This research examines how collaborative approaches can be organised to improve the effectiveness and inclusivity of built-environment reconstruction in conflict-affected areas. Post-conflict reconstruction is often approached as a technical process of rebuilding physical structures, yet this thesis argues that reconstruction is also a deeply political, social and institutional process shaped by governance arrangements, coordination mechanisms, partnership structures and power relations between international and in-country actors.

Using a qualitative research design, the study combines document analysis, two comparative case studies, semi-structured expert interviews and an expert panel discussion. The research first analyses five reconstruction models: top-down privatised, multilateral, donor-led, nexus-based and bottom-up approaches. These models provide insight into how reconstruction processes are governed, coordinated and organised in practice. The empirical analysis then focuses on the reconstruction of Beirut, Lebanon, and Mosul, Iraq, as contrasting cases. Beirut illustrates how centralised and privatised reconstruction can enable rapid physical redevelopment while limiting local participation and long-term social sustainability. Mosul, by contrast, demonstrates how hybrid approaches that combine multilateral coordination with participatory and community-oriented practices can strengthen contextual responsiveness, local ownership and social recovery, although they require extensive coordination and long-term institutional support.

The findings show that no single reconstruction model offers a universally applicable solution. Instead, collaborative reconstruction involves continuous trade-offs between implementation speed, coordination complexity, local participation, inclusivity and long-term sustainability. The research identifies several principles and enabling conditions for more effective and inclusive reconstruction, including context-sensitive governance, meaningful local participation, trust-based partnerships, clear coordination structures, local capacity-building, inclusive representation mechanisms and conflict-sensitive planning.

The thesis concludes that collaborative reconstruction can contribute to more effective and inclusive built-environment recovery when it moves beyond the delivery of physical outputs and instead supports locally responsive, socially legitimate and institutionally coordinated recovery processes. In this way, reconstruction can contribute not only to rebuilding damaged urban environments, but also to restoring trust, dignity, community resilience and the social foundations for long-term recovery. ... Read more

This project examines the Power of Everyday Life and its role in structural transformation. Through a research-by-design approach in Hoyerswerda / Germany, it explores how neighbourhood design can reshape daily routines and attractiveness in support of a post-carbon future. ... Read more

This thesis investigates how restorative urban design strategies can minimize or compensate stressors and overstimulation in dense urban public spaces, with a focus on the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam’s city center. Rapid urbanization has led to increasingly dense cities where people are exposed to continuous sensory input such as noise, crowding, visual clutter, traffic, and pollution. By 2050, more than two-thirds of the global population is expected to live in urban areas, which intensifies the issues of environmental overload, attention fatigue, and psychological stress. While these challenges are well documented in environmental psychology research, their translation into spatial and multisensory urban design strategies is still limited.

The research combines literature review, walk along interviews, site analysis, and a research by-design approach. Important theoretical frameworks are Attention Restoration Theory, Stress Reduction Theory, and Perceived Sensory Dimensions. The study explores how urban stressors and stimuli are perceived through the senses and how their interactions can either intensify or reduce sensory overload.

Findings show that stress or overstimulation is caused by multiple sensory stimuli working together, and not by single stressors alone, and that spatial conditions strongly influence how these stimuli are perceived and experienced. Restoration is therefore not achieved only by reducing input, but by shaping the quality, rhythm, and legibility of sensory experiences.

This led to the development of the Urban Restorative Sensecape Theory (URST), which has five principles: modulation, rhythm, gradation, engagement, and spatial language. The core principle of URST is that restoration does not arise from the absence of stimuli or stressors, nor from escaping them by relocating to other spaces. Instead, restoration arises from the quality, gradation, manageability, and meaningful interpretation of sensory stimuli, while still allowing urban environments to remain lively and rich in sensory experience, and supportive of calm.

