Sleeping Beauties stems from concerns regarding the decline of small post-industrial towns in Italy, where depopulation and neglected infrastructure threaten their cultural identity, risking abandonment or being overrun by unsustainable tourism. The project explores possible futures for Angera, a town on Lake Maggiore, which, while not as severely affected as some other towns, is facing symptoms of decline.

The proposal uses the Soara factory, an industrial relic of the town’s flourishing era, as a testing ground for community-driven revitalization, guided by the principles of commoning. It aims to create opportunities for local residents, supported by larger players, to attract the critical mass and funding necessary to launch and sustain the initiative.

The project focuses on reweaving the fabric of Angera by adopting the approach of a bricoleur - utilizing and revitalizing what is already at hand - valuing local know-how, stories, traditions, economic flows, and industrial heritage, creating a narrative that resonates with the community.

The outcome is not a final product, but the groundwork for collaborative processes, where the architect’s role involves both designing architectural interventions - sparking enthusiasm, and encouraging others to take part - as well as acting as a quartermaster, facilitating the necessary collaborations and processes.

The New Social Fabric explores how architecture and public space can meaningfully contribute to community formation in contemporary social housing. Centered on the redevelopment of the Blikfabriek site in Hoboken, Antwerp, a transitional area between historically distinct urban fabrics, the project investigates the evolution of public and private boundaries in housing design, aiming to improve on previous ideas about community interaction.

The research shows a historical and spatial analysis of Hoboken and neighboring Kiel, tracing ideological shifts in housing typologies, from traditional row houses emphasizing private ownership, through modernist experiments with collective space around the buildings, to more recent developments characterized by pragmatic privacy. Five local case studies featuring buildings and social spaces in the area were analyzed through a consistent framework encompassing historical context, architectural expression, patterns of use, and materiality. People from the community were also interviewed.

These insights informed the design of a mixed-use complex that includes social dwellings, a sports hall, and youth facilities, arranged around a communal courtyard. The design draws inspiration from the qualities of the nearby factory and historic social housing while addressing their social shortcomings through a careful layering of public, communal, and private spaces. Key design strategies include staggered terraces, open sightlines, and activities that residents can take part in, strengthening connections between residents and their shared environment.

Rather than proposing a definitive solution or a radical change, The New Social Fabric positions itself rather as a thoughtful contribution to the ongoing discourse on urban resilience, social sustainability, and the architect’s role in shaping inclusive and adaptable environments.

In 2022, Europe experienced severe drought, notably affecting Northern Italy’s Po region, renowned for its industrial and agricultural significance. Consequently, the region’s food production sector encountered severe challenges in water management, struggling to meet its water requirements. Rice production, leading in the demand for water resources, is especially vulnerable to the evolving rainfall dynamics. Through research by design, this Master’s thesis addresses improving water security for rice production while nurturing a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. The research identifies conflicts arising from widely adopted dry-seeding techniques in rice farming and the abandonment of traditional water retention practices, exacerbated by climate change and leading to diminished water availability. The proposed design interventions seek to retain water in the landscape, replenishing aquifers, and prioritizing habitat restoration. This thesis suggests a paradigm shift in water management and agricultural perspectives, emphasizing the intrinsic link between water, human well-being, and ecological health. By integrating traditional flooded practices and ecological restoration into agricultural systems, it presents a holistic approach to water management. Additionally, the strategy stresses the importance of fostering awareness and active engagement with the natural environment to strengthen the human-nature connection. The insights gained from this study can inform future policies and practices, ensuring a sustainable and resilient future for the rice production landscapes of northern Italy and beyond.

There are more than 2000 estates reserved in Netherlands, of which 18% are in Gelderland. However, with time going by, the surrounding environment of the estates has changed and new challenges which the estates are faced with has happened, including climate change threat, spatial fragmentation and increasing tourism. The city I am studying, Arnhem used to be surrounded by the mansions of affluent city dwellers who transformed their riches into magnificent country houses in the countryside. After the period of city fast expansion, the estates are threaten by the heavy influence of urbanization process which caused territory separation, function isolation etc. Under this condition, transformation of the estates are required to adapt surrounding urban environment. Therefore, my project is to explore how to integrate the estates in the city. After preliminary analysis, I proposed the acupunctural strategy is to transfrom the estates as landscape infrastructures in the city. Under this proposal, there are three precise sub-strategies could be applied, consisting of reorganizing the spatial layout, renewing the functions/facilities/programs and repairing the interfaces between the estates and surrounding urban context.

The project is concerned with the district of Zuidoost, currently inhabited by mostly non-western immigrants and functioning as a sleeping district. As the area is missing defined local public space, the project aims to provide with space in which people of different backgrounds can meet and interact with each other, and therefore enable to form a local community. In order for such space to be successful in the 2100, times in which people would spend a lot of their free time in the virtual reality, it needs to utilize true qualities of the physical space and smartly develop its attractiveness.

This research project aims to find a way for the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague to communicate about their museum building to its visitors. The museum building is to become an explicit part of the visitor experience. By means of design-based research a list of design requirements was composed and a web-based mobile application was designed as communication tool.

This year started with the choice to enter the ‘competition’ to design a new state of the art concert hall for the London Symphony Orchestra. Simon Rattle returned to London to become the new conductor of the LSO, but in his opinion all the London halls are lacking in quality to be suitable for all the plays from the LSO. With this information our graduation process started.

Structuralism represents an architecture that can interact, grow and adapt. The buildings can be recognised by their vivid open structures, composition of small units, and a spatial organisation like a city. As a reaction to CIAM functionalism, the avant-garde members of Team 10 proposed inclusive and social space and a more human form of urbanism and architecture. Starting in 1959, Dutch Structuralism became a very influential movement in the development of architecture in The Netherlands. Now the Structuralist legacy has become heritage. Once the agent of a new era, the pioneering nature of this architecture seems to have faded and it is this building stock that is now in need of renewal. Although some of the Structuralist buildings have become icons, their existence is at stake. Many buildings are facing transformation or demolition, because they do not meet contemporary demands. Despite the design of open structures, being flexible for the future by extrapolation of the structure or adaptation within the building, many of the Structuralist buildings show shortcomings in for example; indoor climate, aesthetic appearance and programmatic possibilities. Recently, the renovation of Aldo van Eyck’s orphanage in Amsterdam has been completed, which once was the inspirational example for many of his contemporaries. Other icons of Structuralism still await a new future, like the Centraal Beheer office in Apeldoorn and the Ministry of Social Affairs in The Hague designed by Herman Hertzberger. Although several buildings have been renovated, there are no standard solutions. We believe that profound knowledge about both the original Structuralist buildings and the argumentation for redesign can help to prepare intervention strategies for upcoming projects. What building characteristics prove to be successful? Are these specific for one building, the oeuvre of one architect or widespread among this generation of buildings? Do renovation concepts reuse or contradict initial design themes? How can necessary renovations do justice to the cultural and architectural values of these icons? Do the icons prove what is promised? Or do we need alternative strategies? This exhibition ‘The Future of Structuralism’ shows our search for what Structuralism is and our assessment of some of its opportunities and shortcomings. But most importantly, it focusses on potential strategies for reuse. The structure of the exhibition is thematic. By focusing on several themes that were important in Structuralism, we aim to link ideology, current examples from practice of transformed Structuralist buildings and design strategies. Through the exhibition and a debate at the opening event, we hope to bring the work from within the chair to a wider audience and add new perspectives to the debate on the movement and its future values.