I'm focused less on what a building is, or becomes, and more on how we build things. And the critical element which I’m exploring in this ‘how' is love. Which is to say I’m also not proposing a specific methodology for how things should be built, but rather exploring more of a fluctuating and volatile field of relationships and bonds in which we can make things. Which is neither contractural nor formally collective, but a working through, by working on, and being attentive to, our never stable projects of friendship. Because that is the reality which we are always already inescapably a part, and we urgently need to keep thinking about how to work from within that, as uncertain and anxiety-giving as that is. *The project revolves around the construction of a Tower of Love, through a variety of friendships and without building plans.

Transpassing through urban voids is about the transformation of the residual voids in the urban block into a passage by creating a lively courtyard of public and semi public space.

The project is located in Armenia : the corner–exposed neighbourhood of Teusaquillo, the district of Bogota. Both the theoretical study and research carried out on site lead to the discovery of certain problems the area is dealing with. Due to security issues the citizens tend to find the easiest but not necessarily most fit solutions to provide themselves safety. The amount of entirely closed off, fortress–like private properties is growing, creating extremely inefficient public spaces. Those ‘in-between’ areas paradoxically create less safe environment putting the inhabitants in dangerous, ghetto-like environment the moment they leave their ‘safety bubble’. This introversion of the area has an immediate impact on the quality of social life causing mistrust, lack of sense of belonging, co–ownership and shared responsibility. Armenia is an example of this kind of introversion both on the scale of a singular building and the district: located in the corner, it is totally cut off from the rest of the city by high speed roads –Avenida Caracas and Avenida El Dorado. The process of city planning seems to have prioritised the fast and efficient car transportation leaving Armenia left out and neglected.
New building comprises of multiple boxes stacked on top of each other and enclosed within structural frame. The solid, closed elements are elevated above the ground freeing the space underneath, where pedestrian circulation takes place. The ground floor level is completely open, accessible and unrestricted, working both as an extension of the building and as part of urban public space merging those two entities. Although enclosed within regular grid the assembly of elements is quite dynamic, providing variety of spatial experiences. The tallest and most dense areas of the building are located above the busiest pedestrian routes responding formally to circulation taking place on horizontal plane. The building gradually dissolves from its highest point towards the grounds surrounding it, touching finally to the pavement surface with the usage of platforms, allowing to access the building from different sides directly from the urban public areas.
Circulation among the boxes placed on four floors is provided by open air suspended walkways and platforms, creating unpredictable and rich in choices landscape of possibilities, allowing users to program their own experience within the building.

A proposal to set up material conditions that make it possible for dwellers in Teusaquillo, Bogotá to collectively experience the public realms anew through the movement of their bodies during the festive and attentive dance of the carnival taking place along Parkway. Here, one can choose to fully engage with life beyond the self or to withdraw if they wish.

The project "White Elephant" investigates the relationship between individual and the public space by looking at the practices of the "Homo-Sacers" who are excluded from the public sphere, yet occupying the public space. By analyzing how they inhabit and appropriate the space for their needs, the research brings up important questions about how we experience the space and objects. The design continues the position of the research and deals with the center point of the public space of Bogota; Plaza de Bolivar. As it brings all the excluded spaces, practices and individuals to the center of the city, it starts a provocative debate on who owns the public space and who has right to control what is happening in the space. This provocative discussion leads to question the position of the architect, the architectural discourse and bias towards certain practices in architectural education.

