This thesis explores the ways in which marketplaces and urban agriculture, can impact access to healthy, affordable food in Bospolder-Tussendijken, a neighbourhood in Rotterdam. With the rise of prosperity-related diseases attributed to poor nutrition, particularly in low socio-economic areas, food prices are increasing. To address these challenges, marketplaces and the integration of food production into urban settings could play an important role in mitigating this issue.

Through a combination of literature review and interviews, a framework was developed to analyze current practices regarding marketplaces and urban agriculture. Additionally, site visits and observations provided typological insights.

The research reveals that historically, marketplaces have been key drivers of urban growth, emphasizing social functions and affordability of food. However, in recent years, there has been a shift towards valuing experience over food itself. Regarding urban agriculture, its primary functions appear to be social, educational, and employment-related. Food production remains predominantly located outside or on the periphery of urban areas. By proposing the creation of a partially covered, multifunctional marketplace, the position of traditional week markets can be preserved for future generations, ensuring continued access to affordable, healthy nutrition.

This research addresses the rising amount of homelessness in Rotterdam. Homelessness should be prevented in an early stage to avoid long term health issues. Home-seeking youth fall between the cracks of the system since there is a lack of social support for those between 18-23 years old with no official care indication. Because of this, It is hard for these youth to build a healthy future. The term “home-seeking youth” is used to reduce stigma on homelessness and emphasize their quest for stable housing.

The needs of home-seeking youth are explored in this study, which also considers ideas on how residential housing concepts can effectively address these needs. Research will be conducted through field research involving interviews with professionals, workshops with long-term homeless individuals, and workshops with vulnerable youth in Rotterdam to understand their housing needs and preferences.

The aim is to determine how a residential building can support the physical (socioeconomic security), mental (empowerment), and social (inclusion and cohesion) needs of youth seeking stable housing. Among these needs, social needs seem to play the most important role as they form a safety net for both mental and physical needs. The main need that home-seeking youth have is for a relationship with someone who can offer them unconditional support. Therefore, it is important that housing for youth includes access to an adult who can help them informally.

Pendrecht is characterized by a great richness in cultural diversity and local initiatives, but these different worlds are spatially separated from one another and invisible for the passerby. They are not articulated in the public domain but instead remain confined to private domains. Left without activity or liveliness, the streets and squares are degraded to meaningless transition zones. This anonymity stands in the way of social cohesion and any sense of belonging or attachment to the neighbourhood. In order to break this downward spiral, an impulse into the public domain is needed that facilitates social and cultural exchange.

This research focuses on the relationship between anonymous spaces and a lack of social cohesion. The hypothesis for this study is "By making architectural/spatial interventions that allow for privacy zones, more social cohesion is created." To investigate this hypothesis, the following main and sub-questions have been formulated.
Main Question:
How can the built environment facilitate social cohesion?
Sub-questions:
1. What is the role of anonymous public space in a lack of social cohesion?
2. What are the needs of residents regarding social cohesion?
To answer these research questions, the following theories and methods have been employed. Social cohesion is approached through the 8 values of social cohesion described by the Field Academy (2018). The essence of privacy zones lies in the readability of the spaces. For an answer to sub-question 1, research has been conducted based on literature study and analysis. For sub-question 2, information has been gathered from existing initiatives, consulted existing research, and fieldwork has been carried out.
The key results of sub-question 1 indicate that all four categories of social cohesion have a relationship with safety and that safety is therefore crucial for social cohesion. Social cohesion is also highly vulnerable to anonymity as it has a direct and/or indirect negative impact on multiple components of social cohesion. The main results of sub-question 2 show that residents of Carnisse have a need for a green living environment where residents can find each other and connect. They want to feel safe in the neighborhood and in public spaces that are connected to surrounding public areas.
By combining insights and information from sub-questions 1 & 2, it is evident that the built environment can facilitate social cohesion by:
1. Clearly defined situational normality. 2. A readable environment. 3. Accessible, comfortable, well-maintained, and inviting public spaces. 4. Freedom of choice. 5. Incorporating residents' needs.
By incorporating these conclusions into a design without anonymity, a built environment is created that optimally facilitates social cohesion.

This study addresses the imperative of enhancing social resilience in urban environments, with a focus on Rotterdam. The city faces diverse challenges, including environmental risks that impact social cohesion. In response, the municipality has formulated a ‘Resilient Rotterdam Strategy’ to bolster the city’s resistibility and recoverability. In this context, the importance of social interaction in fostering resilient communities is underscored, leading to the proposition of introducing makerspaces as “third spaces” to bridge the gap between formal and informal urban life. The study advocates for transforming mono-functional neighbourhoods into multifunctional ones by reintroducing urban manufacturing, particularly makerspaces, to promote social networks and enhance social resilience.

