As Sylhet, Bangladesh, experiences unprecedented urban growth, the tension between rapid housing provision and cultural continuity becomes increasingly acute. This graduation project investigates how the adaptive intelligence of vernacular Sylheti architecture can be combined with modern construction techniques to create affordable, resilient, and culturally responsive housing.

Focusing on the redevelopment of the historic Hawkers Market, the project proposes a hybrid design framework that merges elevated, flood-resilient concrete structures with spatial features drawn from traditional homes, such as courtyards, verandas, and modular layouts that accommodate evolving family needs. By layering a clear hierarchy of spaces, from public commercial spines to private dwelling terraces, the proposal supports both community interaction and individual privacy.

Extensive research underpins the design, including fieldwork, climatic analysis, and case studies of contemporary housing models. Drawing on the principles of John Habraken’s open frameworks, the project challenges the rigidity of standardized construction by embedding opportunities for incremental adaptation and resident participation within a contemporary structural system.

A cross-subsidization strategy enables higher-income residential and commercial components to fund affordable housing units for low-income groups, fostering an inclusive urban fabric.

Ultimately, this project demonstrates how bridging vernacular architecture and modern construction can produce housing that is not only technically efficient and environmentally responsive but also socially rooted and capable of evolving with the lives of its residents.

Bangladesh, a riverine country shaped by the yearly monsoon, where dense cities continue to grow as people leave the flooded rural areas in search of shelter and income.

Situated along the Surma River in Sylhet, a city in the north of Bangladesh, this project explores how to design within an unfamiliar context, with the temporality of the monsoon in mind. The site, currently an informal settlement of Hindu and Muslim communities, floods each year as water flows into their houses and daily life moves onto the streets.

Acknowledging the position of being an outsider and the generations of experience in living with the monsoon, the research took a ‘learning from’-perspective. By analysing how people build, live, and adapt to the water, these practices were mapped in detail to understand patterns and principles. This became the foundation for the design; building in clusters with shared courtyards, keeping the dwellings close to the ground floor, integrating Bangladesh-specific elements into the floorplans and making room for the monsoon in the landscape. A raised plinth protects the buildings during high water, allowing life to continue even during wet season.

Rather than relying on imported resources, the design uses local materials so that the project’s investment flows directly into the community, supporting local economies and craftsmanship.

Bangladesh its housing crisis is fueled by rural-urban migration. Climate change stimulated the rural-urban transition, leading to rapid urbanisation and the formation of informal settlements. Focusing on the Shonatola village at the peri-urban transition near Sylhet, this thesis proposes a research-based design strategy that is incremental, flood-resilient, and fit for the socio-cultural context of Bangladesh.

Incrementality poses one of the most promising solutions for affordable housing in the Global South. Incremental housing strategies of the past, such as sites and services, can serve as lessons on their design and management to inform contemporary models that allow for new, scalable site-specific interventions. The key factors for a successful strategy rely on the security of tenure, qualitative urban design, a base scenario with proper infrastructure, foundations, and load-bearing elements, as well as a final-growth scenario that allows for a middle-class DNA. Furthermore, bottom-up, community-organised, participatory processes should be matched with top-down, citywide planning.

Combining architectural design, urban planning, and water management, the proposal unifies these principles into a scalable, participatory model for affordable housing. Through an extensive literature research, case study analysis, ethnographic research, and fieldwork in Bangladesh, a framework is developed to integrate construction techniques, spatial typologies, and social structures. The design proposal consists of a phased masterplan, flood-adaptive building typologies, and a community land trust-based management strategy.

This project focuses on sound in architecture and the urban environment. The location of this project is Friche Josaphat, a green and biodiverse area located in Brussels. Being a void over the last years, this place changed into a biodiverse landscape. The main question of this research is: what is the sound of the Friche? By listening and analyzing these sounds through making music, information about the context of the building site is gained. A sonic plan is made which serves as a base for the landscape design. A Sonic & sculpture park has been designed where the sounds of the Friche will be emphasized through adding more diversity in the landscape of the Friche and adding sculptures, sound art and places to listen to the sounds. The visitors center that is designed is one of the two entrances to this park. This building creates a gradient in sound from the urban environment of brussels to the park and introduces the visitor to sounds. The building also shows a gradient of materiality from urban to green. The visitors center is an educational place for people from the neighbourhood and contains a café and exhibition about sounds and green. After designing the building a new sonic plan is made, but then on building scale. Music is composed to emphasize the different atmospheres in the building.

The Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, known by the name of Mayapán by the Mayan civilization, remained an enclosed and remote area during every major historical transition of the country (Colonization, Independence from Spain, Internal Civil War). Located between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, this rich landscape remained forever in the sight of powerful individuals and colonizers who never truly managed to rule the Mayan warriors.

