There is a growing urbanization trend in Amsterdam, this causes dwellings to be less affordable. That is why several areas in Amsterdam are being densified. One of these areas is Sloterdijk Centrum, a typical monofunctional office park of the 80’s and 90’s. The municipality wants to transform this park to a lively mixed use area by adding new buildings and transforming existing ones. One of the buildings that has the potential to be transformed is the monofunctional office building De Knip. I choose this building for my graduation project, because it addresses two important current issues, namely transformation and high rises. In my graduation project these problems are addressed by transforming the building De Knip to function as a neighbourhood connected within the city. This was done by creating Collective Private Commisioning groups that live in corridors that function like streets. These streets have a high permeability and adaptability in the high rise and a strong focus on nature inclusiveness in the low rise. Its overall strong dwelling atmosphere created the perfect setting for a lively multifunctional building where people can feel at home, express their identity, connect to their neighbours and where future transformations can be carried out easily due to the prefabricated and adaptive design. This design can stimulate the future transformation of Sloterdijk centrum with the liveliness and dwelling atmosphere that it brings and can be an example to similar office areas.

The site of the project is in Anderlecht, Brussels. The design proposal including two parts: urban proposal and architectural proposal. For the urban renewal, I re-allocated the arrangement considering the programs, the new buildings groups follow their counterpart one by one, several inner courtyards acting as the spine of the site, connecting those groups. The architectural proposal is a manifesto of how it is possible to treat old houses. The three adjacent industrial buildings become my design target. I keep most of the ordinary architecture elements we could found in this task as the spolia. The programs have transformed from industrial space to a community center including a local food market and a daycare center, in between would also be an inner courtyard enclosed by two small pavilions.

The thesis explores the socio-territorial orientation of Finnmark, northern Norway, in relation to the growing international interest for the development of the mineral industry. This interest is met locally with directly opposing views, favouring on the one hand the cultural development related to land-based practices, and on the other hand exploiting Finnmarks high resource potential for the benefit of municipal growth and job development. Difficulties arise with the geographic distribution of ethnicities. Proposed developments of the mineral industry find more support in coastal areas and although most indigenous Sámi find their home inland, they depend to a large degree for their livelihood on this coastal areas. The current fractured political landscape is highly related to and tied up with the complex history of internal center-periphery dynamics, colonization and stigmatization, which took (and in a way are still taking) place under the flagship of national assimilation policies of ‘norwegianization’, sustaining Finnmarks not-so-postcolonial present. In this perspective, three mining cases are of interest, due to the different social and political responses to the mining plans: Nussir in Kvalsund, Bidjovagge in Kautokeino and Sydvaranger in Sør-Varanger. Motivations behind decision-making on these cases illustrate clearly the conflicts of interests and demonstrate the difficulties for coexistence of directly opposing world views. Through an understanding of the formation of societal strata, the argument of the thesis unfolds over an in-depth spatiotemporal and on-site analysis of the cases and their specific socio-territorial setting in Finnmark. I argue that we should look more critically at the tendentious role of the modus operandi of urbanists and geologists (more specifically of resource mappers), in their way of influencing decision-making and framing and shaping cultural life, especially in contested territories. The thesis then moves towards a possible way forward through redesigning our conventional tools and methods for a more inclusive territorial-based endogenous growth model, such an inclusive growth model has the potential to bring together on the long term the opposing visions and ideas on the future of the mining industry and the preservation of indigenous culture. I end by arguing that knowledge building from a combined perspective has the potential to evolve the acceptance amongst cultures abiding by different worldviews. Effectively, the newly proposed geological era of the Anthropocene, proposes also the updating modern science with cultural diversity, asking for renewed responses away from the modern tradition.

Problem statement: Organisations need real estate to enable them to perform their activities effectively and efficiently in a safe, protected and pleasurable environment. Typically, large organisations use many buildings to perform their activities. The relationship between a building (supply) and its users (demand) is constantly changing. This change is fuelled by technology and a host of economic and cultural trends. Because the supply - demand is changing continuously, most of the time there is a mismatch between what a building can offer and what an organisation requires. Therefore, one of the biggest challenges in Corporate Real Estate Management is reducing the gap between the high speed of business and the slow speed of real estate, i.e. between the so-called dynamic real estate demand and relatively static real estate supply.
Research objective: Based on the objective of Corporate Real Estate Management, the research objective of this graduation work is to develop and present knowledge of how the physical resource can be enhanced by implementing ‘Office as a Service’. Because the mismatch is dynamic and will change frequently, a strategic decision approach to managing the mismatch between the user organisation and the building is proposed in order to offer a suitable way of approaching these problems. Therefore the main research question is: “How can ‘Office as a Service’ be a strategic decision approach for an organization to optimize their physical resources in order to obtain maximum added value?” Research method: By conducting operational-empirical research, the research questions are answered. By means of operational research, a strategic decision approach is developed that can be used in the process of forming an accommodation strategy to align real estate to the needs of the core business. Empirical research was used to obtain input for the development of the operational model. This empirical research focused on the performance of ‘Office as a Service’ strategies in relation to both the presumed added values of real estate and the various typologies of occupier space demands. To obtain the required input, a method of a literature review, semi-structured interviews and a cross-case study was used. Key findings and conclusion: A strategic decision approach is developed based on the concept of a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) model. The development of this Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis model integrates the decision-makers criteria, which are based on the presumed added values of real estate as well as the five typologies of occupier space demand, with the alternative ‘Office as a Service’ strategies. Based on the model of Den Heijer (2011) to assess the added value of real estate decisions regarding the four stakeholder perspectives with their corresponding presumed added values, eight added values divided over all four stakeholder perspectives can be related to the concept of ‘Office as a Service’. Next to the presumed added values of real estate which contribute to the strategic goals of an organization, an operational aspect is added to the decision-criteria taking into account five typologies of occupier space demand of an organisation. Based on the Core-Periphery operational real estate portfolio space model of Gibson and Lizieri (1999) in relation to the alternative ‘Office as a Service’ strategies this results in the following interpretation: a stepped ascending relationship where the increase of flexibility is answered by a more external ‘Office as a Service’ strategy.