Independent (i.e. single) mothers are stuck in a trifold of problems regarding housing, resources and labour after divorce, separation or unwedded childbirth. The lack of adequate permanent one-parent family housing puts them in a vicious circle of structural disadvantage. The inequality of opportunity has long term effects on the mother's sense of self, her parenting style and the opportunities for her child(ren), who is more susceptible to end up with the same problems.

This thesis is an exploration into the socio-spatial housing needs of independent mothers and to what extent collective living arrangements could provide an opportunity to balance work and family life effectively, through redefining traditional household structures. Through the lens of second wave feminist theory, the nuclear family is deconstructed, and the concept of collectivised household labour is explored. Drawing examples from other forms of non-nuclear households, including matriarchal tribes, self-work hotels, and eco-communities, the benefits of shared responsibilities of social support systems and efficiency are remarked. This theoretical study is juxtaposed against the practical research, consisting of interviews with assistance professionals, architects and empirical experts, from which a tight balance between community and privacy becomes significant. Thus, it is concluded that collective living arrangements have the possibility to empower independent mothers by expanding the meaning of a household, through dispersing the workload and sharing among each other. However, it remains important to realise that sustainable and supportive communities require room for the individual, like-minded people, rules and work for it to be effective. Collectivised household labour exists within a trade-off between radical intervention and practicality.

Overall, this research aims to contribute to the discourse on housing design by advocating for imaginations that empower, instead of stigmatizing and incorporating the voices of the people you are designing for.

Dit onderzoek beantwoordt de vraag of het terugbrengen van ambachtschap in Rotterdam-Zuid, specifiek de Tarwewijk, een positieve impuls kan geven en kan bijdragen aan (meer) werkgelegenheid en versterking van de lokale economie en de veerkracht in de wijk. De werkloosheid in Rotterdam-Zuid is groot. Het probleem is zo groot, dat al in 2011 een nationaal programma (Nationaal Programma Rotterdam Zuid, NPRZ) werd opgestart, om aandachtswijken sterker en veerkrachtiger te maken. De Tarwewijk in Rotterdam-Zuid is zo’n aandachtswijk; werkzaamheid, opleidings- en inkomensniveau zijn laag. Om de achterstand in te kunnen lopen moeten opleidingsniveau, arbeidsparticipatie, woonkwaliteit en de wijkeconomie omhoog. Voor het onderzoek zijn drie kwalitatieve methoden toegepast: literatuuronderzoek, semi-gestructureerde interviews en open-observaties. Onderstaande uitgangspunten zijn het resultaat van het onderzoek en vormen gezamenlijk kansrijke combinaties voor een fysieke te ontwerpen plek: De plek moet zich centraal in de (woon)wijk bevinden, zichtbaar, laagdrempelig en toegankelijk, zodat er verbinding en inspiratie ontstaat. Op de plek moet het maken teruggebracht worden in een vorm die aansluit bij de doelgroep, bewoners van de Tarwewijk zonder startkwalificatie (jongeren en (langlangdurig) werklozen). De nieuwe maakindustrie moet toekomstgericht zijn (circulair, ‘customer made’ en kleinschalig). Er is behoefte aan kleinere, flexibel inzetbare ruimtes en gedeelde voorzieningen. Gemeenschappelijk gebruik van machines en werkplaats maakt de ruimte betaalbaarder en stimuleert de samenwerking. De schaalgrootte/omvang en de logistiek moeten passen binnen het netwerk/weefsel van de Tarwewijk. De programmering moet aansluiten bij de doelgroep; een samenspel van werk en leren met begeleiding. Lokaal ambachtschap, waarbij talenten, praktische kennis en vaardigheden gestimuleerd worden zijn belangrijker dan opleidingsniveau. Er moeten mogelijkheden zijn voor het geven van cursussen en workshops. Het programma moet inspirerend en vernieuwend zijn (circulaire economie, vermindering van emissie, gebruik van nieuwe technologie). Horecagelegenheid moet zorgen voor verblijven. Ondersteunende of aanvullende financieringsinstrumenten, als een wijkcoöperatie en/of social impact bonds, kunnen mogelijkheden bieden voor het opstarten en in stand houden van de sociale makersplaats. Veel leesplezier!

