Modern urban life produces continuous flows of discarded materials that are collected, sorted, incinerated or buried out of public view. Waste therefore disappears socially before it disappears materially. This research examines how waste-derived landscapes, particularly bottom ash mounds produced by waste-to-energy plants, can be reconsidered as constructed grounds rather than closed technical infrastructures. In the Netherlands, landfills and bottom ash mounds form artificial elevations within a flat landscape, yet they remain largely absent from spatial and architectural imagination. Focusing on Het Groene Schip in Amsterdam Westpoort, the research addresses a hidden bottom ash stock shaped by incineration, regulation, containment and possible reuse. While bottom ash contains mineral fractions that can enter construction chains, its application depends on processing, quality requirements and public trust. The project asks how architecture and landscape can make this hidden material condition visible, accessible and productive without ignoring its environmental and operational constraints. ... Read more

Located in the Caribbean, the island of Sint Maarten is highly exposed to recurring hurricanes, with Hurricane Irma in 2017 demonstrating the severe impact these events can have on the island and its built environment. This research investigates how architectural interventions can strengthen social resilience in Sint Maarten in response to recurring hurricanes. The research demonstrates that vulnerability is shaped not only by physical damage, but also by pre-existing social, economic and spatial conditions. These vulnerabilities became particularly visible in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, when disruptions to livelihoods, social networks, access to resources and everyday routines reduced the capacity of communities to cope with and recover from the disaster. Through an iterative mixed-method approach combining literature analysis, spatial mapping, site analysis and comparative post-disaster case studies, the research explores how social resilience can be translated into architectural and spatial design principles. These findings are translated into the Growing Village, which is a community-oriented architectural proposal in the Lower Prince’s Quarter, one of Sint Maarten’s vulnerable neighbourhoods. The proposal combines learning, food production, entrepreneurship, social interaction and emergency support within a network of buildings and open spaces. By enabling everyday spaces to adapt to shelter and support functions during and after disasters, the project demonstrates how architecture can function as both physical protection and a permanent social infrastructure, contributing to a more socially resilient future for Sint Maarten. ... Read more

Madrid’s Programas de Actuación Urbanística (PAU) were designed for the car-centric, 20th-century commuter workforce that no longer exists. We now live in a hybrid society where the daily live of our home and work ar blending. The result is a repopulation of these neighborhoods, while the urban grid is still dominated by massive, isolated blocks and overscaled infrastructure, focused on vehicles and pedestrian transience. This research argues that these overdimensioned layouts create a socio-spatial mismatch, generating non-places where a localized population is physically contained by an inward-looking architecture built for temporary daytime absence. While prioritizing car efficiency and absolute privacy, this closed morphology eliminates the intermediate human-scale street life required for community building.Utilizing a Research-by-Design methodology focused on Sanchinarro, the study deconstructs these defensive, car-dominated boundaries through Actor-Network Theory. Now our lives are hyperconnected, this research argues we should be looking differently at Third Places. It proposes the vital social infrastructure as a Fourth Place: a system of porous thresholds inhabiting the sidewalk edge. Proposing a network of architectural micro-interventions, this project reclaims the oversized urban voids, shifting the PAU from isolated architecture towards a series of open, collaborative urban commons. ... Read more

Contemporary station areas are shaped by mobility efficiency, accessibility
and densification. Within the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) strategy,
transportation nodes are primarily approached as infrastructural and economic
catalysts. By doing so, their role as socially integrated public spaces often
remains underdeveloped. As a result, station environments frequently function
as a space of movement rather than a place that supports everyday community
life and social interaction.
This research investigates how areas around public transportation nodes can
be transformed into community-based public spaces that support social
interaction while accommodating mobility flows. The research introduces
Community Based - Transit Development (CB-TD) as an alternative approach
to the conventional TOD. It focuses on the relationship between movement,
staying and everyday use. Through literature research, precedent studies and
a comparative station analysis of six stations along Metro line 11 in Madrid,
the research examines how increasing the mobility intensity affects spatial
conditions for social interaction.
The analysis reveals that community anchors such as schools, parks and
local amenities are present in the area, but remain structurally disconnected
from the mobility cores. Rather than density, the lack of integration between
movement space and lived public space weakens the opportunity for informal
encounters and community engagement. Based on these findings, a set of
design principles is developed and applied to Commillas in Madrid. The project
shows how mobility infrastructure can be interconnected within community
life to create a more socially sustainable environment. ... Read more

