Play is essential for children’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development. However, many public playgrounds and urban environments are inaccessible to children with disabilities. This limits their opportunities for independent movement, social interaction, and outdoor play. Although inclusive playgrounds have received more attention recently, accessibility is often considered an isolated intervention rather than part of the broader urban environment.

This master’s thesis explores ways to redesign urban environments to support inclusive access, movement, and play for children with and without disabilities. Using the neighborhood of Buitenveldert as a case study, this research project employs a combination of spatial analysis, fieldwork, interviews, mapping, literature research, and research by design. Three personas representing different ages and disabilities were created to understand how children experience and navigate the neighborhood and its public spaces.

The design proposal develops an inclusive, neighborhood-scale framework based on the principles of connect, play, and rest. These strategies aim to create accessible routes, inclusive play environments, and moments of pause throughout the neighborhood. This project shows that inclusive play is not only defined by playgrounds, but also by the broader urban environment that enables children to move around, navigate, and participate independently. ... Read more

The Netherlands is currently facing a structural housing crisis that is often reduced to a purely quantitative challenge, overlooking complex spatial and social realities. At the same time, a widening socioeconomic gap has left a doubly disadvantaged group, consisting of low-income households, single elderly people, individuals with mild physical disabilities, and statusholders, struggling to secure affordable housing while lacking a robust social infrastructure to serve as a safety net.

This graduation project, “Blurring Boundaries: Designing for a social infrastructure,” seeks to address these interconnected qualitative and quantitative challenges through integrated architectural and urban design. Utilizing a “Research by Design” methodology, the project proposes a residential complex located in the Spaanse Polder, Rotterdam, acting as a transition zone between the city’s urban fabric and the productive landscape.

The core of the design is rooted in the creation of a social infrastructure that facilitates Asset-Based Community Development and builds both Bonding- and Bridging Social Capital among diverse residents. Architecturally, this is achieved through a carefully articulated hierarchy of spaces, ranging from private dwellings to shared residential groups and fully public areas. They are designed to systematically lower the threshold for casual social interaction. The project combines spatial, social, and organisational strategies to support long-term inclusion and adaptability. The building limits its overall scale to 47 dwellings to prevent anonymity and carefully balances supportive and non-supportive residents to ensure a functional community. Dwellings are clustered into residential groups of four to five units that share communal living rooms, kitchens, and outdoor spaces to foster daily mutual reliance.

To ensure long-term adaptability and ecological responsibility, the building employs a flexible,
demountable timber skeleton structure utilizing BauBuche laminated beams. This structural grid allows for adaptable floor plans of 30, 45, and 60 square meters to suit diverse and evolving household compositions. Finally, financial feasibility and sustained affordability are secured through a management cooperative model, where middle-income households cross-subsidize lower-income units. Ultimately, this research demonstrates that integrating cooperative organizational models, flexible sustainable construction, and deliberate social infrastructure can successfully empower disadvantaged groups and foster resilient, socially inclusive living environments. ... Read more

This graduation report investigates how transitional housing for individuals and families exiting crisis shelters can be architecturally and spatially integrated within the transformation of the Spaanse Polder in Rotterdam. The research addresses the gap between emergency accommodation and permanent housing, focusing on the one- to two-year transitional phase in which residents need safety, stability, autonomy, and gradual social reintegration.

Rather than approaching transitional housing as an isolated care facility, the project proposes a mixed collective housing model embedded within an emerging urban district. The design combines a balanced resident composition of one-third students, one-third residents aged 55+, and one-third people receiving a transitional housing place. Each residential floor is organised as one large shared apartment with approximately ten furnished private bedrooms. Residents share bathrooms, circulation spaces, outdoor areas, kitchens, and collective living rooms.

At the architectural scale, the project creates a gradient from private rooms to collective spaces and public neighbourhood functions. At the urban scale, a public library activates the two-story plinth and connects the building to its surroundings. In this way, the project positions transitional housing as part of ordinary urban life: safe, affordable, socially inclusive, and non-institutional.
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This graduation project explores how assisted living for
people with an intellectual disability can become more
socially inclusive as part of the future transformation of the
Spaanse Polder. Instead of seeing care housing as an isolated,
protected facility, the project looks at how architecture can
promote public familiarity and everyday participation.

The design combines care housing with public spaces such
as a café and library, allowing for low-threshold encounters
between residents and the neighbourhood. The different
needs of residents are reflected in two living environments:
the Sanctuary group, which is focused on a less stimulating
environment, and the Social Hub group, which is focused
on a more social environment.

The project shows that inclusive assisted living requires more
than just making things accessible; dignity, visibility and so
cial infrastructure are also important, as is the possibility for
residents to participate in everyday life at their own speed. ... Read more

This thesis explores the relationship between digital lifestyles, resident´s well-being, and the design of urban neighborhoods. In an increasingly “always-on” culture, daily life is often characterized by prolonged indoor time, reduced physical movement, and constant cognitive pressure. These conditions contribute not only to mental overload but also to a growing disconnection from the urban environment itself. The work argues that neighborhood-scale design can play a key role in counteracting these effects. By integrating stress-sensitive design principles, diverse green and blue spaces, and environments that encourage slow movement and everyday outdoor presence, urban space can actively support health, recovery, and overall well-being. Through theoretical research and design-based exploration, this thesis proposes the concept of a healthy neighborhood on Refshaleøen as a spatial framework that reconnects people with their surroundings, restores balance to daily routines, and enables moments of calm, strength, and resilience within the city. ... Read more

In an increasingly urbanised world, inner-city densification is a key strategy for achieving sustainable urban development. However, this process often conflicts with urban health goals, giving rise to the Health-Density paradox: the tension between Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 for sustainable cities and communities, and SDG 3 for good health and wellbeing. This thesis explores how these contradictory objectives can be reconciled through design. Rather than seeking a universal solution, it argues for a context-sensitive approach by reconceptualising both urban density and urban health. Using the neighbourhood of Overvecht Zuid in Utrecht as a case study, the research investigates how urban densification strategies can be tailored to specific contexts in a way that promotes, rather than compromises, urban health.

This study applies a conceptual framework in which urban density is prescriptively defined through Floor Space Index (FSI) and Ground Space Index (GSI), while urban health is unpacked into eight determinants. The eight determinants are People, Lifestyle, Community, Local Economy, Activities, Built Environment, Natural Environment, and Global Ecosystem. The maximisation method structures the design process, enabling transparent urban design decisions throughout the process. The results suggests that targeted increase and decrease in GSI across the site can strengthen different health determinants. Although empirical data on the precise relationship between density measures and health determinants remains very limited.

All in all, this thesis demonstrates that the maximisation method can effectively serve as a design framework to operationalise the Health-Density nexus, offering a path towards urban densification strategies that supports urban health. ... Read more

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