Het Museum van Rotterdam moest eind vorig jaar zijn deuren sluiten, omdat het te weinig bezoekers trok en het gebouw niet meer voldeed aan zijn functie. De Raad voor Kunst en Cultuur stelde daarom een alternatief voor; een Nieuwe stadsmuseale functie (NSF) die wellicht niet in één gebouw gefaciliteerd zou moeten worden, maar op meerdere locaties verspreid over verschillende wijken. Deze gefragmenteerde musea vragen om een uitgebreid onderzoek van het programma met een focus op de bewoners. Het achterhalen van de identiteit van de gebruiker en de buurt op basis van verhalen uit de wijk en van bewoners zal inspiratie leveren voor het programma van een gefragmenteerd museum. Met dit onderzoek wordt inspiratie gezocht om zo dichter bij de verhalen van de wijk te komen. Het onderzoek start bij het achterhalen van de NSF en de visie van het Museum Rotterdam. Vervolgens worden de verhalen van de wijk in kaart gebracht en geanalyseerd, door
middel van het programma Atlas.ti. Daarna zijn de verhalen geanalyseerd op sociale en culturele kenmerken om de identiteit van de bewoner, wijk, stadsgedeelte en de stad te ontdekken. Door de verhalen te analyseren op de naar voren gekomen kernthema’s en te luisteren naar wat de bewoners
zelf vertellen over de identiteit, is er grip verkregen op de identiteit van de bewoners, de wijk, het stadsgedeelte en de stad. Tot slot is er onderzoek gedaan naar drie bestaande projecten om zo ook inspiratie op te doen voor het ruimtelijke programma voor het museum. Vanuit het tweede deel van
het onderzoek is er inspiratie verkregen aan de hand van een referentieonderzoek die variëren in schaal, programma, context en de manier van tentoonstellen. Deze analyse is omgezet in ruimtelijke tools die zijn weergegeven in de
schema’s. Het resultaat van het onderzoek is inspiratie voor het
programma. Het ontwerp voor het museum zal de verhalen respecteren en kan bestaan uit een wisselende expositie. Een groot deel van de bewoners geven aan dat de toegankelijkheid een grote
rol speelt in het deelnemen. Het museum zal dus toegankelijk zijn voor iedereen en laagdrempelig. De verschillende kernthema’s die zijn bestudeerd laten de identiteit van het stadsgedeelte zien. Daarbij staat de verbinding van bewoners bovenaan en zal dus kunnen dienen als hoofdthema
voor het nieuwe museum. Dit onderzoek heeft dus inspiratie geleverd voor het programma op het gebied van de identiteit, de formaliteit, de toegankelijkheid en de verbinding.

In this paper, design principles for a co-housing project focused at young adults (18-27 years old) wishing to live in the Tarwewijk in Rotterdam Zuid are being proposed. These principles are based on literary research, reference projects, fieldwork and workshops held for students familiar with the design location. Topics that are touched upon are affordability, co-housing principles and the living wishes of young adults wishing to live in Rotterdam Zuid. While the target group did not perfectly fit the proposed target group, results were interpreted as if they were. The most important findings through different methods of research, among others, include that different types of housing should be realised, the building should contain several shared facilities in rooms which have a flexible floorplan, the neighbourhood should be involved in shared spaces, housing units should be designed as small and with as little walls as possible and that bathrooms and bedrooms should always be private. These results were combined into a design brief specifically created for the Tarwewijk in Rotterdam Zuid, yet the basic principles can be implemented in other affordable co-housing projects as well.

The Afrikaanderwijk is one of the ‘disadvantaged’ neighborhoods in Rotterdam South. 9,3 percent of the inhabitants of the Afrikaanderwijk is without work. The Afrikaander Coorparation started projects to create new jobs. Partly through the "Right to Challenge" initiative, it has its responsibility to make the Afrikaanderwijk more sustainable implemented with a raw materials station on the Afrikaanderwijk. This pilot project focuses on sorting waste during market days (Wednesday and Saturday). The project provides not only employment, but also greatly reduce the amount of residual solid waste and therefore creates a better streetscape. It also sends out a signal that waste can be seen as a raw material. According to the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative, however, the goal of this project has not been achieved. Therefore the goal of this research is to investigate how the station needs to be changed to contribute to circularity of the market. This station could be self-sufficient and would also act as a meeting place for people of various backgrounds where there is room to exchange knowledge, social contacts, information, products.

Make Food Great Again is a prototype for the future of Urban Agriculture. Thereby its a spatial strategy to address the urgencies connected to the biochemical pollution of agricultural enterprises on the example of the Netherlands. It aims to find a solution for the burden of ultra effective state of the art agriculture on the environment, while sustaining the foodsupply in a circular economical manner.
It’s the architectural answer to the question of how can our food become local and approachable again, while being an actually integrated part of infrastructure in contemporary urban society?

