Inspired by the concept of Heterotopia – a concept first coined by Michel Foucault in 1966, describing ‘other spaces’ – the aim of this project was to question the way metropolitan cities currently deal with ‘The Other’. That is, the human and non-human other. Like its previous function as a marshalling yard, can this year’s Urban Architecture Graduation Studio project site, ‘La Friche Josaphat’ in Brussels, be a place of rearranging? Rearranging the way a city deals with reception of newcomers, as well as the way a city deals with its green spaces.

Midden-Delfland is located in Zuid-Holland and bordered by cities like Delft, Den Haag, Vlaardingen, Schiedam and Rotterdam. The area consists of an open, peat-meadow landscape dominated by livestock farming. Over the past 50 years, this landscape has transformed into a densely urbanized and fragmented part of the Southern Randstad, reducing available space to mitigate the effects of climate change. The KNMI climate scenarios predict a temperature increase of 4.9°C and a sea-level rise of 2.5 meters by 2100. Located at the end of a river delta and mostly below sea level, Zuid-Holland is increasingly vulnerable to flooding as extreme weather events become more frequent. Additionally, infrastructure like the A4 highway and railway cross the landscape from north to south, creating a fragmented landscape. In light of these concerns, a strategic plan is needed to mitigate the effects of climate change, with Midden-Delfland emerging as a location of interest. Beside the need to create more green buffer zones, the importance of connecting urban areas with rural areas becomes clear. The municipality of Midden-Delfland describes its role as an outdoor green area for the 2.3 million inhabitants of the metropolitan region of Rotterdam-The Hague. This recreational demand places considerable pressure on Midden-Delfland. In 2017, this region was designated the title as a ‘Bijzonder Provinciaal Landschap’ highlighting its cultural heritage and distinctive provincial landscape. However, this designation is not legally binding and serves more as a qualitative label. The design titled ‘the Metropolitan Park’ aims to emphasize the area's significance for surrounding urban areas, guided by three main themes: ecology, agriculture, and recreation.

In addition to its agricultural function, Midden-Delfland also has a strong ecological character, consisting of a multitude of ecologically rich habitats, including peat bogs, wetlands, meadow bird zones, and forests. Currently, the agricultural sector plays a significant role in conserving the ecological character, with numerous farmers participating in the management of their land for the meadow birds populations. Despite this contribution, the agricultural sector still negatively impacts the environment. Farmers strictly control the water level for their agricultural practices. Low water levels dry out the peat soil, which in turn causes the peat to oxidize and emit CO2. This oxidation leads to subsidence, making the land increasingly vulnerable to floodings and droughts. Furthermore, pesticide and fertilizer use results in eutrophication, water pollution, and nitrogen emissions, harming the natural environment.

This thesis proposes a new vision, accompanied by a development strategy for the future of the ‘Bijzonder Provinciaal Landschap’. The research is divided into two sections: a design section and a governance-oriented section. The maximization method is used to investigate each theme, with the aim of identifying optimal solutions. In order to develop an integrated vision for the year 2070, spatial conflicts are addressed. The research will also address the development of policy, the identification of stakeholders, and the outlining of strategic steps. Eventually, this thesis provides insights for municipalities such as Delft, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Midden-Delfland itself, encouraging the formation of integrative alliances and the pursuit of sustainable trajectories.

The post-war architectural and urban design paradigm’s characteristic trait of spatial and functional determination limits the possibility for spatial adaptation and flexibility in urban spaces, struggling to face ever-steadily occurring social, economic, and climate challenges. In Droixhe - the largest post-war social housing ensemble in Liège, Belgium, the ineffective reach of previously executed housing requalification and increasing mismanagement overlook the urban public space on the housing blocks’ ground level, leading to its progressive deterioration and alienating fixed spatial ambience.
Drawing from the assemblage thinking theory in urban design and the notion of non-static built environments, the thesis project ‘Re:/Dis:/Assembling Droixhe’ incorporates architectural and urban design interventions within the ensemble’s urban ground level, allowing for ever-evolving compositions of elements with changing interrelationships, while challenging the pre-existing Modernist static built entities. Underlining the notion of “the incomplete”, the established design framework suggests the (re-)evaluation and upgrade of existing compositions through flexible building elements, which create the possibility to be critically reviewed and eventually recalibrated over time in response to occurring challenges. Applying a holistic multi-method approach, this design research aims to unveil the potential and challenges of urban transformation in static post-war urban environments as a point of departure to a more community-engaging and environmentally conscious architectural practice.

