Closing the Loop by Opening the Building is a graduation project that investigates how Open Building principles can be used to transform post-war flats constructed with the Wilma building system. Many of these buildings face demolition, despite the potential of their existing structures to support the circular revitalisation and densification of post-war neighbourhoods. Based on Habraken’s Open Building theory, the research combines an analysis of transformation case studies with research by design. The strategies identified in the case studies were applied to the existing Wilma building structure to explore how it could accommodate changing uses, housing types and future additions.

The resulting design transforms the existing structure into a flexible and adaptable framework that can support multiple future scenarios. One scenario introduces a circular living environment through shared spaces, circular functions in the plinth, and a biodiverse and socially active living gallery. Densification is achieved by adding dwellings while retaining and adapting the existing building structure. The project demonstrates how separating permanent building elements from adaptable infill can extend the lifespan of Wilma flats and facilitate future change towards a circular built environment. In doing so, it provides a possible transformation approach for the approximately 12.000 apartments constructed with the Wilma building system.
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As the construction industry faces increasing challenges related to waste generation, resource scarcity, and the demolition of aging housing stock, this project explores an alternative approach to renewal. The research focuses on the material-driven transformation of a post-war portiekflat into a circular and socially sustainable housing block. Rather than viewing existing buildings as disposable, the project recognizes them as valuable material banks containing significant embodied resources that are often lost through demolition. The main challenge was to directly reuse materials harvested from the building itself within the new architectural intervention. By extending material lifespans and integrating reused components in ways that create spatial and social value, the project demonstrates how circular transformation can reduce waste while supporting social interaction, community building, and long-term adaptability. ... Read more

Within Europe, there’s a huge housing shortage. The Netherlands is one of the countries that exemplifies this issue. The main (social & demographic) reasons for it being an issue are the influx of immigrants and the increase in single-person households. The latter is mainly caused by the construction of single-person households & the increase of single elderly (who live in large family homes). This research explores how, through design, we can create housing blocks that not only accommodate the changing needs of a household but also stimulate the connection and interaction between different households. The analysed households are defined by size and culture. As a result, this research uses co-living principles to stimulate the interaction between these households and defines clear open-building principles to accommodate the adaptation of the housing block. This is elaborated as a design within a typical Dutch neighbourhood in Eindhoven, which depicts the possibilities to densify while still adding qualitative housing. ... Read more

Dutch post-war school buildings face increasing environmental, technical and social challenges. Many of these buildings suffer from poor energy performance, unhealthy indoor climates and outdated spatial layouts, while demolition and replacement often result in high costs, long procedures and unnecessary carbon emissions. This thesis investigates how a low-tech, ecological renovation strategy can improve environmental performance and spatial adaptability while increasing environmental awareness through fast and affordable interventions.

Using a research-by-design methodology, the study combines case studies, comparative analysis and scenario-based design explorations. The research identifies the building skin as the most critical component and develops a modular second-skin renovation strategy that improves thermal comfort, acoustics, biodiversity and water management while creating additional educational and social space.

The project demonstrates that renovation can be a fast, affordable and future-proof alternative to demolition. As long as sufficient space and structural capacity are available, the proposed strategy offers an adaptable framework that can be applied to a wide range of Dutch post-war school buildings. ... Read more

To reduce consumption of non-renewable materials, this research explores the architectural potential of willow (Salix viminalis) by synthesizing traditional Dutch basket weaving with contemporary architectural design. While existing willow structures display ecological and construction advantages, they lack the durability and system required for a building. Through a research-by-design methodology, this study develops a modular, self-bracing system that interweaves traditional craft and building performances. The research culminated in the Nature Technology Centre in Eindhoven, which serves as a functional prototype, demonstrating that woven willow as a primary construction material can create various building components and architectural experiences while meeting certain Dutch building requirements. By establishing a quantifiable cultivation and assembly framework, this project illustrates that willow can be a scalable, biobased alternative available within the local supply chain, offering a sustainable future for architecture. ... Read more

Climate change is intensifying hydrological extremes in the Netherlands, where flooding and drought increasingly occur in close succession. In cities such as Eindhoven, water systems are primarily designed to rapidly discharge excess water, contributing to water scarcity and the spatial invisibility of water in daily urban life. At the same time, growing housing demand raises questions about how living environments can engage more constructively with water systems.
This graduation project explores how architecture can contribute to these challenges by redefining the relationship between housing, landscape, and water infrastructure. Introducing the concept of inertia, the project investigates how architectural and landscape systems can slow down, buffer, store, purify, and reuse water over time, transforming hydrological processes into inhabitable spatial conditions. Using Eindhoven as a case study, the project combines research-by-design across landscape, urban, and building scales. The resulting proposal introduces an adaptive housing landscape alongside the canal, integrating wetlands, recreational water bodies, ecological purification systems, and collective housing into one interconnected framework. ... Read more

