This graduation project explores how the architectural principles of Open Building can be implemented within an existing industrial structure to accommodate change over time. Starting from the notion that architects should not aim to predict the future but rather enable adaptability, the project questions the traditional role of the architect in residential architecture. By reusing the vacant Geschutfabriek -a former ammunition factory located at the Hembrug terrain in Zaandam- the project proposes a spatial framework that balances permanence and change. The building’s foundation and steel structure are repurposed as the permanent Support, while a newly developed infill system offers space for multiple dwelling typologies and public functions.

A flexible partitioning strategy, modular wall and floor systems, and a dry-assembled façade framework allow for varied and reversible configurations of interior spaces. The facade guidelines enable individual expression while maintaining visual coherence, turning the architect’s role for the façade into that of a framework designer. At the urban scale, a new public square, Geschutsplein, anchors the project as a central and multifunctional gathering space in the evolving neighbourhood. Passive climate strategies are embedded in the reused building envelope, supporting sustainable performance throughout the year.

By 2030, 1,700 churches will become vacant, adding to the 1,530 already repurposed. Repurposing these spaces is time-consuming and costly, often leading to demolition when no potential is identified. This research explores how modular wooden building systems with adaptable, remountable elements can create customizable, multistory spaces in vacant churches. Moreover, it addresses the key questions: What are the criteria for a modular building system that could be used as an infill within vacant churches? Which of the existing modular building systems could be a potential solution as an infill to fit within vacant churches? How modular is the most potential modular building system as an infill within vacant churches? What are the technical requirements of the system concerning the various functions it is designed to accommodate? The study concludes that developing wooden adaptable infills is feasible if factors such as adaptability, interchangeability, efficient placement, and material efficiency are prioritized.

This paper explores the densification of nontraditional post-war staircase entrance apartments in the Netherlands as a potential solution to the housing shortage. It examines the characteristics of nontraditional construction systems and their load-bearing capacities. The study employs methods such as literature review, research by design, and calculations. The results identify various densification strategies such as changing accessing, repurposing storage spaces, adding stories, and other extensions. The challenges associated with each strategy are analyzed. Calculations and literature research reveal that the foundation's capacity typically limits vertical extensions, recommending a maximum additional weight of 10-12%. Additionally, the inclusion of galleries is essential for certain densification types, with a maximum depth requirement of approximately 2000mm to comply with Dutch building regulations. The design project is about expanding and enhancing post-war staircase entrance buildings on urban and building scale, combined with a lightweight SIP construction method.

Utilising research in environmental psychology in order to achieve stress reduction in the design of a healthcare center. The design clusters the architectural programs based on the reason people visit certain functions within the building, and privacy aspects. This clustering of functions also allowes the design to be tweaked to achieve stress reduction unique for every program.
Changing the architectural characteristics for every function leads to a patchwork like architecture.

Urban healthcare centres face considerable pressure due to the negative health impacts associated with cities and increasing urban density. These challenges add strain to healthcare providers already dealing with imbalances in care provision. Research indicates that environmental factors play an important role in physical recovery and stress reduction, yet many outpatient care facilities lack these beneficial features, presenting an opportunity for enhancement. By integrating healing architectural characteristics, patients can be encouraged to communicate openly about their health concerns, experiencing reduced mental and physical stress during examinations or treatments. Implementing such features not only reduces reliance on pain medication but also reduces aggression toward healthcare providers and diminishes the need for recurrent visits. This paper hypothesizes that patients' stress levels have escalated since the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily due to concerns about airborne diseases in healthcare settings. Architectural features can mitigate the risk of contracting such diseases, potentially enhancing the perceived safety within these environments. Through a review of existing literature, this paper identifies current and future hurdles in healthcare centres, including airborne diseases, and proposes evidence-based design solutions aimed at enhancing patients' visiting experiences.

In the context of sustainable housing design the ambition arises to realize dwellings resilient towards the ever changing multiplicity of society and its demands towards a home. Realizing accessibility to affordable and suitable housing for various household constellations as well as programmatic, spatial and social versatility are key principles to achieve this aspiration.
A case study analysis of Holunderhof, Kalkbreite and WagnisART leads to the conclusion that a combination between architecturally influenced floor-space efficiency with a high level of spatial quality and cooperative ownership can achieve programmatic and social versatility while guaranteeing long-term affordability for low- and average income households.
Evaluating the characteristics concerning versatility and affordability of Balance Uster, Patch22 and San Riemo, which can be categorized as Open Building concepts, portrays how this approach successfully provides the possibility to subdivide and adapt initially large apartments into various dwelling types also allowing for future different non-housing functions. Since this concept relays largely on individual personalization and private ownership, long-term affordability is unlikely.
Combining the advantages of modular adaptability with affordable cooperative housing for lower income groups as realized at San Riemo is a possible hybrid approach, but shows disadvantages in unfortunate floorplan layouts with dark and inefficient spaces.

