This thesis challenges the dominant paradigm of flood risk management in the Netherlands, which has led to rigid and technocratic landscape practices. The research reimagines flood management as a driver of socio-ecological transformation rather than a threat to be controlled. The thesis tests this approach in The Scheldt Estuary. The study investigates how deactivating existing flood defences might enable new relationships between human and non-human systems. And, how it would reshape the delta as a living and adaptive landscape. It does this through spatial analysis, design exploration and critical reflection.

Four research questions guide this exploration, addressing: - The historical and social narratives underpinning Dutch coastal management; - The projected ecological and spatial consequences of returning to Deltaic Conditions; - The potential of design to reframe flooding from a threat into a generative force; - And, the strategic pathways to foster symbiosis between human and non-human ecosystems.

Three design scenarios illustrate how different levels of engagement with tidal processes (retreat, adaptation, and cohabitation) could inform a new form of “Tidal Urbanism.” An approach that is responsive to changing conditions while remaining sensitive to deltaic contexts. This approach serves as the base for the vision . The thesis concludes with a vision for the Scheldt Estuary in 2130. It imagines a landscape that has shed human boundaries and embraced its identity as a marshland. Flood management evolves into an adaptive system of flow regulation. Coastal design becomes an act of radical co-creation, where humans and non-humans shape space together. Rather than resisting change, this vision welcomes the tide. It offers a future built not on control, but on coexistence. Transformations that would arise from this vision are explored, such as tidal reintegration, modular and delta-sensitive urbanism. The realisation of this vision demands radical changes in space as well as in governance and organisation.

Ultimately, this project reframes resilience not as the elimination of risk, but as the capacity to live with uncertainty; ethically, iteratively and collectively.

Tolerance is an essential tool of peaceful coexistence that allows diversity to flourish and a multicultural pluralist society to function. In times of globalisation, digitalisation, and polarization, it is becoming more critical than ever. Nevertheless, tolerance faces multiple issues. As a concept, it is being washed up, belittled, and critiqued either for its extensiveness or narrowness. Consequently, it became a vague notion, posing the question of what it means in contemporary society. Is it emotion, feeling, or attitude? How does it relate to other concepts of inclusivity and justice? In addition, even with an increasing amount of studies, there is still a gap in knowledge about the relationship between tolerance and space. It is still largely unknown how one associate with the other, what forces are affecting this link and how to use it to facilitate tolerance. Moreover, Kaunas, my hometown and choice as a case-study area, has very explicit issues regarding discriminatory but also changing attitudes, making it an optimal location to investigate (in)tolerance and conditions for it. Therefore in this paper I embark on a journey to study this concept, following the main research question: how can spatial and policy planning be used to foster more tolerant attitudes towards difference in everyday Kaunas?
Tolerance is subjective, partly non-representational, and unconscious. For this reason, I chose to use a mixed-methods explorative approach, combining comprehensive theoretical and empirical analyses. I consolidated spatial observations, institutional research, in-depth unstructured interviews, extensive literature and media review, and poetic investigation of artistic mediums. Through these methods, I integrated knowledge from a diverse range of disciplines, from psychology and philosophy to urban planning and architecture.
The fusion of multiple methods and disciplines allowed me to conclude on conceptual and spatial aspects of tolerance. By integrating tolerance into the affect theory, I argue that it is a process which, through encounter, transforms one state of being into another, meaning that tolerant attitudes are in constant flux. I transferred this new definition into the theoretical framework, which guided my empirical investigation in Kaunas. Based on unstructured interviews and an analysis of multiple cases, I uncovered a force affecting people’s attitudes in Lithuania – the Tolerance Event. It is a very active form of encounter that ruptures the passive status quo while at the same time addressing severe socio-cultural issues and allowing people to get to know diversity. Building on this theory, I propose multiple strategies as an example of how to use the Tolerance Event in Kaunas. They involve funding, policy, institutions, design, and planning proposals and are covered by one central vision – to become the Brave Tolerance City, Kaunas needs More Tolerance Events.

This project deals with spaces for a historically neglected collective: sex workers. It aims to destigmatize the practice by representing the workers and the material conditions that determine their safety and well-being every day, of which architecture is part.
Articulated from an intersectional feminist point of view, the research evaluates how the design of these spaces has been and continues to be a technology to control the workers. At the same time, it visualizes the workers and how they construct processes of emancipation within their (legally and spatially) subjugated position.
The design offers a working space that houses these emancipatory practices, in the context of the recent decriminalisation of sex work in Belgium. In order to do so, it draws from feminist and queer theories to construct an understanding of space that materializes the emancipation from the scale of the neighbourhood and urban block, until the detailing and use of material.