In an era of accelerating urbanization and sensory overload, cities increasingly lack spaces that support mental restoration and emotional well-being. This graduation project explores the architectural potential of calmness as a spatial quality, using Rotterdam South- a socially diverse and often disadvantaged urban context- as both a case study and design site.

The project originates from a fascination with the growing need for tranquillity in cities and the under-addressed issue of mental health prevention. While much attention is given to treatment, little is done to proactively design for mental well-being. Mental health remains one of the four greatest burdens on the Dutch healthcare system, yet spatial responses are scarce.

Framing the design as a metaphorical pilgrimage, the project proposes a sequence of spaces that guide visitors from stress toward serenity. Extensive fieldwork, literature review, and sensory mapping were conducted to identify environmental stressors and urban relaxants, resulting in a conceptual framework of public, social, and personal space. This framework informed the proposal for a Centre for Calmness in Vreewijk, a historical garden suburb in Rotterdam South.

The centre includes a bathhouse, therapy facility, tea house, library, gallery, and workshop space- each embodying elements of introspection, cleansing, and community. The bathhouse in particular draws from historical typologies where collective bathing offered both ritual and refuge. The architectural design seeks to merge collective gathering with private contemplation, creating a balance between vibrancy and tranquillity.

The thesis also proposes a transferable pattern language for designing calming spaces, supported by a set of architectural guidelines and potential future locations for a broader calmness network across Rotterdam South. This dual focus- on a singular spatial anchor and a scalable urban strategy- aims to influence how cities address mental well-being through design.

Ultimately, this project advocates for architecture that heals, reconnects, and restores. It positions the built environment not merely as a backdrop to life, but as an active participant in the mental resilience of its inhabitants.

The foundation of this research lies in the social experience of living together and how architecture can contribute to a more profound sense of belonging. What began as a curiosity about the social potential of shared space evolved into a broader exploration of how people form relationships, with one another, and with their environments. Rather than focusing on housing as a purely functional solution, the project considers how feelings of ownership, recognition, and comfort emerge through design. These aspects are explored across multiple scales: from the city and building to the corridor, doorstep, and living room. The project examines how collective and transitional spaces can become active zones of community-building when spatially and socially considered. Through design strategies such as clustering, varied access, and interaction zones, the architecture fosters a resilient framework where people not only live but also connect, engage, and belong. Ultimately, this research highlights how architecture can support resilient, inclusive communities through spatial design that responds to both personal and collective social dynamics.

Contemporary social housing development in the Netherlands often prioritises standardisation over progressive and imaginative design, resulting in an undesirable dullness of the urban environment. However, there are also advantages to standardisation in the built environment, like reduced design costs, quicker construction times, higher technical quality, and potential for circularity/sustainability. In short, there is an unwanted lack of architectural diversity and individual living style and freedom, caused by a strong focus on standardisation and its benefits. To change this current state, other forms of social housing complexes have to be explored. Buildings that support diverse living conditions for diverse inhabitants, that favour equitable housing over equal housing, with architectural emphasis on the unicity of its users. Housing that invites people to explore their style of living, that evokes a feeling of freedom of style.

We need a new way of designing when it comes to large-scale residential buildings. A way that reflects a high-density urban environment; complex, dynamic, vibrant, and lively. We must design for urban flow.

Current densification efforts often produce closed-off structures, disconnecting inhabitants from the urban flow of the city they live in. Large glass plinths, empty barren public space, and entrances that are meant to facilitate many homes, but are hidden away, create a streetscape that is illegible for people and doesn’t function well on a human scale.

In large-scale urban housing, the link between the city and the home is the residential building itself. The building must function as a transition zone between public space and the private domain of the home, facilitating a continuation of space, scale and movement from city to dwelling and vice versa.

The idea of home, while uniquely personal and familiar to each person, is somewhat elusive. Despite its intangibility, it captivated my interest. Returning from living abroad, I was figuring out what home means to me, and this made me think about how this feeling of home is reflected in current housing design. My interest in the concept of home deepened, partly due to my research on home ownership in Amsterdam during the first weeks of this graduation studio. As I discovered, ownership can manifest in different things, such as owning property or as a feeling known as mental ownership. It is a tricky concept: how do you turn that intangible feeling of home into something one can grasp and understand? At which scale does the feeling of home operate? Is it primarily at the individual dwelling or building levels, or does it extend to the broader city?