The thesis also includes a design proposal for the Lijnbaan, where the five principles from URST are translated into a network of interconnected restorative public spaces. These support sensory balance, restoration, and inclusive urban experience.
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Urban life has become increasingly fast-paced and mentally demanding, intensifying the need for environments that support psychological restoration. While natural environments are widely recognised for their restorative effects, many cities contain overlooked interstitial spaces, informal, fragmented areas shaped by infrastructure and residual planning, that remain underused despite their ecological and experiential potential. In Rotterdam, these interstitial spaces often exist close to everyday urban life but lack visibility, legibility, and intentional engagement.

This thesis explores the relationship between interstitial urban spaces and psychological restoration from a landscape architectural perspective. By drawing on theories from environmental psychology, this research investigates how environmental experience, natural qualities, and spatial characteristics can contribute to restorative experiences. The project focuses on Rotterdam as a case study, examining how interstitial spaces might be revealed, interpreted, and thoughtfully engaged with through design.

Rather than aiming to fully transform these spaces, the research seeks to understand how their existing qualities can be acknowledged and expressed, and how landscape architectural design can support psychological restoration while respecting their informal and ecological character. In doing so, the thesis positions interstitial spaces as a meaningful component of the urban landscape and as a potential network of restorative environments. ... Read more

This graduation project investigates the relationship between public space and the mental wellbeing of adolescents in Carnisse, a post-war neighbourhood in Rotterdam. The project addresses the research question: To what extent does public space influence the mental wellbeing of adolescents and how can its design be adapted to improve the wellbeing of adolescents in Carnisse? It focuses on the context of post-war neighbourhoods, where spatial structure that were originally designed for housing efficiency, often mismatch with the contemporary social and developmental needs of adolescents.

Through a combination of literature review, historical analysis, spatial analysis and observations based on informed empathy, the research explores how adolescents use and experience public space. These findings show that mental wellbeing is primarily influenced by personal and societal factors, but that public space plays an important supporting role in relation to safety, social interaction, autonomy and connectedness to the neighbourhood. Public space can therefore contribute to creating environments in which adolescents feel comfortable, included, and welcome.

Based on these insights, a transformation strategy was developed that consists of three interconnected layers: connect, activate and intensify. By improving soft mobility routes, activating underutilized public spaces, and introducing new functions and youth housing, the project proposes a more inclusive and future-proof neighbourhood where the daily lives and experiences of adolescents are placed at the centre of urban development. ... Read more

This research investigates how public spaces can be designed and used to counteract political polarization in The Hague, with the aim to strengthen a better social connection between citizens. Political polarization is understood as the widening of ideological, emotional and perceived distance between groups becomes problematic when it undermines democratic cooperation, weakens social cohesion and enables “us vs them” dynamics. In The Hague these dynamics manifest spatially through contrasting voting atterns, symbolic street names tied to colonial histories and informal political expressions in neighbourhoods such as Transvaalkwartier. These observations highlight the need for spatial strategies that foster constructive encounters across social and political divides.

Incorporating GIS based electoral mapping and ethnographic observations this study analyses how polarisation manifests in everyday public spaces. Allport’s Contact Hypothesis, Oldenburg’s concept of third places and Soja’s Thirdspace are used to understand how public environments can support depolarizing interactions. These insights informed the development of a site specific design proposal in the Transvaalkwartier.

The results show that public space can counteract polarization when they enhance accessibility between neighbourhoods, provide inclusive and multifunctional environments and support informal equal status encounters. The proposed design transforms an industrial site into a connective public space featuring a new pedestrian passage, a conversation pit, communal gardens, children’s play areas and adaptive reuse of existing buildings into community serving functions such as a library, gym, restaurant, repair cafe and workshop spaces.

The study concludes that depolarizing public space requires a context sensitive approach that integrates spatial analysis, ethnographic insights and inclusive design strategies. The final design demonstrates how architectural interventions can strengthen social cohesion by creating environments that enable dialogue, shared activity and everyday encounters. ... Read more

This research explores how shrinking rural villages can strengthen their identity through public space, accessibility and multifunctional facilities. The research focuses on the village of Krabbendijke in Zeeland, where processes such as facility decline, increasing mobility dependency and the fragmentation of everyday life influence the social, functional and symbolical identity of the village. As discussed by Christiaanse (2023), shrinking rural regions are increasingly dealing with changing accessibility, disappearing facilities and transformations in everyday village life. Rather than approaching shrinkage only as a demographic or economic issue, this research investigates how these processes affect social interaction, public life and the experience of the village environment.

