This project investigated into the only indigenous people in Europe, the Sami people in northern Scandinavia, explored the possibility to transfer their knowledge into a new Utopian thinking. Instead of a concrete urban planning or design, this project is designated to be a meta process of thinking pattern, for which inter-subjective artistic creation plays an important role. It involves a in-depth historical research into indigenous thinking and Utopian thinking, concluded by the mentality and image constructing skills and implemented into two Utopian scenarios in Kiruna (Sweden) and Delft (the Netherlands). ... Read more

Drawing back on my experience of living in Nairobi, this thesis explores the city’s dynamic system of public space and tries to improve its legibility by establishing a framework for its use and design. Exploring Nairobi as a city of arrival, my personal process in the development of this project was quite similar to that of coming to Nairobi as a migrant, continuously learning to understand, use and finally appropriate the city.
As a colonial foundation closed off to the native population, Nairobi, the urban epicentre for East Africa, has always been a city of constant coming and going rather than a point of identification for the Kenyan population. By consequence, Nairobi’s metropolitan system in general and its public space in particular is optimized to flexibly absorb the masses of migrants that make up its population. However, the lack of codification of public space, its dynamics and use side-lines minorities and arrivals and inhibits the ‘becoming’ of Nairobians, disenfranchising them with their own city.This research will therefore commence by trying to get an understanding of how Nairobi has developed into a city of comings and goings over the past 100 years since its foundation. Exploring the historical development of the city and its residents, I will argue that the notion of public realm in Nairobi is radically different from the ideals of public space discussed in traditional planning practice, mostly reflecting the European city.I will in a second step systematically analyse the spatial dimension of the public realm in Nairobi coming to the conclusion that in spite of its illegibility to arrivals, the city works by a set of clear spatial rules.
Based on this research, I will try to establish how digitalisation and the mobile economy will codify the dynamics of public space and life in Nairobi. Trying to mediate between the city’s duality between integration and identity, this project will then propose a framework of soft and hard public spaces based on existing structural and spatial typologies found along Nairobi’s Ngong Road. Using a set of site specific indicators, these elements will be synthesised in designs for key sections of Ngong Road and its vicinity. ... Read more

The title ‘Seditious Spaces’ is derived from one aspect of Britain’s colonial legacy in Malaysia (formerly Malaya): the Sedition Act 1948. While colonial rule may seem like it was a long time ago, Malaysia has only been independent for sixty-one years, after 446 years of colonial rule. The things that we take for granted today, such as democracy and all the rights it implies, are some of the more ironic legacies of colonialism that some societies, such as Malaysia, have had to figure out after centuries of subjugation. While not suggesting that post-colonial regimes should not be held accountable for their actions, it is ironic to see a BBC commentator grilling the leader of a Commonwealth state about repressive laws and regulations inherited from the colonial era. (Even the term ‘Commonwealth’ is itself ironic, implying shared wealth, in reality it commonly meant a colonised country was contributing to the wealth of the metropolitan centre)... ... Read more

Maker movement is emerging in Shenzhen which is seen as one of the catalysts in facilitating mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation. Because of its rich resource in Hardware, Shenzhen attracted lots of makers and startup teams to start their businesses. This is timing that Shenzhen heads to another phase of city development which is related to creative industry and innovation. However, used to be city of Shanzhai products, the city benefited a lot from Shanzhai ideology which is seen a successful migrant entrepreneurship model by some scholars. This significant social movement provided some strategies could be used as guidance for improving the maker movement later. Current maker movement in Shenzhen represents the national culture which mainly focus on manufacturing production instead of incubating innovation. Highly connected to production chain makes it lose the essence of doing for fun spirit. Under the pressure of employment base shift, migrants especially workers are gradually leaving the city center even the city. Thus inclusive urban innovation development will defiantly deserve discussion on how migrants could build up a new model of entrepreneurship based on maker movement to achieve self-empowerment. How could Urban village where 50% of migrants live spatially, economically and socially contribute to the incubate social economical innovation instead of only a collective property waiting to be redeveloped. This essay will discuss how a model learned from Shanzhai Movement is used a strategy to revise current maker movement towards inclusive urban redevelopment and empower migrant entrepreneurs.

