The Indonesian government is planning a new capital city in East-Kalimantan, Borneo, called Nusantara. The total appointed area for Nusantara is 56.000ha, including areas for urban development, nature reserves, industrial, and agricultural areas . The city should support two million residents in 2045. The area is in a severely degraded state caused by large scale deforestation, oil palm and eucalypt plantations, coal mining and uncontrolled urbanization. The remnants of the original ecosystems, including dipterocarp lowland forest and mangroves, are small in size and largely fragmented. Soils are impoverished, polluted, compacted and eroded. Water runs off quickly over the exposed lands, causing flooding, erosion and water shortages. The Indonesian government aims to build a ‘green, sustainable forest-city’, and to take the development of the area as an opportunity to restore ecosystems on site. In the current plans, this aim seems to be consolidated through appointing large nature reserves for restauration and a large urban area separately. The aim of this thesis is to integrate urbanisation with the restoration of the natural systems through design. Two challenges are addressed: the existing problems in the landscape, and the design of a context - sensitive future city. Many aspects of these two challenges are bound by water as an essential substance (H20) and as a force shaping physical landscapes, culture and power relations. Beyond being the connecting factor, water can be a formative power for design, creating long-term sustainability through integrating natural system dynamics. The main concepts to create an integrated approach with water as a formative power for design are derived from Landscape Based Urbanism and Design With Nature. The thesis reconsiders the large-scale planning of Nusantara with a vision and elaborates this vision through designs on the smaller scale that result in socially and ecologically valuable spaces.

This research explores how landscape gradients can shape a new urbanisation framework for Nusantara, Indonesia’s planned capital city. As Jakarta struggles with rising sea levels and the pressures of climate change, the creation of Nusantara offers a rare opportunity to rethink the relationship between urban development and ecological systems on a grand scale.

Nusantara’s development site is located on the island of Borneo, between mountainous rainforests and estuarine mangroves. Much of the lowland rainforest in the area was converted into agricultural land and production forest in the 1900s, resulting in the fragmented landscape seen today. The natural gradient transitions between landscape typologies, which allow species movement, foster biodiversity, and carry cultural significance, have been disrupted by logging, agriculture, infrastructure, and mining. Since Nusantara is situated along a broad spatial gradient from the hilly rainforest to the mangroves, an alternative planning approach is required to preserve and regenerate these landscape structures.

This research explores whether landscape gradients can serve as a formative force in Nusantara’s development. The study begins with an analysis of the historical, spatial, ecological, and cultural characteristics of the site to uncover its underlying logic for subsequent design exploration. A collection of principles for designing with landscape gradients emerges from fieldwork and research, offering potential for future research. Key locations identified in the vision are developed in greater detail to illustrate the spatial quality of the proposed framework.

Environmental noise is a pervasive and significant issue in urban areas, negatively affecting the health and well-being of both residents and wildlife. Despite efforts under the European Noise Directive to reduce noise from sources such as road, rail, air traffic, and industrial activities, around 20% of the EU population still lives in areas where noise levels exceed health-based guidelines. The dense infrastructure and reflective surfaces in urban environments amplify noise levels, highlighting the urgent need for effective noise reduction strategies.

Vertical Greenery Systems (VGSs) can effectively reduce urban noise pollution when implemented thoughtfully. State-of-the-art VGS designs commonly incorporate multi-layer structures comprising a bearing wall, substrate layer, and foliage layer. This research aimed to optimize such VGSs in the early design stages to enhance their noise mitigation capabilities. Among the available generic models, the Transfer Matrix Method (TMM) offers the most comprehensive approach for modelling the acoustic characteristics of these structures. TMM allows for the modelling of acoustic properties on both sides of a one-dimensional fluid-like layer using effective, frequency-dependent parameters encapsulated within a 2 × 2 matrix. The total transfer matrix of the VGS results from the product of its individual layer transfer matrices.

It was established that to accurately evaluate the acoustic effectiveness of multi-layered VGSs, it is imperative to concentrate on the performance resulting from the superposition of layers under specific boundary conditions, rather than analysing individual layer parameters in isolation. This approach recognizes that there is no definitive answer regarding which specific components demonstrate superior performance. Instead, the intricate nature of superposition underscores the necessity for systematic experimentation with various component combinations and the manipulation of extrinsic variables, such as layer thicknesses, to optimize VGS performance.

In this research, the TMM was utilized to develop a tool for evaluating the acoustic performance of VGS designs, suitable for deployment during the early phase of the design process. The tool includes a comprehensive material library that allows stakeholders to explore various design options, making the approach more adaptable. It enables the evaluation of VGS design feasibility by examining the normal incidence weighted sound absorption coefficient and its corresponding absorption class. Additionally, the tool serves as a framework for conducting further analysis on the long-term environmental impact and economic viability of VGSs.

The construction industry accounts for a significant part (39%) of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, additionally it is accountable for 40% of all extracted materials, 40% of primary energy usage and 40% of the total waste generated. Adding up to CO2-emissions in the form of embodied or operational carbon. Meanwhile the temperature limit set in 2015 signed Paris Agreement with the purpose of reducing the global temperature increase, is being exceeded

If the global GHG-emissions are not reduced the global temperature rise will increase even more, and with that the severity of the climate change consequences. GHG emissions in the building sector can be decreased by reducing operational and/or embodied carbon. Since embodied carbon is getting increasingly higher but lacks in research and innovative solutions, this research explores the possibility of reducing embodied carbon by designing a reversible discrete timber system as alternative to a conventional structural timber element or system.

For this a joint that is reversible and applicable to discrete timber elements must be found and tested. Five joints from a larger list were selected based on simplicity. In order to determine the loads on the discrete timber system, a case study was set to be a post war apartment block in Rotterdam South. The selected joints were analysed to determine what would happen if a load is applied to this element. The load showed highly localized peak stresses in the joints, indicating that the joints might be the weakness of the discrete timber elements, the rest of the element showed expected behaviour. In the end a simple square cog joint is the most suitable.

Besides testing the discrete timber elements, the discrete timber systems also needed to be tested to see how they would react under the applied loads, and what the resulting maximum displacement and utilization values would be. Here various ways of aggregating discrete timber elements was tested. These aggregations were influenced by parameter such as the scaling factor (where a normal straight column, was scaled variedly into a mushroom-like column), dimensions of the base of the discrete system, the dimensions of the cross sections and the material of the discrete elements. The results from these tests showed the effects from the various parameters on the maximum displacement and utilization of the discrete timber system.

However, there are also some gaps with regards to which joints are suitable, moreover, can the joints be made in timber or should there be resorted to a reinforced joint in a different material than timber? One of the main strengths of a discrete timber system lays in its reversibility, and for the system to be reversible there must be a demountable joint.

Discrete timber systems can be a feasible alternative to conventional structural timber by ensuring that the discrete systems have strong, reversible joints that are simple in production and construction.

Crossing Bridges is a design proposal located in Luxembourg city. The project deals deals with the city's specific urban territorial condition, as a clear physical and social issue. The distinctive topography of the city divides the city into plateaus and valleys with almost opposite identities. This dichotomy between the urban setting on the plateaus and nature the valley, together with the infrastructural issues caused by the valley, is the starting point for the creation of a new infrastructural hub. Not only will this become a new physical connection between the plateaus and valleys, it will also become a new cultural center that serves as an incubator for the people to explore the valley en escape the hectic city life.