The major cities of today dominate their peripheries. They are the cultural and economic centre on which suburbs rely, in a monocentric organisation. As population increases rapidly, metropolises plan their growth, calling for both expansion and densification. In their spread they will encompass their peripheries, making the latter both subjects and actors of the metropolitan transformation. These changes see the opportunity to create more balanced metropolises. Currently, in rich countries, metropolises tend to be the richest but most unequal areas. Those inequalities are crystallised in spatial forms, with segregated richer and poorer areas in terms of income, land price, rent cost and available social housing. The project looks at the case of Paris, currently undergoing significant changes with new transport lines planned for 2030. The periphery there is home to many underused, ageing office complexes that could gain new attractivity with the new transport lines and a more relevant function. Focusing on the rehabilitation of a large office complex in the well-off residential suburban town of Saint-Cloud, the project proposes a new multi-functional urban centre with mixed housing. The rehabilitation aims for minimal intervention and material reuse while tackling the technical challenges created by the change of use and performance upgrade of the building. ... Read more

This graduation project examines how architecture can contribute to strengthening social cohesion and biodiversity in Zuidplein, Rotterdam, through the integration of communal food production into housing. The project departs from the observation that Zuidplein is characterized by strong ethnic diversity, but also by limited interaction between different social groups, a shortage of places that support prolonged stay, and a highly paved urban environment with fragmented ecological connections. In addition, the infrastructural barriers surrounding the area weaken both social and ecological continuity between the neighborhood and Zuiderpark.

In response, the project proposes a bridge-shaped residential building positioned above the existing infrastructure. The building is conceived as a socio-ecological connector that links neighborhood and park while combining dwelling, collective use, and environmental systems within one spatial framework. The design is organized around three interrelated mechanisms: food production, co-living, and circularity. Food production is approached as a socio-ecological catalyst that supports cultural exchange, affordability, and biodiversity. Co-living is used to stimulate repeated everyday encounters through shared routes and communal spaces, enabling social relations to develop over time. Circularity functions as a supporting system through the reuse of water, heat, energy, and materials, thereby reducing resource consumption and CO2 emissions.

The proposal includes 163 dwellings for a mixed community of students, starters, families, and seniors, organized in clusters around shared atriums, communal kitchens, and rooftop gardens. Public elements such as a market square, productive plinth, and accessible roof route connect the building to the wider urban context. Through this integration of housing, food systems, public space, and ecological infrastructure, the project demonstrates how social cohesion and biodiversity can be addressed as mutually reinforcing components of one architectural system. ... Read more

In response to increasing environmental pressures and material scarcity, this research explores how indigenous building techniques can inform contemporary approaches to tectonic architecture. The study identifies global case-studies on their recurring construction logics and categorizes them into four themes: Stack, Wrap, Fill, and Scaffold. These themes are further examined through complementary contemporary case studies, which demonstrate the continued relevance of material intelligence, structural clarity, and contextual adaptation in modern architectural practice. To test the applicability of these principles, four experimental prototypes were developed using reclaimed materials sourced from the urban environment of Rotterdam. The research illustrates that when reframed through a tectonic lens, traditional ecological knowledge offers valuable insights for developing circular, demountable, and expressive construction systems. By positioning the city as a contemporary material landscape, the study proposes an expanded architectural approach. ... Read more

This research addresses the dual environmental impact of the building sector, operational energy use and embodied carbon, by investigating passive and bio-inspired techniques as alternatives to conventional HVAC systems. Focusing on temperate climates, techniques are categorized into three layers following the Behling Diagram: architectural form, passive systems, and active systems. Each technique is analyzed through literature review and applied to a test design for a residential building in The Hague, Netherlands. A ranking system evaluates both architectural integration, based on visual comfort, spatial quality, and social value, and carbon efficiency, calculated per supplementary m2. Results show that form & orientation and sunspaces perform best across both metrics. The results are combined into a catalog, which can be used during early design phases. While the methodology highlights promising strategies for sustainable design, it is also acknowledged that limitations related to context-specific performance and material assessment are present. This study offers a comparative framework to support low energy-impact architectural decision making. ... Read more