Held by the Mountains is an investigation of the responsibility architecture can take in fragile mountain territories. Starting with the premise that architecture can operate as a commoner of relationships between human, non-human life, and institutional actors in Alpine territories. The project is set within Sierra Norte de Madrid, recognizing that architecture does not simply solve complex environmental fragilities, but can take responsibility for performance within it. Performance in this project is evaluated in the context of a thousand-year horizon, mapping phases and potentials in a post-human future. This thesis investigates inhabitation as a mechanism for common knowledge and refuge as a commoner by re-imagining relationships between human and non-human participants to inform practices, morphologies, tectonics and construction logic. Positioning architecture as a reparative practice, a shared infrastructure through which environmental dependency becomes measured, experienced, and held over time. ... 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 paper investigates how historical models of communal architecture—such as the Corralas and Corrales de Comedias—can inform contemporary approaches to urban regeneration through a spatial understanding grounded in social interaction and transformation. Drawing on the theories of Henri Lefebvre, Richard Sennett, Rafael Moneo, Aldo Rossi, Jan Gehl, Jane Jacobs, and Kevin Lynch, the research explores how architecture operates as a living, performative framework shaped by everyday use, memory, and collective presence. These insights converge in the case of La Galera in Alcalá de Henares, a disused women’s prison marked by complex historical layers. Here, the project embraces the transformative potential of adaptive reuse—not by replicating historical forms, but by translating their spatial intelligence into contemporary design strategies. Ultimately, the work positions communal space as a platform for social negotiation and urban continuity—where memory and use shape new architectural possibilities. ... Read more

Iraq is undergoing a transformative period following decades of conflict, with major infrastructure projects intended to drive economic revival. Central among these is the Grand Faw Port in the southern Governorate of Basra. This port is intended to become the largest and most advanced port in the world, along with a connecting Development Road linking Europe and Asia. This research investigates the socio-environmental consequences of such development, focusing on the interconnected cities of Al-Faw (site of the new port), Umm Qasr (home to the older port), and Az Zubayr (a rapidly growing urban centre). Using a mixed anticipatory scenario approach – involving scenario planning, backcasting, and visioning – the study examines how the rise of this port project and other major infrastructural projects could displace local communities and marginalize older infrastructure. This study particularly pays attention to the local populations dependent on agriculture. The understanding of both the infrastructural violence and the environmental degradation of the area is crucial to this research. Drawing on ecofeminist theory, commoning and design-based methods, the research envisions an inclusive urban gardening community in Az Zubayr that addresses the needs of displaced and local communities while supporting ecological resilience. ... Read more

The thesis proposes the transformation of two of Madrid's decorative fountains into functional public pools, addressing the city's residents’ needs for leisure through physical activity and cooling in a hot city like Madrid. Additionally, the project seeks to enable public access to the Manzanares River—an element currently missing within the city centre and the river’s urban planning. The intervention reclaims water as a shared urban resource for people to experience, while offering accessibility and public space next to the city’s forgotten river. Additionally, it programmatically and volumetrically enhances the surroundings of the Puente de Segovia site. This is done by adding a water management and sanitation research centre and a wastewater treatment plant next to the CEDEX (centre of hydraulic works of Spain). In this way, the water that is being treated and studied is later used for the public pools and the irrigation of the whole intervention. Hence,the hidden mechanisms of water regeneration, from hydraulic engineering to water regeneration are made visible to the public. ... Read more

Public transport hubs become ever more important in our daily mobility pattern. As central places in our cities they have, therefore also become important public spaces. However, the gradual built up of mobility infrastructure around hubs has resulted in stations that are poorly navigable and fragment instead of connect the city around them. 

