For millennia, humans have lived, constructed, and cultivated along the banks of rivers. Rivers are the genius loci of these riverside cities, embodying the spirit of the place and its people. Rivers have been the source of life upon which civilization was built: providing water, power, and transport, but are also spiritually deeply meaningful for many cultures and religions around the world. It is within this context that my graduation project focuses on the urban landscape of the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary, exploring its spiritual significance.

Despite being a daily presence for the city's inhabitants, the connection between the people and the river has been lost over time due to infrastructure and urbanization. This project aims to relink the people of Budapest to the river, fostering a deeper spiritual awareness, and appreciation for the river as a living, breathing embodiment of Budapest's past, present, and future.

Just as human bodies embody the imprints of traumatic experiences, so does the river retain the memory of the place. By viewing the river as a body of water, like the human body, the river keeps the score of the city, as a repository of collective history.

Religion is understood not only as the institutionalized systems of beliefs that operate in the world today, but also with the origin of the word. Its etymology, derived from the Latin "religare," meaning "to put together what has previously been separated," captures the essence of this project's objective, throughout all scales.

The program consists of a museum and a chapel: the first being a place for the muses, a place of revelation and (re)discovery; the latter as a sanctuary of contemplation. Their purpose is to reveal, to show again, the river's significance from different perspectives.

The museum is situated perpendicular on the riverbank of Óbudai Island, revealing the river flowing alongside the city against a backdrop of the mountains. The chapel, located on the tip of Margaret Island, reveals the diverging river as part of the horizon and the sky. The route from one to the other acts as a filter of the river, alternating between moments of covering and revealing, sharp and subtle contrasts. From the flowing river to the majestic mountains, from the vibrant cityscape to the expansive horizon and vast skies, the journey offers a series of panoramic scenes.

This design proposal aims to be meaningful for the collective of Budapest in re-evaluating our relationship with the nature from which our city originated. Its essence is religious, in the linking of the islands, of two buildings, of materials, and of the humans with the landscape. The project reveals the outward landscape of the city, abstracting it in the architecture; allowing the human to empathize with it, and with our inner selves and place on this earth.

The project takes as a starting point the architectural exploration and revival of the typology of a courtyard block – a type that has a long history in the city of Budapest and yet, is getting abandoned and rejected in the in the last decades – a predicament that surprises as the type has been realised successfully for centuries and even millennia across the world. For that fact, I take a stance that a courtyard is a universal and everlasting type, but in need of adaptation to the changing conditions of current times.
The main flaws of the majority of Budapestian courtyard blocks derive from the very failure to adapt to growing and densifying cities – in pursuit to densify the plots, the courtyards became overly elongated, narrow, dark and uninviting. Another common weakness is the deteriorating state of the courtyards resulting from a complex and inefficient system of ownership in Hungary. As a result, even once beautiful courtyards and facades became neglected and deteriorated as it proved difficult to make the residents look after them on their own account without any system.
The revitalisation of a Budapestian courtyard is then two-fold – systematic and architectural. As part of the design, all properties in the project come partially owned by the municipal/civic body to ensure organised maintenance and enduring quality of the building. The main architectural improvements are opening up the dwellings to at least both sides of the block introducing more light and diverse views, and careful proportioning of the courtyards ensuring sufficient access of light and a more usable space.
The project lies in a in a mainly residential neighbourhood in a place that is historically and morphologically very heterogenous. It aims to give back coherency to the urban tissue that is currently broken, by working with a rectangular perimeter. The buildings use the courtyard system to break down the scale of the block and create multiple different environments and more private spaces within.
The project explores the diversity of the courtyard typology and plays with the juxtaposition of different types, introducing both outdoor and indoor courtyards, large and small ones, public and private, loud and quiet, exposed and secluded, green and paved, colourful and toned, densely and lightly programmed. A vast study of courtyards across the world brought forth the forms and techniques that make them successful, giving inspiration for the design that aims to capture these different qualities and collect them creating a diverse courtyard maze.
The project is of mixed program – housing with retail, restaurants and cafes, and a library. The mixed use, together with a variety of courtyards introduced life into the block and creates an engaging living environment.

In a world that is becoming more virtual by the day, there is a longing for physicality that yearns to be fulfilled. This thesis explores the potential of architecture to evoke diverse behaviors and emotions, drawing from the idea that individual perceptions of space are subjective and influenced by the memories and knowledge ours bodies have absorbed from our unique lived experiences. With Budapest as a dynamic testing ground, the thesis focuses on activating the Danube waterfront.

The proposed project consists of a retreat that transitions the people from Budapest to the water fostering a more symbiotic relationship between the urban community and the river.