Through literature research, spatial analysis, fieldwork and research-by-design, the relationship between accessibility, facilities, public space and identity is analysed on multiple scales. The research identifies three interconnected forms of identity within shrinking villages: functional identity, social identity and symbolical identity. These identities are explored through themes such as local habits, historical values, landscape qualities, community spaces, spatial accessibility, functional structures and social interaction potential.

The research demonstrates that facilities function as more than functional services alone. They often act as social anchors, meeting places and symbolical carriers of village identity. Their disappearance therefore affects not only accessibility, but also collective memory, social interaction and public life. At the same time, the research concludes that the car remains an important part of rural life within Zeeland since there are lots of villages with limited accessibility. The challenge therefore lies in balancing accessibility and mobility with more socially active and walkable public spaces.

Through research-by-design, these findings are translated into a spatial vision for Krabbendijke, structured around four overarching strategies focused on multifunctionality, social interaction, intergenerational resilience and landscape identity. These strategies are tested through interventions on smaller scales within the village core, station area and connecting landscape structures. The design proposal illustrates how public space can strengthen the relationship between social, functional and symbolical identity by reconnecting facilities, daily routines, landscape and cultural structures to everyday village life.

Although the spatial outcomes are highly context-specific, the analytical framework and thematic approach developed throughout this research can also contribute to comparable shrinking rural regions within Zeeland and beyond. ... Read more

Contemporary cities are becoming increasingly diverse, while at the same time public space is often characterized by anonymity, generalization, social fragmentation, and a lack of spontaneous interaction. This graduation project, Buurtenergie, investigates the role of architecture in redefining public space within a hyperdiverse society through the transformation of the Power Plant in The Hague. In this project, public space is understood as both indoor and outdoor space where strangers, despite their differences, can coexist with mutual respect. People can appropriate the space and engage in everyday encounters.
The research combines a theoretical study with systematic observations of public spaces in The Hague. Literature from architecture, urbanism, sociology, and philosophy is used to examine themes such as porosity, social cohesion, appropriation, and the relationship between design and everyday social interaction. These insights are complemented by ethnographic observations that investigate how different users interact with architectural interventions in public space. Together, these methods result in a catalogue of spatial interventions and design principles that form the foundation of the architectural proposal.
The design proposes the transformation of part of the Power Plant into a new form of public space that extends beyond the conventional distinction between building and city. Rather than prescribing fixed uses, the project creates spatial conditions that encourage appropriation, temporary occupation, encounter, retreat, and experimentation. A flexible spatial framework, consisting of accessible infrastructure, adaptable program, gradual transitions between inside and outside, and a diversity of spatial qualities, allows the building to evolve alongside the changing needs of its neighborhood while maintaining its public character.
The project concludes that architecture can contribute to social cohesion in hyperdiverse cities not by controlling behaviour or accommodating every possible need, but by offering opportunities for diverse forms of use and interaction. It therefore redefines public space as an inclusive and porous environment, both indoors and outdoors, that supports coexistence, (temporary) appropriation, and everyday encounters between strangers. In doing so, the project demonstrates how architectural interventions can contribute to more democratic, adaptable, and socially resilient urban environments. ... Read more

Activating public life in space has been a concern in architecture and urban design, particularly within the liquid conditions of late modernity, where the separation between public and private are continously blurred. While theoretical discourse has shifted towards relational and dynamic understandings of publicness, design practice struggles to intentionally activate public life, especially within existing public interiors, revealing a gap between theoretical and spatial practice. This dissertation addresses this gap by exploring how design approaches can activate publicness in existing public interiors, adopting design-driven research (DDR) as a methodological framework, positioning design as an independent mode of enquiry. Through a series of situated spatial experiments, the research investigates how publicness can be activated in specific contexts to extract knowledge through iterative cycles of design, implementation, observation, and critical reflexivity.