Through an approach based on Richard Sennett's open city this project aims to create a public transport hub that mitigates boundaries caused by mobility infrastructure and become a public space that is open towards its surroundings. The station Méndez Álvaro / Estación Sur in Madrid is taken as a case study.  ... Read more

This study examines how large-scale infrastructure projects, with a focus on the proposed tunnel between Spain and Morocco, influence the urban landscape and socio-spatial dynamics in Tangier, Morocco. The study, which is inspired by personal experiences and based on interdisciplinary theories, investigates how infrastructure can reinforce or reduce existing inequalities. The research uses a variety of methods to find the answers to the central question: how can infrastructure such as the tunnel be designed and implemented to promote inclusive development? These methods include an integrated methodology, archival research, fieldwork, mapping, case studies and policy analysis.

The theoretical framework is based on dromology, technopolitics, viapolitics, and infrastructural boundaries. It shows that infrastructure is not a neutral connection but a technopolitical force that regulates access, mobility, and power. Historical analysis shows how Tangier's development has long prioritized external connectivity over internal equality. This has led to spatial fragmentation. Comparative case studies of megaprojects such as the Channel Tunnel and the Øresund Bridge offer lessons on centralisation, migration pressure and social displacement.

The main findings indicate that improved connectivity stimulates urbanization and economic growth. However, this often happens at the expense of local inclusion. Inclusive planning is vital to prevent the tunnel from exacerbating the socioeconomic disparities within Tangier and between continents. The study's final conclusion offers practical design and policy recommendations for promoting equity, accessibility and sustainability in the region's future infrastructure development. ... Read more

Contemporary cities typically employ a linear metabolic model which relies on peripheral areas to support their growth and operation, often externalising waste and degradation to economically and ecologically vulnerable areas. Posing the hypothetical question, ‘What if the existing metabolic processes of extraction, production and disposal in Madrid’s periphery could be rethought, and a socially, economically and ecologically productive process could be instated for peripheral communities?’, this paper constructs a theoretical framework with which to understand systems of waste and inequality embedded in the city’s growth and operation, and analyses the historical patterns of growth which proliferated them. Following this understanding, contemporary problematic symptoms emerging from these patterns are identified, and a set of good practices is compiled which may effectively address them. This project takes a critical stance on the tabula rasa form of urban redevelopment commonly employed in Madrid and posits that an alternative model of urban development should be estalished, one which embraces plurality and uses existing built fabric and social, ecological and economic processes as a starting point ... Read more

How to build a paradise on Earth?

This question forms the foundation of a thesis that explores the urgent need for refuge—both from climatic extremes and from the sensory overstimulation that defines life in contemporary cities. Situated in Madrid—one of the cities most affected by the urban heat island effect worldwide—the project investigates the concept of refuge as a spatial, ecological, and cultural condition within the urban fabric.
Focusing on the Casa de Campo—Madrid’s historic royal retreat—the thesis re-examines the intertwined relationship between nature and culture. Drawing on Madrid’s origins, founded on and shaped by water, the project reinterprets the city’s current, lost connection to this essential element. By embracing low-tech strategies and taking maximum advantage of natural conditions, the intervention activates water and the diverse life forms it sustains, making its temporality and microclimatic effects both physically and sensorially perceptible.
Engaging with symbolic, historical, and technological precedents, the thesis envisions a site that redefines refuge—not only as shelter, but as a space for balancing human and non-human forms of regeneration, thereby aiming to reconnect people with their natural environment. Through an interdisciplinary, body-centric approach, the project explores how design can enter this balancing act in order to construct a contemporary form of paradise.
... Read more