During the last decade, Chinese Shan Zhai mobile phones have steadily and deliberately evolved from an informal economy to a formal one. We draw on institutional entrepreneurship to study this evolution, focusing in particular on how informal Chinese entrepreneurs pursued change and the transition to a formal economy. We emphasize three strategies—framing, aggregating, and bridging—Chinese entrepreneurs employed to mobilize support, garner resources, and increase their amount and level of legitimacy. We also discuss implications for research on informal economies and institutional entrepreneurship. This shanzhai model provided a basic for discussing about the possibility of implementing Maker Movement in Urban Village, which could be seen as an opportunity for new migrant economy.

A dramatic paradigm shift over the last few years from top=down planning, physical construction and industrial development towards a new wave of experimentalism that attempts to tackle contemporary urban complexities, develop holistic social growth and steer new social values not solely dependent on economic metrics. In urban village, the urgency of discussing informal development should go beyond the physical structure of the urban village and needs to include the understanding of an intangible network of communities across the entire city.
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This thesis project examined theories and practices of migration in Dutch urban space and observed that two tensions can be recognised. First, there is the tension between the dynamic nature of migration – migration as ongoing flow - and the rigid institutional and governmental practices offered as solutions. Second, a tension can be noticed between migration as a constant phenomenon in the current city, and the temporary, quick-fix housing options developed for migrants. The diverse flows of migrants to the Netherlands are primarily taken as temporary housing problems. This leads to exclusion and missed opportunities and results in a monoculture that can be considered negative for urban space. Consequently, if refugees, asylum-seekers and other migrants have to be really integrated in our cities and societies a more diverse, long-term, urban approach is needed. In other words, migration is a complex and pressing spatial urban challenge.

The former prison complex Bijlmerbajes and the surrounding WPM area have been taken as a case study to investigate practices and elaborate guidelines for an alternative development strategy that can build up a diverse, porous and resilient urban space. This strategy consists of orchestrated small-scale investments, grassroots initiatives and diverse programmes based on a governmental investment in public space as an organised and designed grid related to three scales.

The strategy leads to in an imaginary, future scenario for the WPM area, inspired by the 1970s ideal of the Bijlmerbajes. The project proposes to (re)open the former prison complex and to (re)create a Hotel City, where newcomers and temporary inhabitants can be received and prepare their integration into society. The ‘empty’ area next to the former prison complex is transformed into an experimental area with a lot of freedom where companies, institutions and individuals can rent, lease and develop space.
The two zones (prison and empty area) are connected by a grid structure of public space and can together function as free-zone for experiments with new social and economic policies and practices. In this way, a place is carved out where newcomers, temporary inhabitants and more permanent residents of Amsterdam can together and actively become part of urban space. The intervention of a grid public space connects temporary stay and use with more long-term developments and permanent structures.

On the one hand, this thesis can be seen as a visionary project, inspired by the fundamental ideal of the Bijlmerbajes aiming to foster integration and transition of migrants into city and society and vice versa. On the other hand, the proposal offers a series of realistic and pragmatic design ideas and suggestions based on existing European policies, that can be used as a quick-start for debate to reconsider migration in today’s political atmosphere.

The most important insight of this research and design project is the idea that temporariness and permanence need an organised public space to manage demographic fluctuations and change. The three-scaled grid provides a flexible structure. Even though people come and go and might only stay for a short time, they need to be accommodated in a complex and diverse public space, which as such contributes to the city as a whole and long term creation. Thus, temporariness presupposes stability, and the other way around.
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The Dutch west Caribbean company is a modest proposal. The company was created as an architectural response to an ongoing geopolitical and geoeconomic process (the development of the offshore economy). A process, whereby not only unusual goods such as artworks, battles of wine and stolen antiquities (that were in times past, part of the collective goods) were turned into commodities, but also basic human rights such as the right to asylum, freedom of speech, right to health and more are being turned into commodities. The Dutch west Caribbean company is focused on tax havens and the Freeport as a withdrawal facility, one that seeps through the cracks of national sovereignty and establishes its own logistics network.

The offshore world has been gaining enormous popularity since the 1980’s and despite increasingly defining the operations of the globalized economy and the spaces it generates, it is a spatial phenomenon that is mostly ignored by the architectural and urban discourse. Manifested by the forms of tax havens, freeports and special economic zones, the offshore world offers an exterritorial space where people, objects, and capital can operate beyond the burdens of national sovereignty, and remain in an unregulated limbo, in theory, forever. ... Read more