In September 2018 I have traveled to Bogota - the capital of Colombia with a group of Methods & Analysis students and teachers. During the trip to Bogota I have repeatedly visited the campus of Universidad Nacional de Colombia – a national higher education institution. What stayed with me the most after these visits were not the sights of the most prominent university buildings and representative spaces but quite contrastingly – pictures of the forgotten lawns and the dilapidated fence which marks the boundary of the campus. Universidad Nacional has been isolated from the rest of the city by a fence raised in 1970’s and even more severely by busy traffic arteries. In spite of the separation, the campus plays an invaluable role in the lives of the inhabitants of Bogota. Not to mention the thousands of students, who daily cross the gates, innumerable families and groups of friends arrive at Universidad Nacional to rest and play there. The campus is a green resource for the city.Boundary is a social contract in which the sides agree that a contradiction cannot be resolved in any way other than separating the conflicted sides. If the separation is not questioned the status quo remains. An architect – a person whose work is to introduce change – is inclined to question the division. And what happens if we transform the environment in such way that the discourse, more intensive exchange between the sides and with each other realities become possible? The reality supplies one of the possible answers. In the present state of affairs many aspects of the functioning of the student life have been left to the informal market. In fact the informal markets flourish near the boundary. Vendors have discovered the boundary in a way that does not conform to the orthodox understanding of a boundary. The organic, unplanned, improvised erodes the stiff, regulated, formalized.What would it take to open the gates for the other realities though?

A river garden punctuated by 9 pavilions along the River Arzobispo, in Teusaquillo - Bogotá. The design proposal involves 3 levels of intervention :
- the urban/ecological scale for the re-naturalisation of the currently polluted river Arzobispo;
- landscape design for the articulation of the river bed and the zoning of the garden;
- architectural design for the creation of the pavilions and the infrastructure which allow the interaction with the re-naturalised landscape.
The architecture of the river garden allows to reconstruct, along with the physical archaeology of the place, through the exposure of raw and unapparent elements, also a human archaeology in the enclosed gardens of people's memory. The notion of "Sólido.Líquido.Lítico" derives exactly from the temporal dimension through which solid and liquid elements come into contact. The extended stratification of solid ground and the repeated shaping action of water produce the physical state of 'lithos', stone. Metaphorically, the lithic state can be considered as one of the physical states of this architecture, where the mass of the built encounters the ephemerality of time and use, giving birth to a state of reduction to its elemental state, a dissolvement to the essence and a permanence in the memory of the people who lived within it. Connection and memory triggers an effect of belonging. Through belonging, individual care enters into action and stimulates a collective behaviour of responsibility, which is likely to produce a change of attitude towards taking care of the river.
This process of addressing at once the natural environment as well as the human environment can produce durable positive effects. First, the re-naturalisation of the river Arzobispo can be a model to be applied to many other watercourses in the wider area of Bogotá. Secondly, it allows to envision a public space which resonates with the history and culture of the Bogotan society and that is likely to be embraced as a positive platform for public life, outside of the dynamics of power, fear and violence.

Probing into the parameters of a ‘wall’, this project seeks to empower the boundary wall in reactivating street life along the private-public street boundary, where front-yards were originally planned but now missing. In Teusaquillo of Bogota, people have regretfully took ‘walls’ as mere devices to define territories. Yet, there are latent potentials embedded in these boundary walls that could support more vibrant streetscape. Unlocked by investigating a ‘wall’ through urban ecology and etymology, findings are translated into an architectural intervention that evokes search for meaningfulness and integration between the school boundary walls and the neighbourhood. As an incremental result from a parallel process of research and design, a new series of ‘urban curtains’ challenges the monotonous definition of school boundary walls which are ubiquitous in Teusaquillo. Various actors would explore their own interpretation of this seam between school and street, by operating each layer of curtain. Built to activate urban life, the ‘urban curtain’ is also advocating a new type of ‘co-operative security’ that initiates public surveillance, in opposition to a passive security device imposed by the school authority. Within this seam, is an inconspicuous yet sensitive testing ground that embodies how the author, as an architect, could craft capacity for an equivocal built environment.

Informal actors possess a practical knowledge of the city, a sort of ‘secret know-how’, of how to move and operate in an environment that is unwelcoming to them. How could this knowledge be used as a tool or input of urban design? By considering the knowledge and ways of operating of the informal actors in a city, the following research has moved away from the ‘designing for’ informality, and more towards ‘designing through’ informality. Incorporating the elements that have been observed in the interaction between informal actors and city infrastructure into the finished, non-prescriptive and multi-functional city interventions. Non-prescriptive, here, means spaces that are sensitive to the movement and way of living of its users. By incorporating that knowledge, this proposal hopes to create spaces of increased number of opportunities and affordances, and as such, to give voice to the informal, marginalized actors in the city, that are often dismissed and excluded.