This graduation thesis consist of two parts a P2 research paper and a P5 presentation of a design. The paper describes the housing shortage twofold through the shortage itself and influences on it through the process of ageing. Afterwards the concept of collaborative housing is introduced, one form of collaborative housing is a housing cooperative. Following the introduction of a housing cooperative this paper describes ways of facilitating a housing cooperative through design. A literature study and four case studies will be used in answering this question of how to facilitate. Through an elaboration of the process of starting a housing cooperative this paper identifies inclusion, physical meetings and information transfer as the main problems. Following these problems the following design methods are identified as solutions: Open building plan, incorporation of a meeting space and an Incremental housing system. Lastly the paper concludes the design of a housing cooperative should embody the filosophy behind the housing cooperative: a decommodified type of housing.

The P5 material is a proposal of a design and self building method that derived from the research paper. ... Read more

Trom Swamp to Structure investigates how architecture can mediate between ecological restoration and contemporary building culture by re-establishing material, spatial, and social links between landscape and construction. Rooted in the theory of regenerative design, the project asks what architecture might become if it began not with a plan, but with a plant—if building were understood as cultivation and inhabitation as participation. The thesis focuses on paludiculture, the wet cultivation of rewetted peatlands, as a systemic alternative to extractive land use and carbon-intensive construction practices.Situated in the Berlin–Brandenburg region, where over ninety percent of peatlands remain drained and are a major source of CO₂ emissions, the project positions rewetted wetlands as ecological infrastructures and sources of regional value creation. Cattail, a rapidly growing wetland plant, forms the basis of a circular material chain: cultivated on restored peatlands, processed into insulation and construction panels, and applied architecturally within the project itself.This material cycle is anchored by a cattail-panel factory located along the River Spree in Berlin-Kreuzberg, embedded within an industrial waterfront context. The factory operates as both a productive and pedagogical space, linking landscape, labour, research, and public life. A meandering mixed-use building complements the industrial core, housing education spaces, research labs, and temporary housing, while maintaining an open ground plane that reintroduces wetland conditions into the dense urban fabric.Through the integration of ecological, technological, and social systems—particularly water management, material production, and collective use—the project proposes architecture not as an endpoint, but as part of a regenerative metabolism. Ultimately, From Swamp to Structure envisions a building culture grounded in local ecologies, material knowledge, and shared stewardship of landscapes. ... Read more

This graduation project rethinks the concept of architectural permanence in response to the declining lifespans and growing obsolescence of buildings due to rapid societal and environmental change. It proposes a framework that embraces adaptability, material cycles, and cultural continuity.

The design is a timber-based public building located in Kemerburgaz Kent Ormanı, an urban forest in Istanbul. Functioning as a digital archive, it collects, displays, and shares intangible cultural heritage while symbolizing architecture’s potential to embody long-term continuity. Cultural heritage informs not only the program but also the spatial organization and structural expression. Inspired by traditional Turkish architecture, the design features a communal “sofa” space, overhangs and a central courtyard. These elements foster social interaction and express local architectural identity.

Constructed using local pine and traditional joinery techniques, the structure reflects a responsible approach to both material use and forestry. Timber is harvested at different stages of growth for specific components, establishing a cycle of replantation and maintenance. The modular framework, combined with reversible joints and screw pile foundations, allows the building to be disassembled, adapted, or repaired over time. Its connection to the ground is non-destructive, enabling relocation or complete removal without leaving a permanent trace on the site.

The project offers a model of permanence grounded not in fixity, but in continuity, care and cultural identity.
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This thesis investigates how geobased materials can restore sustainable value chains through a social, ecological, and technological framework while enhancing the regional landscape and built environment. It combines material research with design to propose a grounded architecture for farewell rituals.

The first part examines clay and earth materials, focusing on sustainable extraction, thermal performance, and tectonics. It proposes a hybrid system using a durable fired clay outer shell with an inner layer of unfired earth bricks to optimize durability, moisture regulation, and thermal mass.