Cross-comparing and overlaying the design experiments, the findings conceptualise publicness as a dynamic threshold condition that emerges from the relations in an ecology of people, objects, nature, space, and institutions, that can be shaped through processes of spatial transformation. A key mechanism to articulate publicness in processes of spatial transformation proved to be
collective creation: a tool for forming publics around shared matters of care through collective problematisation. Finally, the research contributed to design research by showing the capacity of design-driven spatial experimentation to produce situated and transferable knowledge. It also contributes to public space theory and design by reframing publicness as a relational process shaped by relational, embedded and emobdied design approaches allowing designers to intentionally engage and activate it within existing public interiors. ... Read more

This graduation project reimagines Almelo Central Station as both an architectural landmark and a catalyst for urban cohesion. While the current station functions as a transport hub, it simultaneously acts as a barrier between Kerkelanden and the city center. The research phase—based on observations, interviews, mapping, and case studies—identified spatial fragmentation, low visibility, and social detachment as core challenges.

Building on theories of social capital (Jacobs), urban legibility (Lynch), Transit-Oriented Development, and the Spoorbeeld design vision, the project advances beyond analysis to propose a comprehensive architectural intervention. The design envisions the station as a civic space that bridges physical and psychological divides, fostering accessibility, safety, and shared identity.

Key design strategies include a new passerelle that winds across the railway tracks, creating clear and inviting connections between both sides. This structure integrates public and social functions—such as cafés, study spaces, daycare, and cultural amenities—ensuring the station is more than transit infrastructure. On the Kerkelanden side, a new face with tribune stairs strengthens links to schools and neighborhoods, while on the city center side, a redesigned passage through the historic monument revitalizes Almelo’s heritage. Bicycle and pedestrian routes are prioritized to encourage sustainable mobility, complemented by improved public squares and green zones.

The architectural proposal demonstrates how embedding local identity and programmatic diversity within a coherent urban strategy can transform Almelo’s station area into “The Station That Connects”—a safe, inclusive, and vibrant urban hub that strengthens both mobility and community ... Read more

Urban forests are increasingly planted for their climate and ecological value, yet their potential to support mental well-being remains underused in most urban greening strategies. This thesis explores how restorative urban forests can be systematically designed and implemented to address psychological needs, using Paris as a testing case.
This thesis begins be developing a typological framework grounded in environmental psychology and landscape architecture. Drawing on theories such as Attention Restoration Theory (ART), Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), Biophilic Design, Shinrin Yoku and the Perceived Sensory Dimensions (PSD’s), four universal forest typologies are defined: the Refuge Forest, Healing Forest, Social Forest and Focus Forest. Each typology is linked to specific emotional and sensorial needs in our modern cities; such as withdrawal, recovery, connection and cognitive clarity.
These typologies are then translated into the Parisian context through spatial analysis, in situ testing and design research. Within this dense city, the forest typologies are adapted to work within the existing infrastructural networks and urban morphology. The Healing, Social and Focus Forests are reimagined as linear interventions inserted along mobility corridors, while the Refuge Forest takes the form of compact, immersive pockets within the city.
The result is a multilayered system of forest interventions that not only enhances urban ecology and environmental resilience, but also addresses mental health at the scale of everyday experience. By integrating emotional restoration into the logic of urban forestry, this thesis proposes a new design language: one that expands the role of trees from climate infrastructure to psychological infrastructure, reconnecting the city with the human need to pause, breathe and feel.
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The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the role and relevance that architecture has (and can have) in facilitating the spatial production of festival spaces. It aims to demonstrate that festival spaces serve as ideal locations for experimenting with spatial relationships and architecture itself – through its expression and collective appropriation -which can have transformative effects on spaces of the everyday, guided by the disruptive nature of the festival.