This research paper was conceived having been introduced to performance art, becoming absorbed by it and believing in it’s potential for the architectural discipline. I saw the work of performance artists from the 50’s 60’s and 70’s as engaging in conceptual work which challenged ideas of the art object and process in the nowness of their events. In comparison architecture has been quite lacking in such development avoiding opportunities for intimate engagement and ephemerality. Although architects such as Cedric Price have explored impermanence in architecture this has largely appeared in response to functional and infrastructural conditions. Through this paper I will explore strands of a more conceptual theme; investigating how performance can contribute to an architectural intervention. Studying performance, I have ventured into art, perception and feminist theory as well as other artistic disciplines. Extracts and interpretations of theory, artistic references along with personal experiences have also been used for the purposes of this research paper. The references and examples are presented by categorizing four primary aspects of performance which have been identified, body, object, audience and permanence. Through out each section assertions have been made asking for a response to be made to architectural workings. The final stage of the paper uses this research to give an indicative direction with instructions and prospectus of an architectural discipline influenced by these aspects of performance.

To provide the current population of Bospolder - Tussendijken with a future perspective that tackles socio-demographic issues, they create Phase Change Material (PCM) Modules of waste products Frying oil and Mg2+ in the cooperative factory: 'Frituurfabriek' in the M4H. They have the opportunity to participate in society, to become owner of a factory, to earn salary and to bring back home the modules to sustain their homes. The accessible production process for this circular passive cooling element for housing renovations allows great crafts and educational development for the people. It attracts a wider public than pure the workers, since there is also a community centre, additional workshops and an extension of the BoTu neighbourhood, located on top of the factory. As a showcase this is designed as a full PCM building; no insulation but PCM ensures consistent interior climate. All together, this social concept of emancipating the population is tohave social impact by low-tech innovation, it relinks the historic M4H and BoTu relation and offers an alternative concept for architecture an (conservative) use of finite material use as sand.

As architects, by constructing the conditions for people to collectively perform alternative ways of gathering, maybe we can agitate the impermanent boundaries around what is normal and accepted. My intervention along El Parkway is a paved ground that makes it possible for people to collectively experience the public realms anew through the movement of their bodies. This festive space has the capacity to hold big carnivals and huge moving crowds. The landscape around it is part of a complex and interlocking network in which things, be it water, plants, identities etc., are all along never-ending paths of movement, cutting their banks as they flow.

We live in frames — societal frames, cultural frames, politico-economic frames, ideological frames, and physical, therefore, architectural frames. Evidently, frames manifest as abstract concepts as easily as they assume material forms. With the endless ways in which it can manifest come also a multiplicity of agencies, ways in which the frame influences, instigates, or enables actions, and most importantly, ways in which frames can perform. It is here that the frame should not only be considered as an object (e.g. an architectural one) or a condition (e.g. a political one), but also as the subject of a specific action, of framing. In this, architecture is not merely the autonomous production of architectural objects, it is intrinsically interwoven with the frames that at once define it (the discipline) and us (people). Fundamental to this is the assumption that an architectural object, whether in its most widely recognised form as a building, performs by framing life. The way in which this performance is enacted, the way in which life is being framed, is thus informed, defined, or mediated by the frames around us, be it socio-cultural or politico-economic frames. And precisely because architecture is compliantly responsible for the construction and strengthening of certain frames, whether intentional or unintentional, it is also capable in providing a better understanding of these underlying multiplicities of frames. Architecture is the very frame through which the thesis explores the frame. In addition to discussing the frame in relation to architecture by exploring its performative aspects, the thesis attempts to critically assess its inherent issues: its affective potential on the extents of human behaviour; the creation of a duality between an inside and an outside of the frame (dichotomisation); the reflection of a (Western) culture of binary thinking; its connotations with well-defined limits, closed boundaries, hard borders, and therefore restrictiveness, exclusiveness, and prescriptiveness. The thesis will take the position in favour of an open approach to architecture, in which instabilities and ambiguities are allowed and encouraged, not for the sake of aesthetic consideration, but for its contingent productive outcome — new interpretations, understandings, and activities. Frankly, the goal of the thesis is not to create ‘methodologies’, ‘toolboxes’, or other inherent prescriptive means for architectural and urban design. In fact, the research, and the subsequent project in its entirety, ‘frames’ an introspective, sceptical position towards the wide range of predefined notions in architecture. In our time of increased societal polarisation and a persisting culture of antagonisation, architecture’s role should be to rethink its own binary thinking, to unframe some of its own established frames, to allow instabilities and ambiguities to emerge, to productively open up for contingencies, and to blur its perimeters, boundaries, and limiting frames — architecture liberated from its problematic fixed preconceptions, norms, and dogmas.