‘Design with (addiction) Care’ is a reflection on the role of an architect within the humanization of addiction care, primarily the design of the typology of a hostel. It is deeply rooted in the studio theme of the scarred city, where both the vulnerable scarred urban tissue as well as vulnerable people demand careful architectural reasoning. The thesis combines several methods to obtain an understanding of how architectural decision-making affects the use and experience of buildings over time. Concomitantly it examines how the perspectives of different stakeholders influence the design process. Analyzing the perspectives of architects, residents, managers, social workers, directors, local residents, professors and municipalities has contributed to a reflection on an architect's challenges, limitations and possibilities within our multidisciplinary profession.

In the face of the prevailing norms and practices in contemporary architecture, there is a growing need to find alternative ways of making architecture that prioritize human experiences, social interactions, and a deeper connection with the built environment. The examination of empowered play as a revolutionary approach to design is the focus of this thesis, "Retreat the Line," which offers a break from conventional paradigms. It emphasizes the importance of challenging the prevailing urban planning trends that prioritize financial gain and rigid quantification, often leading to the commodification of public spaces. Instead, the argument for a qualitative approach put out by suggested moments of architecture embraces wastefulness, unexpected moments, and the co-creation of spaces that encourage serendipity and delight.

"Retreat the Line" is an appeal for architects to adopt a more all-encompassing and human-centered approach to design. In order to build lively, inclusive, and meaningful built environments that improve quality of life and develop a feeling of community and belonging, it urges practitioners to investigate the potential of the architectural agency.

Polders in the Taihu basin have a history of over two thousand years. The low-lying topography and dense water network create convenient geographical conditions for the reclamation of polders. Later, with the rapid population growth, mulberry-dike-fish-pond was constructed in order to make full use of the limited land resources, which is a sustainable and ecological agricultural model, supporting biodiversity and water resilience as well as providing a basis for settlement in this region. The historical polder landscape closely linked the water system, agriculture system, and settlement system, and then derived water culture, rice culture, fish culture, and silk culture.

However, since1950s, the Taihu Lake basin has been under drastic urbanization, which caused a threat to water safety and cultural heritage. The city invasion of the rural area and road construction leads to the siltation of the watercourse. As a result, the polder landscape was fragmented and lost its water resilience gradually. Water crises including eutrophication, flooding, and drought become more frequent, influencing the cultivation of crops and the traditional settlement’s safety. Additionally, the region has lost its unique cultural identity as a result of the standardization of agriculture.

In conclusion, the polder landscape in Taihu basin is facing three main problems: city invasion, water safety issues, and loss of cultural heritage. Compared to the civil engineering method to solve these challenges, landscape intervention costs much less, builds up a more adaptive and resilient system, and brings aesthetic experience as well. Therefore, how to learn from historical practice to protect precious cultural heritage while restoring the water resilience in the Taihu basin through landscape approaches is the key challenge. The landscape approaches start from the base layer like soil and water, helping to create a sustainable social-ecological system as well as being flexible enough to adapt to future challenges.

This graduation work serves as an academic documentation of my graduation project within the Urban architecture studio, black hill city.
The project aims to investigate and implement architectural interventions to transform the urban structure of the Belgian city of Liége. By focusing on innovative design strategies rather than large-scale urban interventions. More specified to this research. This project focusses on the different senses in architecture and the connection between architecture and urbanism by integrating these different senses in the design.

My thesis ‘Against the grain’ explores the relationship between urban life and food, how architectural invention could reintroduce food activities back to being a part of the urban life. The agenda was inspired by my personal interest in food and how it effects our lives, especially the power of food in placemaking. The topic of food and space, I believe, is a topic that is under researched yet it has so much potential in contributing to the public realm. The current modern food system is inevitably detaching us from food and removing food from the urban agenda. The aim of ‘Against the grain’ is to explore an alternative model where “food and all its practices can be a part of urban life”. I therefore, propose a redefinition of the clay factory, from an abandoned industrial building to a food hub with a foodhall and food market, cooking school, and community garden.

The indispensable relationship between city and economy often remains incomprehensible and rather conceptual, as they do not meet in a concrete environment. In the most general sense, the economy represents production and consumption activities in which urban residents participate, yet there is no tangible space in cities where this relationship is physically exhibited and witnessed. The reason being that the industry though a keystone of the economy, has not survived the evolution of the urban tissue, resulting in the consequent lack of synergy between humans and the act of production.

Etymologically, the term industry appears as a synonym of ‘diligence’ and ‘hard work’ which allusively refers to that of humans. Though throughout the years the word represented the means of production, this is now out of sight. Production, once indispensable to human existence and the urban tissue, is no longer a part of everyday life. The functioning of the machines led to pollution and inadequate sources, while the industry needed bigger and cheaper lands which were hard to possess within the dense city center. This ever-changing dynamic resulted in the subsequent isolation of industry and production to the outskirts; resulting in segregated urban planning where it was not possible to witness the act of making.

