In my graduation project I have researched the relation between built space and open space in the urban context. With the current densification challenge in Utrecht much more built volume is added to the city, increasing the pressure on open space. Open space is of great importance in securing urban liveability and has in particular many environmental values. By proposing redesigns in the neighborhood of Rivierenwijk, both the quantity and quality of open space is improved, enabling a sustainable densification potential. Central in these redesigns are environmental aspects regarding climate resilience and biodiversity and how they can be reinforced in the urban open space. Therefore contributing in the transition of Utrecht to become a more climate resilient and nature-inclusive city.

The two urban challenges of the mobility shift and industrial redevelopment come together at the site of the Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H) in Rotterdam. The mobility shift consists of the transition from polluting vehicles towards sustainable alternatives, like electric vehicles, and the use of public transport and slow mobility. The industrial shift consists of sites where the industrial function is moving out, resulting in urban redevelopment. This research dives into the following research question: ‘How can sustainable mobility guide the redevelopment of post-industrial sites towards a sustainable environment’. In the research, the component of sustainable mobility is connected to development and environment. Strategies like TOD and S2N are used to find synergies in research and design. To answer the main question, research is applied to the M4H, resulting in a strategic spatial framework. In this framework, mobility is elaborated in detailed design interventions. The challenge of sustainable mobility is further elaborated and explained in infographics, and the shift to design principles is made in a development pattern box. So sustainable mobility can guide the development by defining the mobility transition, by a translation into development principles, and the implementation of sustainable mobility in the redevelopment process.

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 project describes the search for new methodologies of analysing an unknown context as well as questioning existing patterns of behaviour in the urban organization. After a fieldtrip to Bogotá, an interests in elements with connecting and separating values in the public sphere has been developed. Teusaquillo, the central area of intervention, has been shaped by educational and cultural institutions. It consists of quiet neighbourhood streets, hectic connecting roads and the green spine, the parkway. The dominance of traffic and movement within the city leaves little space to interact in the public sphere which led to the following question: How can collective space in Teusaquillo be altered from a space of movement to a space of inhabitation? Developing an architectural response to this question, inspirations from the comma in literature and the pause in music have grown from conceptual inspirations to design tools. Apart from this, investigations on intimacy in architecture and the boundaries between architecture, urban planning and landscape played a major role. The street itself became the location of this project and has been analysed in depth. The resulting intervention is envisioned through a new layout of the street based on ground interventions with landscaping elements as well as a modular façade structure that extends buildings and creates spaces of transition. This was developed through a systematic approach that has been tested and validated on other streets. Spaces of Permanence is carried out beyond the boundaries of architecture and questions modernist urban planning ideals. Through acts of slowing, blurring boundaries, introducing means of appropriation and material culture collective space is made accessible and spaces for meaningful interaction are created.

In Bogotá, the capitol of Colombia, the museum of modern art Mambo needs an extension. This graduation project is a proposal for that extension, which has a focus on the relationship and interaction between the building and the public domain. The result is a building complex that has many different levels of publicness, an open building that is part of the urban fabric. It is a reaction on the harsh demarcation between the public and the private realm in this city. The answer is a more diffuse border at the threshold between building and street, wondering what the (semi) private realm can facilitate for the people in the public realm, in a city where almost all ground is private.

The Tools of the Architect exhibition is an assembly of a small selection of projects, showing the collective interests and ambitions from the char of Methods & Analysis. All of these projects were developed by students between 2014 and 2017, in courses offered by the chair at the Bachelors and Masters levels of education. The shown projects are based on two premises representing how the chair of Methods and Analysis addresses architecture and the built environment in two interrelated ways. On the one hand by studying and testing the tools and procedures, the methods that have been, are being, or can be used by architects in the production of the built environment. On the other hand by studying parts of that built environment critically or systematically, analysing them, in order to understand some of the components, logics, and processes that could further inform them.@en