During the study visit to Bogotá, I discovered Rogelio Salmona’s architecture – as fascinating once I got to know it, as it had been obscure before the trip. There were many buildings of his that shared an intriguing quality of slowly revealing itself in space rather that disclosing everything they had to offer at once, but one in particular caught my attention - Edificio de Posgrados de Ciencias Humanas at the campus of Universidad Nacional. It looked pleasant yet rather inconspicuous at the entrance – a sculptured, multidimensional volume, characteristically Salmona-esque brick details, accentuated blue gutters, tall trees overshadowing the whole space. Once I entered, there was a big linear open space, from which I could catch a glimpse of the other ones to come – hidden behind open brickwork, there was a water pool in the atrium to the right; it seemed that there was another atrium to the left, some bits of it visible through the window, and also a long ramp leading upstairs. I started walking around and the spaces kept unfolding, constantly giving new points of view, changing the way I was moving in them (ramps, narrow corridors, circular atria). And then once I got to the rooftop, a whole new landscape opened up – the field of view became bigger, I could look around and see a whole variety of spaces, including the ones I have already been to, and the magnificent panorama of the city. There were people on every roof slope (many of which enjoying it as a slide), on every low wall, in the auditorium and under the pergolas – the view I could not have expected when entering the building.

How could public spaces tell us about the city? How does public space take part in our thoughts and affect behaviors? What makes the groundscape? What embodies its essence? And what will people perceive when lowering their gazes? I argue the process of making groundscape is not only constructing a horizontal layer of urban tissue but also closely intertwining with the flow of knowledge, for instance in the sense of meaning and identity. Through transforming an unbuilt plot into a public space where the groundscape becomes a collective stage to hold different social possibilities and arouse the public consciousness, the thought behind this project is to understand the generation of things as an episode of the whole. Considering the episode as a process that performs urban life and bring inhabitants together, whenever a spatial intervention happens, the groundscape could provide a soft background for both human and nonhuman activities which grows with the city.

Politics no longer works like the democratic ideal presumed it did. We need to find other ways of doing politics: not just representational and abstract, but situated and performative. Architecture can help us doing this. This project focuses on the situation of Reyeroord, IJsselmonde, Rotterdam. I propose a building process of three theatre typologies that provide a place for theatre as well as community gatherings. Using local building methods and materials, these three structures and their building process, aim to increase the response-ability of this place and its inhabitants. Through the building process, a "Skilled Practice involving Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness" (Ingold 2008) inhabitants learn new ways of relating to their environment, and by changing that environment, it becomes easier to respond to it. Building together can thus be a performative political practice, creating micro-kosmic instances of a reality as it could be, situated in the mud of a place, materials, bodies, thoughts and values. Even if this happens on a small scale, the experiences, agencies and skills emerging in this process will taken far beyond this immediate situation.