It is with the technique of adaptive reuse that the campus buildings from the TU Delft are seen as a solution towards the contemporary problem of the student housing. Starting of with an investigation towards adaptability and its measurability within the research paper. Leading towards conclusions about the cause of adaptability being tied to the shearing layers principles of Stewards brand. This, connected to the open building theory of Habraken states the structure of a building, this case being the EWI faculty of the TU delft, as case for transformation and adaptation. The new infill layer is based upon the maximisation of the adaptability over time, leading towards future changes on differentiating problems. The project contains a worked out self-build system which is designed for disassembly and thereby establishing adaptability. Furthermore this concept is taken towards the current functionality of the EWI as campus building, and thereby introducing an adaptable study space.

There is a significant problem with how we conceive our built environment, the traditional nature of the construction industry lags in innovation compared to nearly every other industry. As a result, the industry is unable to quickly respond to changing social, environmental and economic contexts. Requiring new methods of construction and ways of design thinking in order to meet the demands of the present and anticipate change in the future. Within the context of TU Delft Campus, there is a great need to accommodate an increasing student population and subsequently need to maximize the use of space throughout campus. The research paper aims to explore what combination of prefabricated 1D, 2D and 3D engineered timber systems generates the most optimized use of engineered timber for a hybrid building. Essentially creating a timber kit of parts system based on the proportions of the parking lot to be able to generate site specific responses throughout Delft Campus. With the ease of assembly and disassembly of prefabricated timber systems, a designed kit of parts can transform the underused parking lot locations throughout Delft Campus.

Increasing density of housing in postwar neighbourhoods can simultaneously help in reducing housing shortages, address social-economic issues and enable a 2000-watt-society. Shifting household compositions have seen household sizes reduced and floor space usage increase, which corresponds to higher energy and material use. Reducing floor space usage per capita is a prerequisite for enabling sustainable housing. Usage of efficient principles from cooperative housing, such as sharing functions and spaces can allow for greatly reduced floor space usage per capita, without reducing quality of dwellings. The application of these principles in the postwar neighbourhood through transformation of existing buildings can be key in ensuring that they become suitable for a circular economy by 2050.

This Master Thesis is an attempt to address the lack of a sufficient number of affordable and qualitative student housing by creating an experimental, universal design strategy called MODULE+, combining computational design and modular architecture. The strategy consists of three main elements - individually designed flexible timber modules, an algorithm that generates the functional layout of the building based on them and optimizes it in relation to selected objectives, as well as carefully selected further design directions that allow the transformation of the generated solutions into a qualitative living environment. The developed strategy became the basis for the design of a complex of residential buildings for students within the TU Delft Campus.

The Hofbogen has already undergone significant redevelopment after being out of service since 2002. This includes the establishment of the Luchtsingel roof park in 2015 and the ongoing construction until 2024 to transform the empty roof of the Hofbogen line into a nature-inclusive park. Within this existing masterplan, the project seeks to add value by proposing a building addition to the Hofbogen infrastructure at the Bergweg station. One of the key challenges in designing a biodiverse park on a rooftop is water management. The engineering aspect of the project is crucial for working with the existing structure to create architecture that generates positive output for the park, the area, and its users. The project gives emphasis on the conscious choice of materials and is attentive to their lifecycle implications. In the context of the contemporary building industry, it is necessary to support the principles of reuse and demountability and the use of existing structures. Consequently, the project is designed to be constructed on top of an existing structure within the urban fabric, and represents a demountable building approach that utilizes highly adaptable building pieces capable of accommodating change. Overall, this graduation project aligns with the architectural engineering studio's focus on designing ecological and socially responsible architecture while contributing to a sustainable development of Rotterdam's urban landscape.

Korea had a history of wooden architecture for about 2,000 years before modernization. However, after the Korean War, the concept of modernist concrete high-rise apartments was radically introduced to solve the severe housing problem. In US, Charles Jencks declared the death of Modern Architecture, but it was a huge success in Korea. Apartments have become Korea’s representative residential type, and they call it Apatu. In addition, the phenomenon of demolishing old Apatu and reconstructing new ones every 30 years has become considered a housing culture until now. Instead of this existing reconstruction method, the principle of Open Buildings is proposed by reusing existing apartments into vertical infrastructure.

