We are living in a time period commonly referred to as the Anthropocene, with the rapid and disruptive reshaping of landscapes standing out as a key feature. This restructuring is evident in the Netherlands, where the landscape has shifted from a natural and connected system to a human-altered and fragmented one due to interventions in natural areas, either by removing or isolating them. The result is a patchwork of remaining greenspace scattered between buildings, infrastructure, industry, and agriculture, leading to lost ecological and social connections and posing serious challenges to biodiversity, climate resilience, and quality of life.

At the same time, urban regions are under growing pressure from the need for one million new homes in the coming years. One of the areas where this urbanisation will take place is the city triangle region in the IJsselvalley. With its unique location between the Veluwe and the IJssel river, this region represents both the vulnerability and potential of urban-rural transition zones. Its patchwork landscape reflects past disruptions, while its ambitious housing goals threaten to intensify the fragmentation of remaining open space.

In a time of dominance over nature, I propose a pro-active concept of a Regional Landscape Park to find a new balance by protecting as well as developing nature and landscape. Rather than living in opposition to nature, we must learn to cooperate with it. To avoid further degradation, we must rethink the development of urban regions and let the landscape guide our actions. This includes steering urbanisation toward a more harmonious relationship with the land.
The central question guiding this thesis is: how can a Regional Landscape Park in the Stedendriehoek area, situated between the Veluwe and the IJssel, be utilised to protect and develop nature and landscape, raise awareness, and guide urban growth? Focusing on the Stedendriehoek area, the study analyses the spatial concept of a Regional Landscape Park, assesses the current state of its components, and identifies design principles and strategies tailored to the IJsselvalley context.

The resulting proposal introduces the concept of a Mosaic Park, a dynamic spatial vision that embraces landscape diversity and invites people to move through distinct yet connected environments with shared spatial characteristics. The design is structured around three interconnected layers: ecology, climate adaptivity, and recreation and identity. It proposes a guiding framework to balance ecological, social, and economic values in future development. As urbanisation continues to pressure remaining greenspaces, this thesis presents the Regional Landscape Park as a landscape-centered strategy for designing more sustainable and connected ways of living.

Bangladesh is undergoing a rapid urban transformation, with cities like Sylhet expanding at an unprecedented pace. This growth, however, often comes at the cost of ecological stability, spatial equity, and cultural continuity. This graduation project explores how sustainable urban expansion can be achieved in Sylhet by integrating vernacular architectural practices into contemporary planning.

Through a multidisciplinary approach, combining fieldwork, urban mapping, material research, and case study analysis, the project addresses the question: How can strategies for urban growth incorporate traditional knowledge to support environmental, economic, and cultural resilience in rapidly developing cities like Sylhet? Centered on Shonatola, a peri-urban village on Sylhet’s edge, the study exposes the risks of fragmented, plot-based development and the growing preference for industrial materials that disconnect communities from their environmental and cultural roots.

As an alternative, the project proposes a design framework that employs natural materials, bamboo, compressed earth blocks, and lime plaster, across all housing types and income levels. This material consistency challenges the social stigma surrounding vernacular construction and supports inclusive, low-carbon development. The proposal is anchored by a Community Land Trust (CLT) model that ensures affordability, collective land ownership, and long-term governance.

Rather than opposing urban growth, the project demonstrates how locally grounded design can steer it in a direction that is equitable, resilient, and reflective of cultural identity.

This design phase builds on research, personal experience, and insights gathered during
our field trip to Bangladesh. Especially the homestay in Ekduaria gave me a deep understanding of how people in rural Bangladesh live, how they use space, value community, and adapt their homes to daily needs. These experiences shaped the foundation of the project. The research focused on finding affordable, adaptable, and community-oriented housing for rural-urban migrants in Sylhet. What became clear is that affordability is the top priority, but just as important are familiar qualities like green space, open low-rise layouts, a strong sense of community, and a clear transition from public to private spaces. To respond to these needs, I chose to work with the Open Building approach. This method allows for flexible, long-term housing solutions where residents can adapt their living spaces over time. A clear structure provides stability, while the interiors remain open for change. A minimum floor height of 3.5 meters, smart placement of service cores, and layered construction all support this flexibility. Smaller studies on climate, material choice, and construction techniques helped refine the design. Local materials, passive cooling, and rainwater collection are integrated to make the project more sustainable and context-specific. This project is not a fixed solution, but a flexible framework designed to grow and change with its users. It offers a future-proof way of living that connects the memory of the village with the possibilities of the city, and aims to reduce the affordable housing shortage in Sylhet in a way that feels both practical and personal.