Human activities are speeding up normal climate fluctuations on the planet, while this is taking away the time to adapt to new living conditions, for the whole biosphere. Climate influences human activities, which influences again the climate. It is a loop that will never stop if humans do not change their way of living. To slow down climate change, mankind has to change the way they think and behave: they need an ecocentric mindset. Humans need to live in symbiosis with ecosystems to let the biosphere grow, instead of depleting it. With the build environment we can influence the users and passers-by. Therefore, ecocentric architecture has a key role in working towards the ecocentric mindset.

Globalisation and global urbanisation are reshaping our world. Life in Central Places is expanding; life in remote territories is vanishing. For centuries, subsistence agriculture sustained rural communities the world over; that raison d’être has now largely vanished. Cities mine the territory for fuel, material resources, food and even population. Simultaneously, our globalised world faces serious challenges as we try to move beyond oil and to a circular economy. The remote island of Flotta in the Orkney archipelago exemplifies these themes, and offers possible visions for a future world in which the remote territory exists in symbiosis with the centralised city. In the coming decade, the Flotta Oil Terminal will close. Flotta’s population is aging, and its vital services are gradually vanishing. There is a small but significant influx of people fleeing the city- looking for an old, but now-vanished way of life in the remote territory. Friction on Flotta is rising as these few, new romantics interact with the pragmatically-minded last generation of Flottarians. Community is not always rosy. The closure of the oil terminal will likely be the nail in the coffin of human habitation of Flotta. Orkney also has a waste management problem- shipping scrap metal to distant, central locations. Simultaneously the Orkney archipelago is ‘the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy’. It already generates much more electricity than it needs, but struggles to export the surplus via a subsea cable designed to transfer power to and not from the islands. Renewable energy is not best suited to central cities- it is Energy at the End of the World. Traversing the island, the Bruck-Mining Saga forms a connection between the point where the Flotta subsea electricity cable lands and the remote edge of a ruined, wartime landscape facing out to sea. It pragmatically mines metal bruck at infrastructural scale, creating new material for export and thus a new economy by using the locally generated renewable electricity surplus. The metal recycling plant occupies the site of an abandoned airfield from the early days of the oil terminal- which constitutes a form of spatial bruck. In time, the oil terminal will also become bruck. The creation of ‘new metal’ in turn facilitates the embellishment/ establishment of a craft metal working/ jewellery making tradition on the island. This draws Flotta into the existent Creative Orkney Trail and brings bruck metal mining to the scale of the human, and indeed even to that of the wearer. These workshops inhabit a series of wartime ruins, which are of course a form of architectural bruck. They preserve and embellish the romantic attraction of this story to visitors of Orkney. Such stories of the remote are vital to humanity: ‘Once upon a time in a land far, far away…’ Where does the community fit in- complete with all its beauty and imperfections? It occupies a point of transition between these two spheres of production, where a series of spaces house the rich tapestry of Flotta stories past, present and future. These subterranean spaces form a modern monument which both record and enable the telling of stories that are crucial to the plural identities of the evolving Flotta community, and which in turn reflect our broader humanity. In doing so, they become simultaneously a museum, community arts space and landmark. More permanent than any infrastructure can or ever should be, they cement a part of our humanity in the remote island territory. They say: ‘We’re still here.’

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.

The project I propose is not the child of its time, it rejects the lexicon of current affairs (climate change, pollution, exploitation of resources) as well as that of social issues. It does not want to solve the problem of the site in which it operates, but it embraces a horizon of analysis and observation of man in his existential dimension, completely isolated from the dynamics determined by the homo faber. The project focuses on the relationship between the homo figurans 1 and the territory in which he lives, an archaic, but never anachronistic, relationship. The project I propose focuses on architectural language, on how to act in the place rather than what to do in the place. For this reason, I believe that it has a markedly political valence. As the political valence of a work of any type - literary or architectural - is not determined only by the issues it deals with, but above all by the choice it operates. There is not a more purely political operation than an operation on language.

Homo Figurans, term used by Eugenio Turri in The landscape as a theater 2001.
Homo Figurans: Man as a figure among the figures of the world.

Port-city interfaces have grown apart over the last few decades, resulting in a disbalance between ports and cities. This thesis focuses on finding an approach to reuse and remediate unused industrial sites in sensitive port locations while making them ready for a post-carbon era. The project uses phytotechnologies for remediation of polluted soil on an old refinery site and the construction of a series of laboratories that are made from reused materials and productive phytoremediation landscape around the old refinery installations and are hosted by the old refinery installations,.