This project aims to explore ways of being considerate—as architects—with regards to the sites (and the bodies related to these sites) in which we intervene through our practice. Architecture is often meant as a mediator between bodies and their surroundings, however, actually realising this aspiration is rather difficult. In the research it is argued that simply defining what bodies are and what their needs are—and then creating designs based on these definitions—can be a problematic approach with regards to topics of empowerment and inclusivity in architecture. Namely because this approach can create norms on which bodies matter (and which do not) and on how bodies should behave in certain spaces. The approach leaves no space for body-surrounding-relations to grow and change and—finally—it ignores the interdepency that exists between bodies and their surroundings. Bodies are never not somewhere, and this somewhere is never not shaped by our bodies being there. With this project, I set the ambition to reject all knowledge about what bodies are and instead focus on what it is that bodies can do somewhere, sometime. I chose to engage with my own neighbourhood: Bospolder-Tussendijken, in the city of Rotterdam. More specifically, with an organisation called the Zelfregiehuis, which focusses on empowering the residents of the neighbourhood through the organisation of various activities. What bodies can do somewhere is influenced by a great variety of factors. For this project, I identified three factors—or considerations: (urban) regulations, tools and techniques and the construction time and place. These can be seen as knowledge fields within our profession, meaning that we—as architects—can care for, think about and incorporate these considerations when designing and intervening somewhere. The interventions that are proposed give the sites new ‘base layers’, which allow for more spontaneous uses, without compromising on aspects like safety and technical performance. Additionally, the interventions are made so that afterwards, fewer specialised tools and techniques are needed for use/adaptation. Finally, the construction processes are divided up into events, to turn the affecting of surroundings into something that is done together, and that is open to continuous change (just like our bodies).

This project describes the search for new methodologies of analysing an unknown context as well as questioning existing patterns of behaviour in the urban organization. After a fieldtrip to Bogotá, an interests in elements with connecting and separating values in the public sphere has been developed. Teusaquillo, the central area of intervention, has been shaped by educational and cultural institutions. It consists of quiet neighbourhood streets, hectic connecting roads and the green spine, the parkway. The dominance of traffic and movement within the city leaves little space to interact in the public sphere which led to the following question: How can collective space in Teusaquillo be altered from a space of movement to a space of inhabitation? Developing an architectural response to this question, inspirations from the comma in literature and the pause in music have grown from conceptual inspirations to design tools. Apart from this, investigations on intimacy in architecture and the boundaries between architecture, urban planning and landscape played a major role. The street itself became the location of this project and has been analysed in depth. The resulting intervention is envisioned through a new layout of the street based on ground interventions with landscaping elements as well as a modular façade structure that extends buildings and creates spaces of transition. This was developed through a systematic approach that has been tested and validated on other streets. Spaces of Permanence is carried out beyond the boundaries of architecture and questions modernist urban planning ideals. Through acts of slowing, blurring boundaries, introducing means of appropriation and material culture collective space is made accessible and spaces for meaningful interaction are created.

This graduation project explores the act of listening to “noise”, to develop a new critical attitude to understanding sounds of the contemporary city. The essential aim is to create ears which separate, abstract and re-organize the myriad of sounds of the environment, which often ends up in a cacophony. The sounds of the surroundings are captured and amplified; the harvested sounds conjure up a new soundscape. The structure has the ability to reveal the specific sounds of the city in different situations, given its ability to perform to site-specific conditions and to adapt, as well as perform according to the different sounds within the broader Soundscape of Bogotá.

In the face of growing densification pressures in Teusaquillo, Bogota, this project revolved around deriving a method to activate the interior space of a typical urban block for (a) the augmentation of public space and (b) the further proliferation of present and future activities. The resulting method synthesizes a variety of architectural operations under a conceptual notion of cleaning in order to thread the different components involved in the strategy. Consequently an attempt has been made at providing a rational design system to tackle the various complexities of the typical urban block in Teusaquillo with the clear aim of activating the interior space of it.