused for rammed earth, gabions, and retaining walls to ensure sustainability in the process of topographic transformation and phytoremediation for purification work.
In this respect, the infrastructure lines become the life lines of the city, and the ambiguous conditions produced by the intersections, overlaps, juxtaposition become lines of urban life. Thus, it aims to formulate new formal and material language addressing the pressing issues in the new urban age.

Often, the current housing stock does not address problems of social isolation at this moment in time. For example, dwellings are designed as interior spaces and the route towards the home is often an unpleasant and boring one. It is important for architects and designers to have positive impulses and guidelines to address these problems. To find these kind of guidelines, I started my graduation at the Explore Lab studio at the TU Delft with a research. Parallel to a literary study, I researched people, their social relations, space, objects and architecture through observational studies relating to social sciences (short-term ethnography, qualitative fieldwork inquiry, praxeology). I found patterns in elements relating to social relations which enabled the drafting of design principles. Through the design of a programmatic hybrid city building in Rotterdam, challenges of social isolation were explored and addressed across scales. Not only the space in and around the home, also the workspace in or outside the home is important to consider within this problematic. In the design proposal, social relations are considered in for example the route through the building, sightlines between spaces within the building, in the program, and in the didactics and details of the facade.

The city of Lahore (Pakistan) is suffering from a severe environmental crisis. Water related issues such as droughts, floods and waterborne diseases have interrupted the accessibility of citizens to basic amenities. At the TU Delft, I have been approaching these issues in the Explore Lab Studio for my Master’s graduation. In my approach as a future architect, abandoned heritage – Bradlaugh Hall - will serve as an experimental laboratory for testing new ideas along with the reimplantation of local methods for climatization. In terms of programming, a common ground will be set up to narrate the existing boundaries to impede people from meeting fellow citizens out of their circle. Addressing the socio-economic segregation that has characterized Lahore since the colonial rule and has worsened in the last decades. The interaction and transgression among people will allow to learn, express and exchange ideas. Contributing to provoke awareness among citizens regarding their role in society. Along with an urban vision of reconnecting the city with the green structures as an mitigation strategy, the gardens culture will be reintegrated in the life of communities. Who have inherited the beautiful environment as part of their heritage.

As an architect we experiment. Architectural experimentation is the process of generating design ideas and making design decisions. The traditional tools, drawing and modelling, have proven to be fruitful. However, when zooming in on the essence of experimentation, one may wonder if drawing and modelling are the only possible tools to support the process of exploring and deciding. By detaching drawing and modelling from the act of experimenting; the research tries to broaden the traditional laboratory and explore the meaning of experimentation within design education. Furthermore, the research provided knowledge in, and experience with, non-traditional experimentation tools. The latter two have been applied into the design project. In the design process, traditional tools have been combined with non-traditional tools, such as film, blogging, movement and writing poetry. These experiments allowed for a sensitive and reflective approach towards the design (location). Especially the non-traditional tools allowed for looking at the design (location) from multiple perspectives. This resulted in the discovery of existing and potential qualities, but also in design principles and a guiding theme. The design takes place in the Bossche Stadsdelta. The Bossche Stadsdelta is the name for an area in ‘s-Hertogenbosch that will be developed in the coming years. However, due to physical separation by water and the lack of a shared identity; the area is not yet experienceable as the Bossche Stadsdelta. Luckily, the experiments with traditional and non-traditional tools imply that the area has a lot of existing and potential qualities. Therefore, a folly route is introduced. Follies are ornaments of the Bossche Stadsdelta: born from what is already there. They amplify existing (potential) qualities and are open for human action. The follies are mutually connected by sightlines and a shared architectural language. Together it allows locals and visitors to consciously move and stop throughout the area: to experience the Bossche Stadsdelta as a whole.

The Dutch coast is facing many changes shortly to keep up with the increase in tourism, wind farms, housing, and sea-level rise. To preserve the coastal place-identity under these changes, it is important to research what elements constitute the place-identity of the Holland Coast. Place-Identity, in this paper, is defned as a combination of landscape features, build features and the space these feature result in. The history of the landscape is described. The history of coastal settlements is explored along defning moments that impact how these places look today and the type of buildings that came to be. Through
analysis of historic and present-day photos, the architectural identity is formulated, based on three themes. Firstly, the positioning in the landscape, secondly an elaboration on the transition between inside and outside, and thirdly a focus on materials that come from nature, like wood and brick, materials that show natural forces, like textiles, and bright colours and reflect the abundance of sunlight associated with the coast. This theory is validated by seeing these elements protected by the aesthetics regulations (Welstands normen) of several municipalities.