The intention is to construct a designbrief for a permanent festival terrain in which the dialogue between people, place, society, and time can be constantly re-imagined through its fluid architecture—offering fertile ground for discussion on architecture’s role in the facilitation of festival spaces, how they inform the design, use, andorganisation of everyday spaces, and how they stimulate collective design processes.Ultimately, this project seeks
to enact architecture as a facilitator of dialogue, a medium for questioning and reshaping spatial relationships through the lens of festival spaces. ... Read more

This thesis investigates how hybrid public spaces can serve as contemporary third places to foster social engagement among young adults in suburban and peri-urban contexts. In response to increasing social isolation and the erosion of informal meeting spaces, the study proposes an integrated design strategy that blurs the boundaries between first, second, and third places. Grounded in theories of place, publicness, and multifunctional landscapes, the project reimagines a polder landscape between Rotterdam and Berkel en Rodenrijs as a “Gathering Commons”; a spatial framework that accommodates recreation, remote work, and community life. The design draws from landscape typologies, historical land-use patterns, and contemporary social needs to generate a layered public realm that remains active throughout the day. Through spatial synthesis and pattern-based analysis, the thesis demonstrates how the hybridization of program and form can create inclusive environments while acknowledging potential challenges in governance, safety, and stewardship. The project offers a replicable model for enhancing social cohesion and spatial quality in the transitional zones of modern metropolitan regions. ... Read more

This graduation thesis explores how urban green spaces can contribute to enhancing public spaces as connectors to the social fabric within the Stadsdriehoek of Rotterdam. The project critically addresses how processes of globalization and homogenization have diminished spatial identity, historical layering and emotional attachment within highly controlled urban public spaces. Using the theoretical framework of place attachment - consisting of physical, social and mental dimensions - this thesis applies these aspects as a landscape layer approach to analyze the urban landscape of the Stadsdriehoek.
Through the methods landscape biography, use and activity analysis and the narrative approach, the case study reveals how the loss of historical legibility, infrastructural dominance and rationalized design have reduced opportunities for meaningful place attachment. The project proposes urban green spaces as mediators that reconnect the (lost) historical layers through legibility and diversify social uses while embedding collective and personal narratives into the urban landscape. A conceptual vision for the Stadsdriehoek is developed, followed by two speculative small scale designs reflecting opposite conditions: one emphasizing collective, public narratives at Plein 1940, and another focusing on personal, neighborhood narratives at Achterklooster. These designs illustrate how landscape interventions can serve as adaptive frameworks that foster attachment landscapes, allowing public space to become more socially, emotionally and historically meaningful. ... Read more

Urban regeneration has historically prioritized financial value over the socio-cultural needs of communities, leading to feelings of disenfranchisement among citizens and taking matters into their own hands in the public space. This research proposal addresses the critical gap in understanding how community organisations can use urban regeneration as a way to embed their temporary use in the public space.

The study aims to explore the added value of community initiated temporary uses, identify barriers and opportunities faced by these organizations, and examine the impact of various relationships and alliances on their involvement in decision-making processes regarding public space.
The research is structured around three key questions: (SQ1) What is the embeddedness of a temporary use in the public space? (SQ2) What is the added value of community initiated temporary uses to the public space? (SQ3) What barriers and opportunities do community organisations face during the design and decision making process around the regeneration of public space? Utilizing qualitative research design, the study will include literature reviews, case studies, observations, and interviews with relevant stakeholders.