This thesis investigates ambiguity as a productive architectural condition, particularly through the lens of terrain vagues: urban spaces defined by contradiction, indeterminacy, and temporal fluctuation. Based on critical philosophical frameworks, the research examines how ambiguity, often regarded as a lack of clarity, can instead become a catalyst for more sustainable spatial practices. The study begins by tracing the inherent qualities of terrain vagues and identifying their potentials. It then moves toward a design-oriented investigation, exploring how empirical analysis can abstract these qualities into operative tools. Ultimately, the paper proposes a framework for integrating ambiguity into the design process—not as an aesthetic byproduct but as a deliberate mode of engagement that challenges conventional binaries and embraces multiplicity, adaptability, and ecological sensitivity in architecture. ... Read more

In the post-extraction landscapes of the Rheinisches Braunkohlerevier, the relationship between water and matter no longer follows natural rhythms—it is charged, reactive, and unfolding. Here, contamination is not a singular event but a condition that accumulates, binds, weathers, and seeps across geological and temporal scales. Conventional restoration frameworks respond with binary visions of compensation and separation. This thesis takes a different approach—remaining within the unsettled terrain, it traces the transformations already in motion.

Water, long drained to make space for mining, returns to a stratigraphy fractured and unsettled by decades of extraction. It moves through disrupted sediments, activating chemical reactions that carry heavy metals and acidity through soil, into groundwater, and toward the surface. Matter does not passively receive these flows; it absorbs, resists, and transforms them. This interaction forms the foundation of the thesis: a material practice rooted in territorial specificity, where design engages the dialogue between dissolution and deposition, contamination and gradual reconfiguration.

By reworking site-bound matter, the project proposes infrastructural prototypes that respond to their environment not through resistance, but through participation. Each intervention is situated, embedded in cycles of absorption, stasis, and release. Rather than proposing resolution, the thesis offers a framework for ongoing negotiation—where design operates within, rather than above, the entangled realities of water and matter. ... Read more

This research paper aims to explore performative dissident practices within the context of Madrid, focusing on how architectural practice can gain insights from these practices to inform the design of interventions or conditions that foster empowerment, particularly for vulnerable communities. The intention is not to provide a socio-political critique, but rather to advocate for the significance of these urban battlegrounds as pedagogical instances that can enrich architectural discourse. Therefore the research seeks to answer the following question:
How can architectural practices, focused on contested urban environments, draw from the dissident practices manifested in the built environment and thus foster resilience for the vulnerable communities?

In the rising action of the research, the paper first constructs a methodological and theoretical tapestry, developing a lens through which to conduct a site analysis. This is done by employing architectural analytical drawings, as well as narration and experimental writing, to highlight the more latent, experiential aspects of dissident practices. The climax of the research applies this lens to three squares within Madrid’s most vulnerable neighborhood, Embajadores/Lavapiés. In the falling action, the research delves deeper into the site of choice and its significance for the project and expands on the conceptual framework that can be applied towards a design of conditions. ... Read more

It is certain that cities must prepare for densification in the coming years due to urban population growth. High-rise buildings as urban housing have long been seen as a solution to address housing shortages. This typology efficiently utilizes limited space, allowing a relatively large number of urban residents to settle in the urban area. Now, the urban built environment is reaching the point where social and societal problems are also experienced in this typology. Residents of high-rise buildings struggle with feelings of loneliness and are unable to anchor themselves in the urban community. It seems that our urban designs have led to increased anonymity and a loss of social contact in high-rise living. The lack of social engagement within a community or social isolation has adverse effects on mental health, resulting in dissatisfaction, stress, and poor public health. Ultimately, this societal problem will also influence the urban developments negatively. As a result, the characteristic structure of high-rise buildings must be studied and reconsidered for the sake of the mental health of the urban population. The built environment must come up with solutions to encourage social interactions through design interventions in high-rise buildings and focussing more on public interior spaces. ... Read more