The post-war reconstruction period in the Netherlands marked a significant time for the housing industry, where demand and necessity resulted in ground-breaking innovations, and construction technologies advanced by leaps and bounds. The high-rise typology proved essential in tackling the housing shortage owing to the fast and affordable system-construction using abundantly available concrete. While these innovations enabled the creation of a large number of houses, solving the housing crisis temporarily, it was soon observed that the living conditions of these neighbourhoods were far from ideal. The creation of standardised units and floor plans afforded developers the ease of vertically stacking units to create a large number of dwellings. However the principal flaw in this planning strategy was the lack of consideration of how households function in reality.

As the government of the Netherlands plans to build up to a million new homes by 2030, it becomes pertinent to ask the question, will they be suitable homes? The large-scale construction and demolition that is required to achieve this promise will require an immensely large stock of raw material and natural resources. So how can these homes be made different from the ones that already exist? How will they mitigate the problems that plague the widespread post-war neighbourhoods of the country?

This project examines the post war neighbourhood of Westwijk, Vlaardingen and the spatial as well as social problems that it faced soon after its construction. To be able to densify such neighbourhoods in the future, a vastly different strategy needs to be adopted, to make not only the new homes as a safe, happy and inclusive environment for all its residents, but also to alleviate the condition of the surrounding neighbourhood and its residents.

Drawing inspiration from traditional housing topologies, and some greatly successful projects by architects such as Aldo Van Eyck, Herman Hertzberger and Charles Correa, transience emerges as a key aspect in their success. It exists not only in an absolute form such as ‘in-between’ spaces, but also as a concept of growth. When houses are designed to accommodate change, to encourage communal interaction, while allowing the freedom to draw one’s own boundaries, it leads to the creation of a 'society'. The formation of such a society is what is crucial to the upkeep of a neighbourhood, camaraderie amongst neighbours and the possibility of multiple generations being able to benefit from their family home.

My research finds its origin in a personal observation of isolation among humans, from which a fascination for social architecture developed. This initiated research on the relation between architecture and human behavior: I explored how physical boundaries influence human behavior.

At the same time, I started exploring the area of Midden Delfland and Tanthof as part of the design challenge. Within the plan of ZUS envisioning a future within for the area of Midden Delfland, a constraint of urban expansion was proposed. From this, an ‘edge’ between the city and the landscape would emerge, creating a new type of space ‘in between’. My research being about borders and boundaries, the challenge of reimagining this ‘in-between’ space offered me a chance to test the theories I researched and apply them in a design.

Current urban edges often end abruptly, lacking connections to the surrounding landscapes. Tanthof, a monofunctional residential area south of Delft, exemplifies this problem. Characterized by high-density housing and minimal quality public spaces, it fails to integrate with the adjacent Midden-Delfland. Such inefficient and isolating developments are unsustainable, especially given the Netherlands' limited space.
The urban edge I designed unlocks the potential of boundary areas, transforming them into vibrant spaces that connect city and landscape. This boundary bridges urban life with the tranquility of nature, offering nearby places of escape to counteract the intensity of city life. Creating such space allows residents to take refuge in the landscape, rejuvenate, and then return to the city with renewed energy.

I discovered a symbiotic relation between movement and the identity of edges [borders/boundaries]. I translated desired movements that would foster social connection to spatial solutions which I formulated in design ambitions, strategies and principles. This formed the foundation of my design, which would from then on be present in any design decision. From there on I designed movement through space on four scales; the scales of the neighborhood, the building, the collective spaces and the house. The building I designed is a spatial translation of desired movement on these four scales, to achieve an integrated and connected living environment.

The final booklet I delivered is a back-to-back presentation of the Research and Design, as they were also back-to-back throughout the design process. Furthermore, the plan is illustrated in a presentation which digs deeper into the physical appearance of the Design.

