This research explores the potential of architectural design to enhance ‘sustainable academic performance’ by looking beyond the traditional university design strategies, within the context of a future economics university building in the heart of Milan. The city’s unique blend of fast-paced economic and cultural dynamism and slow-paced aperitivo culture makes it a city of temporalities and flexibility. This study critiques the predominant focus in our society on either maximizing performance while disregarding mental health, or enhancing well-being to the point of overlooking productivity, highlighting a gap between the ‘hustle culture’ and the ‘wellness culture’. Supported by numerous research in environmental psychology, it proposes a design framework that integrates both performance-enhancing and well-being enhancing design strategies, aligned with the principles of the Attention Restoration Theory, to create a space that promotes ‘sustainable academic performance’ for both neurotypical and neurodivergent users in the academic context. Through literature review, case studies, surveys, geotagging and analysing everything through the lens of culture, the study proposes the redesign of the Bocconi University Via Roentgen Building, aiming to create a new typology of economics university building that promotes a healthier lifestyle.

This thesis explores the redesign of Milan’s Central Station as a flexible, responsive, and scalable urban hub that integrates transportation with cultural experiences.

Titled “On the Move,” the project aligns with the European Union’s 2050 agenda for sustainable urban development and efficient mobility. It proposes a shift from viewing train stations as mere transit nodes to envisioning them as vibrant cultural centres that actively contribute to the city’s dynamic identity. Drawing inspiration from Milanese Futurism and the concept of “In Motu Vita” (Life is in Motion), the research explores how architectural design can strike a balance between transportational efficiency and cultural dynamism.

By utilising Milan’s historical trams as “living spaces” for cultural events, the project introduces a “Experience Depot” concept that allows culture to be continuously present throughout the city.

The year-long thesis not only challenges the traditional typology of train stations but also sets a visionary precedent for integrating cultural vitality into urban mobility hubs. Through a thoughtful spatial integration of Milanese culture, the redesigned station will adapt to the city’s evolving needs, ensuring it remains a lively and contemporary landmark for generations to come.

This graduation project explores how architecture can give form to temporality through a new typology for contemporary art museums. Designed for Fondazione Prada in Milan, this Museum of Temporality questions the traditional idea of a static and permanent museum and instead proposes a cultural institution built around cycles of artistic creation, public exhibition, private exhibition and demolishing rituals. By integrating artist residencies, fashion collaborations, and city-wide event calendars, the museum becomes a spatial system for transformation in time.

The project investigates how exclusive cultural experiences can be made more public and visible while maintaining the exclusive character of the client Prada, through flexible interior as well as constructional and material strategies, playing into today's FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) character of the building users.

This research booklet can be read along the film: In Transit: An Exploration into Subway Space, as an experimental study into the everyday experience of architecture. The film, story and essays are an attempt to better understand the relationship between architecture and human life and to question the way the subject of architecture can be studied. The triadic work is a layered study that combines actual footage of subway systems and stations, which is edited into a narrative. This narrative is structured and accompanied by a written account of a fictional figure, who starts as an outsider and slowly progresses into an everyday commuter of subway space. Lastly, each chapter is accompanied by an academic essay about the nature of the architectural phenomena and the observed phenomena through exploring a number of theories about perception, atmosphere, materials, semiotics, habits, space, time, rhythms, the everyday, and public space.

Overall, this work is an attempt to study architecture by actually participating, to experience lived space while also observing and writing about the abstract processes that produce it. In the words of Anne Buttimer and Henri Lefebvre, it is an attempt to be both an insider and an outsider, and to situate oneself in the seam, between
practice and theory, ordinary and special. In doing so this study linger on the edges of the architectural discipline that touches upon subjects such as philosophy, sociology, biology, anthropology, geology, urbanism, storytelling and filmmaking.

The design is an attempt to put use these lessons into practice and to design a transformation with simple interventions.

Amsterdam is a rapidly growing city with a high demand for new homes. Research indicates different initiatives and processes over the last years to densify the city and enhance the liveability in its neighborhoods. However, time has shown the injustice accompanying these proposals and the situation in several neighborhoods worsened over the last years. Overtoomse Veld is one of these neighborhoods and will function as a precedent in this project for other post-war neighborhoods. The expansion of Amsterdam’s center, the development of more owner-occupied housing, and the attraction of high-income knowledge workers and according amenities, have amounted to an environment which lacks many opportunities for social cohesion in the neighborhood and segregation and gentrification occur more often in the city. This project aims to find possibilities and potentials for future program and densification of the city & its neighborhoods, which stimulates social cohesion between current and new residents. By making use of two different scenarios, it is investigated how different densities can be achieved, but simultaneously social cohesion in neighborhoods can be stimulated. Therefore, the project offers a perspective on how to deal with the issue of densification by catering the social aspect in the process.

Unbalanced decision making processes, lack of planning scope and a market-driven development lead by high power interests have shaped the emergent Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico (MAVM) with an increasing spatial fragmentation and social segregation. To counteract the problematisation an adaptive planning framework is proposed linking urban morphology, governance capacities and socio-ecological systems as a way to approach vulnerable areas in the metropolis from a local perspective aiming for a collaborative and evolutionary process. Several areas with the potential to become sub-centers are defined in the territory in order to become strategic locations where endogenous development is possible creating opportunities capable of overcoming segregation and fragmentation by means of enhanced economic and community activities. The research recognises five main principles (systemic goals) which through spatial actions that act in a muldimensional level (scale, time and actors) stress capacities for adaptation embedded in the selected locations. Seemingly, potentials for connectedness and activation from a bottom-up perspective are revealed through exploration by design implementing a scenario construction departing from two levels of participation between stakeholders (high and low) and a further evaluation phase through pathways that inform possibilities and limitations of the strategies taken during the evolutionary process. This research allows to conclude that interests and their alignment with different actors, local capacities and operability of the actions taken are directly proportional to the transformation capacities and the effectiveness of the goals proposed by the adaptive framework.

Under the influence of globalisation and neoliberal planning paradigms, socio-spatial segregation in Stockholm, Sweden has significantly risen. Its society has become more heterogeneous, with migrants often ending up in socially vulnerable suburbs in the periphery of metropolitan areas where a spiral of social exclusion and decline is kickstarted. This has caused social disorganisation, perpetual poverty and increased crime and vandalism, leading to stigmatisation and polarization. This is endangering effective decision-making to help improve socio-spatial integration, as migrants are depending on municipalities to respond to their needs. Past and current policy approaches have until now proved
ineffective to reduce segregation or to mitigate its negative externalities.

The project aims to adress the gap of knowledge as to how governance, social and spatial constructs interrelate with regards to segregation processes and its effects on society. It explores possibilities to create a shift towards a more comprehensive way of planning that incorporates a better understanding of these
processes, through a multi-scalar, complementary approach of strategic policy and design interventions. These interventions are tested in the Järva area in North-West Stockholm to investigate the potential for more socially sustainable development.

A multi-dimensional lens is proposed to grasp the interrelations in segregation processes and to better account for its implications in future development; viewing segregation as a historic process through a wider socio-cultural lens, forming a complementary dynamic and static perspective.