The study is motivated by the abandonment of vernacular architecture in rural tropics, which has led to greater energy demand due to the higher embodied energy of construction materials and increased use of air conditioning. This research examines how and to what extent bioclimatic strategies in vernacular architecture of dwellings in a tropical monsoon climate can improve thermal comfort. A mixed-methods approach is used, including a qualitative analysis of three vernacular case-study examples and a quantitative simulation of the thermal performance of the three vernacular dwelling compared to a non-vernacular dwelling. Results show that bioclimatic strategies in vernacular architecture are highly dictated by the dominant characteristics of the climate, with a focus on solar shading, natural ventilation, and discharge of rainwater. The simulation results indicate that the non-vernacular building performs poorly in managing heat gain, with thermal comfort only reached in 56.7%, 56.3%, and 53.9% of the simulated instances. The vernacular building performs better than the non-building scenario in most cases, with the exception of Kerala. The study also found that the hourly and monthly plot of operative temperature and relative humidity of the three scenarios do not show any diurnal or seasonal differences from the effects concluded in the psychrometric charts. This is attributed to the tropical monsoon climate, which does not have distinct seasons or diurnal differences in temperature and can be considered quite constant. The research highlights the importance of considering the unique characteristics of a specific climate when

This research aims to encourage healthy behaviour within the built environment using a technique called nudging. Mostly used outside of the field of architecture, nudging aims to improve health by presenting options in such a way people a more likely to choose one option (a healthier alternative), without losing any freedom of choice.

To allow architects and urban designers to improve user health a framework was developed that proposes design elements. These elements aim to improve health by promoting healthy social, mental and physical behaviour. Examples are healthy food options, signage towards staircases instead of elevators, communal spaces, materiality and much more.

The graduation design explored how user health within architecture can be promoted using the proposed framework. The design project itself focuses not only on improving mental, social and physical health for the inhabitants but also on how a building can be valuable as a health centre in it's neighborhood. This is done whitin an existing context of a rehabilitation clinic in Amsterdam West.

Bridge the gap is a project that shows how with flexibility and energy neutrality existing and upcoming office vacancy can be successfully transformed. This all in cooperation with the Open Building ideology where the current building process is questioned and a spot early-on in the building process is reserved for the residents. With the use of this case study and the help of the created toolbox the whole of the Netherlands can reduce its CO² emissions but also solve a big part of the housing shortage with a place to stay for everyone within society.

The housing crisis has resulted in a shortage of one million homes in the Netherlands. The dilemma: simply ramping up housing production fails to solve the problem, as common methods of construction and project development repeatedly prove to be socially and environmentally unsustainable.

Transit Village explores a variety of approaches that rethink the status quo and integrates them into a sustainable neighborhood development at the “Rail Junction East Arnhem”. The centrally located site remains largely untouched by city planning and is characterized by its transitional use through diverse groups. Rather than relocating these groups to make space for development, a Community Land Trust gives community members and future residents agency to develop land according to shared values. The result is an urban framework, that builds new connections to the city fabric and nature areas, that creates recreational spaces for the city population, and whose walkability enables a circular neighborhood economy. Within the urban framework, residents can even make use of building plots before building operations are carried out.

Buildings are co-created with a circular building system that embraces change. A high grade of prefabrication and remountability reduces construction and demolition waste and speeds up production and assembly. Modularity facilitates a gradual transition from low to high density and allows density adjustments in the future. A catalog of flexible partition and facade components empowers residents to customize apartment size and function according to their current needs. In this way, buildings can adapt to changing resident requirements, and building lifespans are considerably extended.

Refurbishment and recycling of unused building components are handled by a locally run Material Hub that creates work opportunities in the district of Presikhaaf, which has a high unemployment rate. The resulting circular material ecosystem is fueled by a new financial model where residents subscribe to apartment configurations instead of renting a predefined apartment, thereby financing maintenance and circulation of materials in small monthly installments.

To evaluate which design choices would lead to building components with high performance in such a Product as a Service environment, a decision-support tool for designers was developed in the Thematic Research Paper. Therefore, Residual Value Forecasting models from the car leasing industry were analyzed, and design parameters were extracted that can make statements about the residual value of different interior partition wall types. The parameters were organized in a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis that is capable of ranking designs regarding their grade of durability and remountability. The tool seeks to help designers choose component designs that will create low maintenance costs, that are in use longer, and where the residual value of materials becomes accessible at the end of their useful life.

This paper will investigate how an existing office building can be transformed into a residential building in a demountable way. Firstly, an overview will be provided of existing demountability quantification methods. Secondly, a case study will be presented with connection details of an office building; De Knip in Amsterdam Sloterdijk, a building that is initially not designed to be demountable. The case study will be analyzed by two existing demountability quantification tools. Finally, the relation between demountability and the functional change from an office- to a residential building will be investigated on the basis of technical and architectural aspects (appendix 5a,b,c). In this paper the quantification of the demountable components of the building skin- & load bearing structure will be the focus points.