Today, the region is composed of three different states with a complex mosaic of rich biodiversity, fascinating landscapes and important coral reef systems competing for survival against the effects of nature and human actions. For decades, the focus remained mainly on the economic development of the coastal areas without considering the ecological stress and social uncertainty as a result of urban expansion. In the span of merely twenty years, the region was completely transformed following capitalist intentions and we can see the fragile state of the land as a direct result of this. Sadly, the region’s mostly mono-cultural economic practices focusing on tourism services have pushed the locals, from mostly indigenous background to leave their communities and seek job opportunities in the cities created for the new Mayan Riviera.

This set of political, social, economic and natural elements have had enormous repercussions on the physical and social integrity of the landscape, which nowadays is threatened not only by the over-exploitation of resources and climate change, but also by the homogenization and simplification of an ancestral culture.

However, it is in this richness of landscapes, biodiversity and cultural heritage where I see a possibility to think of new ways of co-existing and to imagine new ways of living in sync with our environment. What would be the long durée in this region where everything is the result of a process of legitimization and Disneyfication of the landscape and its culture? The aim of this thesis is to expose the critical issues, assess the damage and recover together with nature with the guiding principle that resources should be managed to reflect the relationships among all ecosystem components, including humans and nonhuman species, the environment in which they live, and physical, biological and socioeconomic interrelationships.

We can all relate to the experience of wanting to shut of all the environmental stimuli around us, as our brain is overwhelmed and overstimulated by it all. Our surrounding environments can be improved if architects and designers learn more about how multi-sensory stimuli can enrich our perception of space, and when these triggers can take a back seat. Hence, we should strive for a well-balanced design regarding sensory stimuli, instead of creating overwhelming environments that are unnecessarily stressing ourselves. Buildings affect behaviour and wellbeing of its users. The goal of my research to make architects and designers more aware that creating spaces has certain effects on mental health of perceivers. And more importantly, that these effects can be different for each person. A design for a building should serve every user, instead of designing for the average person. Architects should take into account that every individual perceives a space differently and reacts differently to environmental stimuli. They should implement this varying demand for environmental stimuli in the building/environment, based on an individual’s needs. A stimulating space is an environment that stimulates a person’s way of working, thinking and being, whether it is stimulated by internal or external factors. The role of the architect is getting more multidisciplinary, but the way students are educated at our faculty is falling behind this multidisciplinary approach. My design for an interdisciplinary design school at the TU Delft campus will contribute to this collaboration between students of various faculties. Besides that, it will show how we can design for every user, instead of for the average one, by offering a gradation of spaces, based on the order of interaction with the environment and the degree of environmental stimuli included.

Climate change and its effect on water is an unavoidable phenomenon. However, the scarcity of this precious resource is not just due to changing natural patterns but a highly man made disaster. ‘Water use has been growing globally at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and an increasing number of regions are reaching the limit at which water services can be sustainably delivered, especially in arid regions’(UN Water).

Similar to this condition, the water system in Jaipur has central instabilities. With high level of dependence on a single source at the moment, high transmission loss, increasing water pollution and degradation of the ecosystems, the resilience to such loss is low. This condition has further worsened due to the changing precipitation patterns leading to less rainfall in the last decade and intensive heat which causes high evaporation. But, in order to meet the rising demand of the population and industries, changing land use both in urban and peri urban areas, has resulted in over exploitation of ground and surface water, the city is now facing a severe water crisis. Nearby water reserves have run dry and the seasonal river (Dhravyawati) which passes through the city is now used as a sewage drain, catering to all domestic and industrial waste due to lack of efficient governance and inadequacy in providing effective infrastructure for supply and treatment. The existing traditional water systems which has been the only practice of rainwater harvesting in the region are non-operational and insufficient to meet the demand of the growing population and industries. All these trends are interrelated and create a cause effect scenario, ultimately leading to conflicts and drought conditions. Therefore, the research addresses issues of both ‘water scarcity’ and ‘water security’ for the city.

In order to become resilient, there is a stronger need for communities to effectively manage water resources through conservation and reuse. Therefore, the project proposes a sustainable integrated multi scaler and multi-generational planning approach to water management strategy for the city of Jaipur, India, which has constantly been a victim of drought conditions. The aim of this graduation project can be categorized into two parts: the first half looks at the general goal to devise a sustainable strategy for integrated urban water management and urban planning for semi-arid zones, created by a hybrid system of centralized and de-centralized water management practices. Based on this knowledge, the main strategy proposes a toolbox of interventions in built form and landscape on different scales which can be applied across all cities. The second half is context specific, focusing on the region on Jaipur, India and how water sensitive spatial planning and design by using the toolbox can help to ensure a resilient urban environment. The research develops design proposals on multiples scales in a multi user setting, namely the regional, city and local, thus giving recommendations to regional and local authorities on developing a water sensitive city. As part of a long-term effort to this increasing shortage of water, it encourages greater conservation and management through spatial guidelines on the regional, urban and local scale where indigenous practices and green infrastructure become part of the contemporary system and solutions.