The project comprises two parts. The first is a private bathhouse facility, nestled within a once-concrete expanse in a park and sheltered within a public layer. The result is a building that outwardly serves the public, while inwardly housing an introvert private bathing facility. The second is a public floating structure, paying homage to the evocative reminiscences of old pontoon pools with a purpose of re-activating the historical legacy of swimming in the river. By sewing these two worlds together in one area, while bridging the community physically to the river, the proposal becomes a revitalisation of the waterfront.

The goal was to craft an architecture that delivers spaces capable of leaving a lasting impression on the mind and bodies of those who engage and experience them. Architecture is the set for life to happen, and we, as set designers, choreograph and orchestrate different scenarios and environments for different users to engage with - and the play plays out.

In the middle of the picturesque quarter of Kosančićev Venac in Belgrade, a small empty crater is to be found. Once, the National Library of Belgrade stood here, but it got bombed during the second world war. Now it seems there is nothing more but some ruins of the original building. In multiple cases in Belgrade, the questions of how to deal with these scars in the urban fabric remains unsolved.

This graduation project investigates the site of the former National Libray of Serbia and how to deal with the historical continuity of its narrative. For the design of the intervention, the concept of layering will be used as a formative method. To strengthen the memorial function of the site, the intervention will serve as a place that allows for the experience of an abstraction of daily life. To achieve this, research into religious architecture is conducted.

This essay endeavors to unveil how the mechanisms function that are responsible for the fundamental awareness of one’s physical presence in the world. The capacity of architecture to contribute towards towards such a state of being, is a major theme. The essay does this in three consecutive parts. In the first part, the subject’s bodily experience of the world is laid out. It reveals how the body finds vibrant stimulation in the world. In the second part, the thoughtful understanding of the world is discussed. This reveals the subject’s dependency on the mind for active sensibility. In the third and last part, a synthesis between one’s active awareness and its bodily stimulation is presented. This leads to the embodiment of immanence. In this state of being, the turbulent world becomes a symphonic one. The subject may understand the felt, as well as that it may feel the understood. Clear and sharp appreciation of the world around becomes possible. As a part of this world, the subject is actively aware of its own presence too. Through this, one connects to its physical being and one is grounded inside the body and world. Architecture can help ground by revealing the relation between physical stimulation and the understanding that makes it sharp and clear. As a result, the symphony of the vibrant world is revealed, and the subject may dance along.

In the Advanced Housing Design Studio we explored how housing design can successfully address the challenge of reducing the ecological footprint of its residents and assure social inclusion. In this studio an emphasis was put on the housing concept of collective living. A cooperative housing concept that offers the opportunity to create a living environment that meets the needs and wishes of the future dwellers and encourages the use of shared and collective spaces.

My experiment in this studio was finding an equilibrium, a balance between different household types with different habitational needs in an existing monotonous block. For my research I looked into a way of placing the different household types or one can say social groups together without causing an unpleasant living environment. Whilst on the contrary bolster a close-knit and sustainable community.

The long-stretched shadow of my body touches the footprints in the sand in front of me. It is a cold winter afternoon and the sun is already setting. I hear the rhythm of water pulling back and passing under another wave of water. The beach is full of people many of whom presumably visit this place for the same reason as I: “uitwaaien”. While walking in the wind, I empty my mind of thoughts which have been floating around in my head that day. I find comfort in being together with the wind, the sand, the sea. “Uitwaaien” is a Dutch word that is not directly translatable to another language. It involves an activity, yet also a feeling, an experience, a change in mood. What intrigues me as an architect is that this shows that an environment has such strong influence on a person’s well-being. Architects are constructors of environments and therefore I believe that by researching and using the coastal environment as a laboratory, architects can learn to better understand how to design an environment that results in positively affecting its users. To explore the topic, the coastal environment around the harbour of Scheveningen becomes the laboratory. Around Scheveningen harbour, few buildings are left which remind me of the fishing industry which used to be the occupation for most of Scheveningen’s inhabitants. Fish is still one of the most important industries around the harbour, yet the labour has moved inside large box-like warehouses and factory-like ships. Now that the fishing industry is taking less space in the harbour, new offices, apartment blocks and warehouses are starting to appear. These new developments are a reflection of what is happening on a national level and global level. In the case of The Netherlands, the political and economic structures are creating a commercial environment in which housing developers start new building developments at a fast pace and with low budgets. The lack of action by the state in developing houses and the large housing shortage in most cities adds to this problem (Hulsman, 2021; Hulsman & de Voogt, 2020; Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties, 2020). Designs, therefore, are often reduced to the minimum standard of living as set by the building codes. The result is distanced and generalised architecture without thoughts on how these environments could positively affect the user’s well-being (Hannema, 2019) (Pallasmaa, 2012, p. 34,37). In words of Juhani Pallasmaa: “homogenisation of space weakens the experience of being, and wipes away the sense of place” (Pallasmaa, 2012, p. 50). So, the new buildings in the harbour stand in a strong contrast to the spatial characteristics of the coastal environment which provide many positive effects. How can architects make sure that also the buildings have a positive influence on people’s well-being? How can buildings, instead of weakening, enhance the characteristics of the area? How can a building be specific for the Scheveningen and reconnect people with the sense of place?