Chapter 1: National Productive Park Delfland
This chapter summarizes casestudies from “Redesigning the Deltas.” It discusses the various factors that led to the design framework of the Urban Dyke.
Chapter 2: Research
The second chapter provides the foundational research that informs the design. It critically examines contemporary approaches to real esta-te concerning environmental impact. This chapter investigates whether architecture can play a significant role in minimizing the environmental footprint of the construction industry. The findings offer practical gui-delines for architects, designers, and developers to achieve real estate projects with minimal environmental impact.
Chapter 3: Research by Design
The third chapter involves design-based research that led to the concept of the Urban Dyke. It explains how casestudies and existing architectural theories can lead to an integrated design. This design aims to enhance the valuation of post-war neighborhoods like Tanthof in Delft while also serving as a flood defense. Each chapter is interconnected, providing a comprehensive understan-ding of how the Urban Dyke concept can address both environmental sustainability and urban development challenges.

Intergenerational co-housing could provide a solution to enable the ever-growing group of older people who want to live independently for as long as possible. The government also encourages older people to age in place to relieve pressure on healthcare services. For this form of housing to succeed, there must be good social cohesion between generations, where both older and younger people benefit from mutual exchanges of knowledge and support, ensuring they both feel cared for and valued. Building mutual relationships is essential to making these communities a success.

The aim of this research is to identify architectural elements and best practices that promote social encounters among different age groups, thereby enhancing social inclusion. This interaction between built environments and social dynamics originates from Foucault's concept of architectural influence on behavior and Bourdieu's idea of habitus.
To increase the willingness to move among different age groups, their housing preferences have been researched and categorized into the eight domains established by the World Health Organization to create an age-friendly neighborhood.

An analysis of case studies from intergenerational communities in Germany, Belgium, and Norway revealed insights into privacy levels, collective spaces, safety perceptions, and circulation patterns. The findings highlight the importance of creating in-between spaces that serve as informal meeting points, promoting social inclusion and community cohesion. By integrating functional design elements and fostering intergenerational interactions, the research aims to identify best practices for developing inclusive and supportive housing environments that cater to the needs of all age groups.

The growing concern about a mental health crisis and a looming threat of the loneliness epidemic worldwide that was further escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic forced people into isolation and created a new form of ‘work from home’ lifestyle. Nonetheless, the loneliness epidemic can be traced back to the 19th-century design principles that designed our current cities with reference to industrial tools such as the car instead of the ‘human scale’. Many of these modernist ideals had negative implications on the mental health of the residents in post-war districts. Moreover, with the need to build more homes, the current housing market values densification strategies that are primarily for profit and not for the needs of the people, which continues the pattern of ‘living together apart’. Consequently, there is an urgency to tackle isolation among the inhabitants of Groot-IJsselmonde, specifically Thamerdijk and post-war neighbourhoods being primarily targeted for future densification schemes. Interventions are therefore required to encourage degrees of social encounter. A research-based approach explored within five different lenses, sociological, historical, urban, building and dwelling scale is translated into a design project that could potentially allow for more positive densification for both current and future residents.

Urban densification is essential to keep the green spaces surrounding Dutch cities, especially in the Randstad. The current Dutch housing stock, of which a significant portion was built during the 1960's and 1970's, lacks a flexible layer in which people in urgent need of housing can find (temporary) affordable housing. Short-stay housing, which encompasses people living somewhere for a day, up to a couple of years, could provide this flexible layer. Target groups for short-stay housing fare well by social interaction, stimulating integration into Dutch society and opening up new possibilities in their life. This social interaction can be partially provided by introducing the sharing economy into an existing neighborhood, providing sustainable options regarding ownership or mobility.

The project 'Between a Day and a Lifetime' therefore proposes an urban densification strategy in which a short-stay housing concept, based on principles of co-housing and the sharing economy, creates densification in a way that it enriches the lives of the current ánd future inhabitants.

In this research, I strived to explore solutions to the question:
How to maintain or enhance a sense of community in post-war neighborhoods undergoing regeneration processes
The outcome of this research provides a guideline for architectural planning, in creating an environment that reflects the importance of a sense of community in the built environment. The outcome can be viewed as a manual for analyzing and retrofitting neighborhoods, focusing on the shared spaces and maintaining or enhancing a sense of community. By focusing on a specific site, and examining its characteristics, I formed a guideline on how to treat specific issues with architectural interventions. I examined theories by various researchers (such as Gehl, Whyte, David Sim, and Bernard Tschumi) as well as architectural drawings of master plans that focus on shared spaces as an integral part of the vision.