Production is an everyday actor which plays a vital role in the urban flow. Gleaning the industry, collecting and giving it a new meaning, can reintroduce this everyday forgotten existence of production to its city. This way, production would not only represent the economy but also become an urban catalyst to evoke new possible interactions such as the sense of collectiveness. This collectiveness is provided by the ever-changing urban dynamics and; as a result, by a new understanding of urban culture. This approach offers shared urban spaces for different types of users, urban residents, makers, manufacturers, and workers.

After having been pushed away for years, the industry is now ready to be celebrated, offering unconventional perspectives for new urban and architectural explorations. By enabling many dualities such as humans and machines, contextuality and universality, etc. to exist together, it intends to form a more homogenous urban atmosphere.

Maastricht has a long history as an industrial city and used to be well-known for its ceramics, rubber and paper industries. Due to the decline in industrial production, workspaces and industrious activities are leaving the city and are becoming increasingly secluded from the public sphere. With the Studio theme being gleaning, the project is looking to find value in the existing while giving it a new meaning through interventions and adaptions. It therefore aims to introduce workspaces into the urban fabric of Maastricht and make them meaningful for the urban environment on the site of a former paper mill. Through the lens of philosophical anthropology, these workspaces become essential spaces in the city, facilitating a plurality of activities, allowing encounters and exchange and enriching the urban experience.

Maastricht is located between two extremities. On the one hand, the center that seems to be frozen in a heritage policy that allows little flexibility. On the other hand, the suburbs where the change is so intense that time layers are constantly being wiped away and what remains seems generic. The site of this graduation project is located between these two worlds, on the site of the former fortifications.

On the site there is an old paper factory, for which a redevelopment is proposed in this thesis. The factory developed together with the dismantling of the fortifications and therefore inherited large parts of its morphology to these older military structures. A thorough inventory revealed a pattern of parallel walls beneath the maze-like factory. They had grown next to the fortification wall and came to form the main characters in the new design for the factory.

In my design, the elongated machine halls for paper production become passages that run through the heart of the factory. In the north of the site, the green belt that surrounded the city will be reconnected by the construction of a large park, which will be connected to the other bank of the Meuse by reusing an abandoned railway bridge. One of the buildings with a passageway will be arranged on the floors above the passageway as flexible housing for expats and migrants.

The 2022 Urban Architecture graduation studio explores the site and surroundings of a partially operating paper mill in the city of Maastricht. Working with a thematic approach the project is engaged through the lens and attitude of a so called Glaneur/Glaneuse. The ones who reap leftovers from harvested fields, or find beauty, value and opportunity in the more unlikely places.

From exploring the factory, the project engages the challenges of a medium scale urban intervention through a redefined urban proposal for the disused southern side of the grounds of the paper mill. A plan for a mixed use neighborhood integrates housing, industry and culture oriented public interiors.

The design for a cultural center on the location of a former paper mill explores the found themes of collage and assemblage as design tools and influences. Whilst evaluating what can be kept and how additions can be fitted into this rich existing environment, the project develops three existing structures and one newly built volume into a diverse new public interior. It results in a context aware collaged addition that opens up new opportunities for a formerly inaccessible part of the city.

Facing a decline in industrial production and potential vacancy in the north of Maastricht, the ‘Readymades’ by French artist Marcel Duchamp were investigated as an approach to reuse of industrial architecture. With the artworks being mundane, ordinary objects that were only slightly modified, their placements in unusual contexts like art galleries manages to create new associations in an exciting contrast to what the objects originally were. At the core of this graduation project stands the question of how this approach to art can be transferred to an architectural scale, giving the opportunity to revive leftover structures without disguising their history.

Theatrum mundi and the idea of ‘the city as a stage’ is the foundation of this research. It configures the our area of interest within the realms of stages, sets, scenes and backstages by defining their interrelations and metaphorical exchanges within the spaces in a city. The approach analysis and defines application backstages on architectural design and sheds light on the current conditions of the backstage. The research reveals the material, immaterial, spatial and ecological conditions of such workspaces that aid in cultural production. The study of landbouwbelang as a backstage displays its uniqueness as a case study and by use architectural drawings these leanings further validates the design approach towards domestication of existing infrastructure towards appropriability for a production environment. Additionally, it showcases cultural production as a new kind of performance, that in the design is further staged. Inspired by the set designs of the movie dogville(year), the methodology suppresses the curtains and reveals the working and organism-istic nature of cultural production. Domestication and appropriation is not a static phenomenon.. Hence, the methodology needed to be something that explains the mutating phenomenon. Inspired from the movie dogville, where the the ideas about set and props has been taken to a new dimension. In a way the approach with the markings and layer of imagination, it lead to me answer my questions and reveal the backstage at the same time. For he viewer to understand the variations, shaping of spaces and domestication of existing built fabrics. Landbouwbeland is a labyrinth and one loses the idea of space, and orientation within it, hence the final product will showcase the labyrinthic nature of landbouwbelang, this learning is transferred into the design, through fixed directional markers that align with the spine of the functions. By allowing the domesticity into the production space, it was suggested, there is a greater possibility for a fluid relationship between individual and group practice, unlike the formalized spatial and temporal structure of the rehearsal which brings individual practitioners together at a set time and for a specific purpose.