With the implementation of Skopje 2014, the cityscape has undergone tremendous changes with new facades and constructions, resulting in the dominance of political messages in people's daily life. Alongside these imposing alterations, the public space of Vardar River is greatly neglected, displaying a contrasting condition from the vibrant upper city level. The project seeks to redevelop 3 areas of public space of the riverbank through urban acupuncture of surfaces to enhance the area as a better public space for people of Skopje to serve as an escape from the hustle and bustle of the city. Through surfaces of various materials and opacity, the project aims at creating a public space that encourages interactions, activates social security and ultimately, devises a new relationship of people with their built environment.

The project site situates at Kale Fortress, a historic archaeological site at the highest point overlooking the city of Skopje. Despite its rich cultural value and prestige location, the site has been abandoned for years since the inter-ethnic conflict between the Macedonians and Albanians in 2011 over the construction on a church-shaped museum. Together with the other three abandoned structures in the Fortress area, I regard them as ‘emotional scars’ neglected by the people. This graduation project seeks to revitalize the Kale Fortress area by converting the abandoned structures into Open-air theatres. By identifying the four abandoned structures as an Anchor and centre of activities, the design aims to reactivate the fortress area by giving a ‘second-life’ to the ‘Modern Heritage’ and acknowledge them as part of the context/ history. Theatre is chosen to be the medium for its nature of expressing and interacting. It also provides a space for reimagination and empathy during performances. It is hoped to give a new perception and memory association of the place being open, generous instead of a taboo to the users. With the main design focus on the Church Museum, the developed design strategy is to be further applied to the rest of the three structures so that the fortress area could be perceived as a whole and accomplish the design intent in a broader context.

The project intervenes in the city of Skopje to promote creativity in the city. At the moment Skopje’s public space mainly consists of formal squares and parks which do not respond to or encourage appropriation and creativity within the city. The project will intervene in the in-between spaces on an urban scale, responding to the surrounding functions. I identify in-between spaces in Skopje as spaces which connect areas in the city with different functions and characteristics. For example a space in-between a busy road that connects to a residential neighborhood. A series of interventions will create a complementary network of public spaces in Skopje, improving the continuity in pedestrians experience and the social dynamics in the city. By using level changes and materiality the design aims to create a landscape that invites different forms of usage. The surface of the interventions will differentiate and create spaces by emphasizing or blurring thresholds. This will provide the city of a surface that stimulates people to appropriate the pedestrian landscape. The interventions provide a permanent landscape that can be freely interpreted and triggers people to use the public space in creative ways Through highlighting the potential of in-between spaces this research aims to encourage creativity and appropriation in the city.

The graduation project is a playground in and around the former Post Office of Skopje which is composed of three main elements. Firstly, the terrain of the complex is divided into four main fields, which vary from their immediate surroundings towards the city. Furthermore, the element of the bridge, which grows with its tentacles into these different zones, is located on the axis from the city to the river and thus decentralises the existing building. Lastly, the circular Post Office plays the role of the cohesive host of all the elements, bringing with it the factor of time.

The interventions topic first came to mind when I discovered there was a dark alley within one of the neoclassical façades along Macedonia street leading to a courtyard behind. It turned out that there were many courtyards like this dispersed throughout the city, providing potential for public space alternatives for the city of Skopje. The studio Methods and Analysis advocates the research process consisting of contextual, conceptual, and disciplinary analysis that results in a fully-fledged architectural intervention. Contextual analysis was conducted through observation of Skopje and interviews. The conceptual analysis investigated the literature research, from which I formulated the design aim to stimulate social interactions within the courtyards. The disciplinary analysis consisted of precedent studies, resulting in a set of instruments of architectural elements: basin, wall, leveling, and playground. The design of the courtyards implemented these instruments to mediate between resolving the issues found in the current situation and the surroundings. The interventions selected three courtyards within the inner ring of Skopje and proposed an urban strategy inspired by the theory of an urban mind map to integrate the dispersed courtyards within a complex environment. The design position to simulate social interactions in public space so as to provide people a sense of home and further unite the city.
Finally, reflecting on the graduation project, I obtained a new perception of architecture, became more critical of the reasons behind an intervention, and use an unconventional approach to figure out a problem. I learned how to conduct research through observation, theory, and precedents and combine the results into a set of instruments to be applied in the design of the interventions in order to achieve the design aim.