This thesis explores the traditional water system of Sassi di Matera and finds out that water plays an important role as a sustainable resource, the social center, and the chance for green space. In addition, by exploring the overall history and culture of Matera, different symbolic elements of water (public fountains, grabiglioni, WWTP) are chosen as the representations of water in different landscapes. The water wisdom and representation become the design strategies to optimize Matera’s water circulation, improve the network of public space, and enhance the blue-green network. Ultimately, the sustainable development goals of the region can be achieved by using a landscape approach as the start.

While technological development and the rising Second Machine Age are already firmly affecting the notion of labour and the consequent disposition of our cities and territories, the remote island of Hammerfest, in the Arctic regions of Finnmark, prefigures the conditions for a radical rebirth. The full extents of automation, resulting in a post-labour organisation of economy, envisions the return of the homo ludens and enhances play as fundamental base of the new society. The explosive decentralisation of production and distribution suddenly wipes out the city, the core centre of our consumerist lives, and promotes the return to the landscape, where new pillars of society are established. On this island of utopian playground, individuals are now fully capable of engendering the shape of their existence, clustering around the ludic elements and interacting with each other in playful activities, while machines take care of their fundamental needs. Among the elements, the Theatre represents the highest form of play and, therefore, the most essential component of public life. Facing the growing automated port and the perished city, the machine of the theatre is a bridge between land and sea, on the particular conditions of a site that constantly changes under the cyclical variations of the tide. In front of the spectacle of automation, what humans stare at is the activity that has been taken away from them, the agency of their actions. A new kind of theatricality is therefore needed. Since the demise of labour invests anyone with the possibility of becoming actors of the play, the sense of spectatorship itself is questioned. Far from the optical relation of the theatron (sight), that has so far embodied its cornerstone, the theatre has now to be subjected to another relation, suggested by the word drama (action), thus endowing the becoming performative of production. The Theatre of Automation is therefore a social endeavour, aiming at bringing the theatrical performance to the level of a collective form of life, where the role of the spectator merges with the one of the actor. In other terms, the machine of the theatre takes active part in the transformation of the site, unfolding and accelerating the artificial manipulation of the territory at the hand of technology. As an act of formation, first, of physical, cultural and ultimately of political nature, the Theatre measures the pace of changes, interpolating the urgency of human artifex with the rhythm of natural systems. When climate change and sea level rise will set the eventual limit of the Machine, interrupting its floating dance on the tides, the Theatre will come to its final act. Rich with the collective memory of the site, it will close its stage and set sail towards new destinations, bearing the paradigm of a new society, on the threshold between human, machine and nature.

Land and Sea are of a very different kind. One roots people to their contexts, tying them to its borders, properties and complex systems of relations; the other suggests the possibility for limit-less, unconditional wandering, an overwhelming experience of movement, in both space and time. This ancient tension between the anthropic process of colonizing Land – as the space of exploitation for collective survival – and the unseizable wilderness of the Sea – the realm of individual bravery – is the founding act of western societies. However, this delicate balance – or perpetual confrontation – is now endangered by its own premises. Land, as intrinsically limited, is reaching its maximum capacity: to ensure our survival and growth, the Sea is being identified as the new frontline for the rationalizing logics of territorialization. The Sea-as-a-territory is a political imposition: it is the tool for the collectivity – or the state – to enforce its hegemony on the sea-scape. Being the Sea a context-less space, dynamic, free from roots and limitations, the logics of colonization and exploitation are projected with even more harshness and strength. The Sea is facing the risk to lose its original role as memory of individual freedom – beyond the state; nevertheless, its exploitation is crucial to the survival of the collectivity and cannot be avoided. Therefore, the notion of the Sea-as-a-territory needs to be mitigated, in order to re-establish a coexistence of opposites, or at least to create awareness of the dualistic relation between the two paradigms of Land and Sea. The North Sea is urbanizing quickly and violently; such trends appear to be most visible in the Flemish Coast, a region which is deeply struggling to rule on its waters – groundwater and sea – while planning further expansions towards the sea, to protect the coast from storm waves. To meet the needs of the region – and of the collectivity – while mitigating the territorialization processes towards the Sea, the construction of an island is proposed, to be realized in four phases: the formation (I) or the act of imposing order with the definition of a protective wall; the accommodation (II) or the territorial reclamation using natural conditions; the production (III) or the desalination of seawater as act of exploitation; and the colonization (IV) or the human element, through the construction of a system of pools. The constant confrontation of these four elements – the wall, the landscape-in-formation, the desalination plant, the baths – constitutes the possibility for a different interpretation to the Sea-as-a-territory. Their relation – spatial and temporal – might become the trigger for a new consciousness on the mitigated narrative of territorialization, this time ruled by the intrinsic condition of ephemerality of the process itself. The island-as-an-outpost – or the island-machine – is a fortress; and fortresses are always doomed to surrender.