Casa de Campo, Madrid’s Field of Play, has yet to fully integrate into the city's everyday life and ecology. This forest, rich in archaeological and natural heritage, is nearly forgotten, with its playgrounds sitting empty and unused. This project takes an infrastructural approach, creating directed fields where both human and non-human activities can unfold. The design lays the groundwork for future events and building activities, operating flexibly in the division, allocation, and construction of surfaces, while also engaging architecture's ability to communicate through its imagery.
The research identified multiple sites within Casa de Campo to become a series of interconnected yet diffuse elements. These elements are intended to induce movement, create new atmospheres, and establish visual connections and ecologies between the park and the city. Site selection was based on factors such as accessibility, proximity to roads and trails, viewpoints, and archaeological significance. The networked imagery of these architectural elements fosters new associations and movement patterns between city dwellers and their playground, Casa de Campo.
Key research methods included mapping, drawing, navigation, and walking, all of which helped to immerse the project within the context of Casa de Campo and Madrid. These tools revealed the site's suppressed and intangible qualities. Some maps were playful and internal, while others were systematic, helping to address the complex implications of the proposed intervention. Operational mapping, used as a design tool, allowed for the exploration of functions and possible outcomes over an extended time frame. This approach balanced structured, fixed elements with more flexible, negotiable ones. As a result, the urban strategy aims to create a flexible system rooted in ecological and infrastructural thinking. Time and process are integral to the landscape's growth and microbial activity, connecting air, surfaces, substrates, and rhizomes. The architectural design materializes these anticipated event scenarios, and the construction process is made visible to the public, embracing the messy realities of urban building rather than concealing them.
... Read more

At the heart of diverse, thriving inner-city areas are the community gardens, impromptu skate parks and self-managed community centres where residents can build intercultural connections, and achieve a sense of belonging. This thesis defines these as ‘Open Third Places’: public areas whose disorder generates spontaneous encounters and unexpected vibrancy.
Open Third Place can be found in the El Laboratorio squatted social centres of inner-city Madrid. The gentrifying, inner-city neighbourhood of Lavapies has historically hosted a diverse variety of outsiders, ranging from international immigrants to Spanish activist groups. Where their needs were not met by costly governmental regeneration efforts, El Laboratorio group used the act of occupation to explore the creation of low-budget, user-led social centres, free from bureaucratic constraints. These spaces became valuable hubs for coexistence in an otherwise fragmented community, despite financial and legal constraints.
Therefore, this paper examines how El Laboratorio diverged from mainstream building conventions, to demonstrate where such disorder is crucial in the formation of Open Third Places. This analysis is structured by three divisions, or ‘thresholds’, which exist in the formally planned city, but were blurred within El Laboratorio centres: ‘spatial thresholds’, ‘designer-user thresholds’ and ‘temporal thresholds’. Using archival visual and written material from the social centres, the paper suggests a connection between the conviviality of El Laboratorio and their bridging of these thresholds.
In this way, the thesis reveals possibilities for architects to similarly work with these thresholds, when designing for the community of Lavapies. Despite this, it concludes by foreseeing difficulties of translating ideas from the ‘disorder’ of a squat, to the ‘order’ of a more formal design scheme, outlining potential conflicts in the application of these ideas. ... Read more

This thesis explores the interplay between urban underground spaces and the concept of time, aiming to transform our perception and use of these hidden areas. Beginning with an extensive mapping of Madrid's underground, the research reveals the often-inaccessible nature of these spaces. Through typological studies and philosophical exploration, the thesis reinterprets these spaces as temporal phenomena, emphasizing their dynamic potential.
The theoretical foundation is grounded in concepts such as Bergson's duration and Bakhtin's chronotope, which highlight the entanglement of time and space. The design project proposes a shift from place-based to operation-based design, focusing on the temporal dimensions of space. It envisions a flexible art hub in Madrid, adaptable to various activities and extending beyond its physical boundaries, reflecting the concept of Urban Uchronia—a utopia of time that challenges existing temporal norms.
The manifesto envisions a network of interconnected underground spaces across the city, forming a system of Urban Uchronia. This vision integrates subterranean environments into the urban fabric, transforming how we engage with these spaces. The thesis concludes by reflecting on the transferability of these concepts, offering innovative strategies for urban regeneration and architectural design in diverse contexts worldwide. By reimagining underground spaces through the perspective of time, this thesis proposes a new paradigm for urban development. ... Read more