The findings are expected to provide practical tools that empower citizens and community organizations fostering a collaborative approach to public space regeneration. Ultimately, this research seeks to contribute to the discourse on the value of public space and community empowerment, highlighting the importance of inclusive decision-making in the public urban landscape.
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Half of the people worldwide currently live in urban areas, which is expected to grow to two-thirds by 2050. Though relatively little is still known about the exact effects of urban living, in particular on our health, some patterns have been recognised: a higher likelihood of developing mental health issues, a high degree of car-dominance and -dependence, and strongly felt effects of climate change. These diverse issues have one overlapping factor, which is urban stress, the main topic of this thesis. People with a low socioeconomic status experience this especially severly, due to their higher likelihood of living in “problem areas” with many urban issues, in addition to other financial worries. This thesis aims to find out what the exact causes of urban stress are, and find out design solutions that can help lower this urban stress. The question at the centre of this thesis is “What spatial design elements can improve the health of residents of vulnerable neighbourhoods with a low socioeconomic status through stress-relief, based on the case study of Overvecht, Utrecht?”. Overvecht is chosen as a case study, as it has all of the aforementioned urban issues, in addition to issues related to socioeconomics. Firstly, through literature review, sources of urban stress (“stressors”) are formulated and bundled in the so-called STRESS framework, which divides the stressors into five categories: Social, Activity, Economy, Nature, and Personal experience. Then, design solutions are presented in the form of the RELAX framework, which has the same categories, but seen from the perspective of stress-relief rather than stressors. Both of these frameworks are then applied in Overvecht, which shows how they work in practice. This same method could be used in other vulnerable neighbourhoods with similar issues related to urban stress. The main take away is that the different design solutions all depend on each other and to properly and effectively lower urban stress, the different perspectives should all be considered and formed into a synergetic vision/design, which reacts to local circumstances and wants and needs of local residents. ... Read more

The Future is Yesterday explores how traditional urban design principles can guide the regeneration of Amsterdam’s city center through the lens of human experience. Focusing on the Stopera block, the project reimagines a place where urban identity was once lost, transforming it through spatial diversity, adaptability, and local engagement.

By bridging design and experience, the research shows that sustainable cities are not only built but felt. Drawing from environmental psychology and the voices of local users, the design creates a flexible framework where public and private life intertwine, and where identity evolves through the city’s existing morphology.

Ultimately, the thesis reflects on how the past can inform the future of urban form — not through nostalgia, but through continuity, experience, and the quiet resilience of timeless design. ... Read more

This research explores how underused transport infrastructure in Dubai can be reimagined through climate-responsive and human-centered design to foster walkability and social inclusion, particularly for migrant and expatriate populations. As a city defined by rapid urbanization, vertical growth, and a car-centric planning model, Dubai’s development strategies often prioritize global capital flows and profit-driven infrastructure, while marginalizing local needs and environmental considerations (Easterling, 2014; Menoret, 2014). These approaches have led to the proliferation of “lost spaces” (Trancik, 1986), underutilized and fragmented areas that disconnect communities and diminish urban livability. Focusing on the area surrounding Sobha Realty Metro Station, this study proposes an inverted green deck which is an adaptive reuse strategy that transforms a space underneath a metro linkeay into shaded, green public spaces that encourage community interaction and reduce urban heat. While existing literature critiques Dubai’s car-centric urbanism, few studies offer spatially and climatically adaptive design solutions that respond to its unique socio-environmental complexity. This research addresses that gap by developing design interventions that integrate environmental sustainability with social equity. Employing a mixed-methods approach that combines spatial analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, precedent studies, and 3D modeling, the research investigates how repurposed infrastructure can mitigate extreme climatic conditions, enhance pedestrian experience, and accommodate diverse cultural practices. The study draws on global urban theories, including Henri Lefebvre’s Right to the City and Keller Easterling’s infrastructure politics to critically examine how design can mediate between economic imperatives and everyday urban life. The research contributes to broader discussions on sustainable urban development by offering a context-specific, design-led response to the challenges of car dependency, social fragmentation, and environmental stress in rapidly urbanizing cities. The inverted green deck emerges as a scalable (modular) model for transforming neglected infrastructure into inclusive, climate-resilient public spaces.
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This graduation project represents an exploration of the potential for underground urban developments and develops a vision for these as an extension of the urban fabric. The final architectural representation of the project is a mixed-use complex situated above and around the
existing Farringdon underground stations. The design is predicated on transforming existing buildings, adding extra underground space, and connecting them to the context. The design incorporates the primary concepts of blurring the boundaries between above- and underground spaces, creating a public ground floor realm in the middle, and an idiosyncratic architecture that responds to the needs and opportunities of the underground addition. ... Read more