Parkstad is planning to power most of its electrical grid by solar energy, resulting in an intermittent power supply. One of the methods to solve this intermittency is to create facilities for energy storage. The landscape differs from the rest of the Netherlands by its hilly profile. The most important difference is presence of a large subterranean infrastructure which is a relic from the mining past. This vast infrastructure holds potential for energy storage. Energy storage demand exists on three levels. Daily storage demand, inter seasonal storage demand and incidental storage demand could benefit from energy storage among other solutions. The actual methods to achieve this energy storage are mechanical, electrochemical, chemical and thermal. For Parkstad compressed air storage, underground pumped hydro and gravitational storage hold potential.

Families are leaving the city of Amsterdam, mainly due to a lack of safety, child friendly outdoor spaces and affordable and appropriate size housing. Yet many of them do want to stay in the city, and the city wants to maintain them too, as they are important for the whole circle of city life. The notion of ‘family’ though is rather general, and usually implies traditional families. However, the amount of ‘modern’ families, such as single parent-, co-parent- and patchwork families is growing. They have even more specific needs than traditional families, due to their often complicated household configuration. The main task of this project is to provide suitable housing for these modern families, thus housing that is: child friendly and adaptable to changing household configurations.

The design of this family friendly building complex in the city center of Amsterdam is the result of the Dutch Housing graduation studio, Stronghold Amsterdam 2017 - 2018. This project focusses on the city living of Amsterdam, where high density and future orientation are very important.

There is an increasing amount of young families that leave the big cities. In this Amsterdam has the highest number of all cities in the Netherlands. The main reason for leaving is the extension of the family (or plan to), which results in new requirements for the house and living environment. Most families want to stay in the city but can’t find a house that meets the new requirements. They look for more space, a safe environment for children to play and for an affordable price. This is not possible in the housing market of Amsterdam.

To provide a living environment for these young families in Amsterdam the research reviewed the needs of young families and investigated which design solutions could satisfy them on the scale of the neighbourhood, building and dwelling. These design solutions are obtained from literature and six case studies and combined in a scheme. The main aspects that are important for the living environment of young families are: safety, facilities, playing and interaction, supervision, space and identity. All the design solutions are divided into these aspects.

A personal choice of some of the design solutions from the six topics provide the focus of the design. The design creates affordable housing and a safe living environment in the city center of Amsterdam, on the Tweede Weteringsplantsoen. To provide this the design expends the living space of the residents towards the collective space of the building. This consists out of a court-like raised square and a new street level on the fourth floor of the complex with a gallery and small squares. These open spaces at the top provide the characteristic form of the building and a strong identity. The dwellings are orientated towards the collective spaces of the building, to allow for supervision of the children playing outside. Children of different ages can slowly expend their range of action from the safety of the shared spaces of the building towards the city. The layout of the dwellings provides flexible use of the rooms and the possibility to create more rooms.

In less densely populated areas and cities (like Maastricht) of the Netherlands vacancy is a social issue. Vacancy is caused by a decrease of demand for
shrinkage), creating an excessive offer of, real estate. This ´spatial shrinkage´ is related to the demographic and economic shrinkage that is characteristic of our times; a ´new reality´. Our strategy of spatial development however is still based on speculation of an old reality with self-evident demographical, (thus) economical and spatial growth. The built environment of our times still have cities that grow while their inner cities become vacant.

Vacancy causes damage to the livability of the built environment and undermines the (historical) structures like public space that hold the city (socially and spatially) together. Continuity of the built environment can be restored by filling the gaps and adopting a new strategy of spatial development; flexible
development in small steps affirming a reality of permanent temporality.

Heritage based design is well equipped to address this issue. It endorses the importance of historical structures and their continuity in both time and space. Moreover it´s core business is redeveloping buildings that have lost their usefulness while maintaining and stressing its (cultural) values. These values extend well beyond the economical; an insight that is of the essence to move beyond our contemporary way of spatial development.

The Guesthouse TU Delft is a project built upon the idea that a new institution to be built is able to provide the urban environment of Delft with a new variety of academic activities, which normally stay at the campus. These activities are to be participated by many people, whether he’s from the university or not. In the making of this institution I borrowed lessons and inspirations from some of the excellent precedents that fascinate me, and these ideas are applied at specific places of the project, with some variations to respond to the specific urban setting of Delft.