In September 2018 I have traveled to Bogota - the capital of Colombia with a group of Methods & Analysis students and teachers. During the trip to Bogota I have repeatedly visited the campus of Universidad Nacional de Colombia – a national higher education institution. What stayed with me the most after these visits were not the sights of the most prominent university buildings and representative spaces but quite contrastingly – pictures of the forgotten lawns and the dilapidated fence which marks the boundary of the campus. Universidad Nacional has been isolated from the rest of the city by a fence raised in 1970’s and even more severely by busy traffic arteries. In spite of the separation, the campus plays an invaluable role in the lives of the inhabitants of Bogota. Not to mention the thousands of students, who daily cross the gates, innumerable families and groups of friends arrive at Universidad Nacional to rest and play there. The campus is a green resource for the city.Boundary is a social contract in which the sides agree that a contradiction cannot be resolved in any way other than separating the conflicted sides. If the separation is not questioned the status quo remains. An architect – a person whose work is to introduce change – is inclined to question the division. And what happens if we transform the environment in such way that the discourse, more intensive exchange between the sides and with each other realities become possible? The reality supplies one of the possible answers. In the present state of affairs many aspects of the functioning of the student life have been left to the informal market. In fact the informal markets flourish near the boundary. Vendors have discovered the boundary in a way that does not conform to the orthodox understanding of a boundary. The organic, unplanned, improvised erodes the stiff, regulated, formalized.What would it take to open the gates for the other realities though?

This graduation project explores the act of listening to “noise”, to develop a new critical attitude to understanding sounds of the contemporary city. The essential aim is to create ears which separate, abstract and re-organize the myriad of sounds of the environment, which often ends up in a cacophony. The sounds of the surroundings are captured and amplified; the harvested sounds conjure up a new soundscape. The structure has the ability to reveal the specific sounds of the city in different situations, given its ability to perform to site-specific conditions and to adapt, as well as perform according to the different sounds within the broader Soundscape of Bogotá.

Informal actors possess a practical knowledge of the city, a sort of ‘secret know-how’, of how to move and operate in an environment that is unwelcoming to them. How could this knowledge be used as a tool or input of urban design? By considering the knowledge and ways of operating of the informal actors in a city, the project incorporates the elements observed in the interaction between informal actors and city infrastructure into the finished, non-prescriptive and multi-functional city interventions. By incorporating that knowledge, the project aims to create spaces of increased number of opportunities and affordances, and as such, to give voice to the informal, marginalized actors in the city, that are often dismissed and excluded.

Cities are becoming places for Instagramable experiences and Disneyfication. People are moving as fast as possible to get from one place to the other. We often forget to really look and be aware of our surroundings. I believe that some parts of the city should be dedicated to a more slower, more enjoyable, experimental way of moving through and being in the city. Within this thesis, the decision is made to intervene in an extremely sensitive and politically charged point in the urban context of Bogota. Not by traditionally transforming it by giving it back its original function, or by simply demolishing it, but by introducing an alternative way of transformation; namely transformation by ruination. This is inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire who says: ​“To prepare for ivy and passing time, a ruin more beautiful than any other.” Ruinating one part of the building creates opportunities for a biotope and gives the importance of time and imagination a place in the city. Besides that, I am also introducing basic and minimal architectonic elements to create a public space which connects the ruin to the river on the site. I have decided to only introduce platforms, plazas, and plateaus. By these 4 interventions, the area becomes an articulator of public and natural resources of the city. By being guided by genuine curiosity and evolved through multiple instances of trial and error, I have created a project that is elegant and provides clarity. Besides that, this project reflects upon the collective nature of architecture (e.g., architects layering their work on top of their predecessors), the acknowledgment of decay and destruction as necessary complements to creation and construction, and the possibility of developing serious, rigorous work with simplicity and happiness. This project is inspired by and operates at the work of Rogelio Salmona. The inspiration and underlaying guiding theme can be perfectly explained by an excerpt of a speech he gave at the Alvaro Alto Award: "…between the “elephant” and the “butterfly”; between the permanent and the ephemeral, there is a relationship that we cannot ignore, for it would mean sacrificing the enormous importance of diversity. .... The issue is to constantly extract, as Baudelaire used to say, the eternal from the transitory. There it is."