This project tries to, inspired by the heavily quantified and confined ways of assessing "liveability" in policy documents, come up with a different way of reading the city. In this project, I aimed to explore this reading within the unit of the street, to see how focusing on a single street, a section of the city, could result in valuable broad insight into the neighborhood, the city and beyond. For the reading of this street, a socio-spatial approach was adopted, seeing space as a social product and focusing on how it is perceived and lived by its users in everyday socio-spatial practices. This is researched by walking and talking with ten individuals living and/or working on the this street. From this I tried to read the street through different eyes, the eyes of the people that are in a way experts of the street and see what lessons can be learned from this.

The project discusses the topic on how to design within inner cities where there is an enormous lack of building ground. Cities must densify throughout the years. To successfully achieve this, architects could expand on top of existing buildings. By building stories on top of existing buildings architects could extend the lifespan of buildings with a non-destructive approach. Due to reconstruction over time spaces in cities have become harsh, neglected and unused public spaces. For this project, the used method was to preserve the original historic pattern while using a new modern architectural language. The ambition, to ultimately design a building by reconstructing from the past while using knowledge from the present. In brief, to engineer a building with a sustainable impact on the environment.

A design proposal for urban densification in an area with a suburban setup, where social structures, ecological structures and architectural structures are equally important. Inspired by the characteristics of heterotopian places.

The shopping mall the Molenpoort (Nijmegen) was constructed in 1972 and is creating this hyperreality; an indoor world without rain, wind or snow. The invention of Victor Gruen, a foreign typology from America occupies all the negative space within the building block. Victor Gruen’s idea for the mall was a building where the community would gather, but at the end the mall evolved to a function with only a commercial purpose. This introverted architectural typology makes the visitor wander and tries to keep them inside for as long as possible. In the beginning the mall was a popular destination to shop, meet and greet, but after time went by it began to decay. Two major renovations (1985 and 2000) tried to save the mall, but it has become outdated again. There are multiple reasons why shopping malls have fallen into disuse, for instance the economic crisis in 2008 and a rapid change of our culture in social and in technical sense. The growth of online shopping is immense, with its peek during the Corona crisis, this virtual world is competing with the shopping centres in the real cities.

The new urban proposal contains outdoor streets, intimate public spaces, a large square for events and a rooftop park. The Molenpoort is divided into smaller building blocks which locate multiple functions, among which a public building. This public building has a central position in the urban proposal and locates creative companies from the Honigcomplex. The building is based on the concept of bricolage, which is about the act of improvisation. The building is reusing the existing concrete structure of the Molenpoort and besides that reusing the existing steel structure of the Honigcomplex. The building will be a place in the city were people are making, baking, dancing, cooking, playing and presenting. This makers industry (factory) is visible in the architectural expression of the building. By introducing an alternative function to housing, the makers industry and the community will be reengaged and the Honigpoort can function as a catalysator to the city centre of Nijmegen.

Under the overarching theme of Bricolage, the studio’s task has been to rethink the given situation and to develop a proposal for the revitalization of the Molenpoort site in the south of the city of Nijmegen – both on urban and on spatial scale. There, the shopping mall of the Molenpoort Passage has implanted itself in the middle of the old town. A manifesto of contemporary architecture from the 70ties, comprising a faceless building complex, merely dedicated to shopping and consumption in an atmosphere of constant overstimulation. Based on two hypotheses, (i) that human beings are strongly dependent on rituals and routines on the one hand, and (ii) that we are increasingly in need of a built environment that radiates stability and community on the other hand, the question arose about the connection/interaction between architecture and the performance of rituals. How can we develop an architecture, which encourages daily as well as ceremonial rituals which become an integral part in humans regular habits, in order to strengthen a sense of belonging and togetherness? The idea for my urban plan was to break up the big mass (the shopping center), into a loose ensemble of smaller buildings, which fit in size into the surroundings and unite the plot into a new community. Overall it shall be a place of education and hospitality. With the design of a primary school and boarding house I wanted to create a safe environment and once again a community, a school community, with its own rituals and routines.