The second part applies these findings to the design of a farewell centre and natural cemetery, Gedenkpark Leijsenakkers, located in the Heilige Driehoek area of Oosterhout. The design integrates local materials and ecological strategies such as water buffering and ecological gradients to create a slow, contemplative architecture that harmonizes with the landscape. The project offers a mineral-based alternative to typical crematorium typologies, emphasizing material care and regional identity. ... Read more

Dit onderzoek richt zich op de ontwikkeling van een integrale ruimtelijke strategie voor bouwen en wonen op veengronden in Nederland, als antwoord op de woningcrisis en de gevolgen van klimaatverandering. Een amfibische woonvorm van wonen op palen wordt onderzocht, waarmee verschillende grondwaterstanden in het gebied mogelijk worden als uitgangspunt voor ruimtelijke inrichting. De strategie is uitgewerkt op drie schaalniveaus: stedenbouwkundig, cluster- en woningniveau, en onderzoekt hoe bouwen op veen mogelijk wordt gemaakt door middel van lichte, flexibele bouwmethoden, innovatieve funderingstechnieken en adaptief waterbeheer. Hierbij speelt het APSSI-systeem (Aquifer Pressured SubSoil Infiltration) een centrale rol in het reguleren van waterstanden en het tegengaan van bodemdaling. Het onderzoek combineert ecologische, technische en maatschappelijke inzichten tot een toekomstvisie waarin water en bodem sturend zijn voor de inrichting van het land, in lijn met de uitgangspunten van het Nationaal Deltaprogramma 2025. Hiermee wordt een nieuwe amfibische cultuur voorgesteld waarin wonen op veen niet langer uitzondering, maar norm kan worden. ... Read more

Addressing the pressing need for a shift to circularity in the construction sector, this project explores the potential of regenerative floating architecture in transforming urban waterfronts. It investigates how bio-based materials sourced from local aquatic environments, such as reed, willow, eelgrass and seaweed, can be used to construct floating buildings.

The design of a culture hub for Amsterdam’s Haven-Stad addresses ecological degradation in the industrial harbour by integrating the cultivation and harvesting into a productive floating ecosystem landscape. A double-loop system links plant growth cycles with the lifespan of building components, rethinking the temporal dimension of architecture. To apply this systemic approach, a parametric framework was developed. It assesses the cultivation area required to meet material demands for construction and replacement.

The architectural system is based on modularity, disassembly and adaptability: every part of the building is designed for ease of construction, maintenance and replacement. The cultivation of plants on floating ecosystems is at the start of the community-based building process, followed by material harvesting, storage and transformation into prefabricated building elements. Alongside the cultural use, this cultivation process contributes to fostering communities but also regenerates biodiversity and aquatic ecosystems.

By aligning regenerative design with community-building and long-term adaptability, the project proposes a flexible and evolving architecture typology rooted in local ecological cycles. Framed within Haven-Stad’s development timeline, this approach offers a transferable methodology for the sustainable urbanisation of transforming industrial waterfronts. ... Read more

In response to increasingly extreme summer heat driven by global warming and the urban heat island effect, reducing energy consumption in architecture has become a critical concern in Taiwanese design practice. At the same time, decades of over-reliance on reinforced concrete as a universal solution have shaped the architectural industry into one that resists innovation, as well as filling the urban landscape with concrete structures that are ill-suited to present climatic conditions and agenda.

This thematic research investigates the physical, practical, and cultural challenges facing sustainable building design in Taiwan, through the means of thermal climate simulation study, survey with architectural practitioners, and the analysis of the historical development of Taiwan’s architectural industry.

Building upon the insights gained from this research, the design phase proposes a climate-responsive renovation strategy for a typical concrete high-rise apartment building in Taipei. The design emphasizes low-cost, low-tech interventions with minimal structural modification and additions, focusing on passive cooling strategies. The core principle of the design process is to significantly improve the natural ventilation schemes throughout the building by converting existing spaces into air channels, and critically introduce community programs and passive design elements into the network of private/public spaces to facilitate neighborhood gatherings and more open living spaces.

Rather than offering a fixed set of climate design solutions, this project presents a flexible methodology for addressing both climatic and social challenges within Taiwan’s existing public housing typology.
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This paper studies the feasibility of building with locally grown materials from the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region (AMR). Materials choices are based on the use of paludiculture in the peat meadows and agroforestry in the clay landscapes. A diverse range of construction products can be manufactured from these raw materials and are able to form modular elements. Research by design has been conducted to detail a building which uses alder, poplar, typha and reed. The resulting landscape use and growing times give insight into the broader impact in the AMR of locally grown construction materials. This research continued into a design project which consisted of a manufacturing centre for locally grown building elements and a residential top up in which they are used. ... Read more