Contemporary cities increasingly organize themselves into separate worlds, each social group remaining within its own familiar bubble, confined by homophilic tendencies that filter out difference and prevent encounter. In Valparaíso, Chile, this condition is made spatially explicit through topography. The vertical distance between El Plan, the flat lower city, and the Cerros, the steep hillside neighbourhoods, is not simply a matter of elevation but of accumulated disadvantage. Altitude correlates directly with reduced access to education, mobility, and civic resources. The city's hills are territories of unequal citizenship.
Yet Valparaíso cannot be understood through fragmentation alone. Alongside structural inequalities, the city contains extraordinary cultures of informal adaptation, collective production, and cultural resilience. It already contains collective capacity. What it lacks are shared spatial frameworks through which that capacity can intersect more equitably across social difference.
This thesis investigates to what extent architecture can act as a mediator between formal institutions and informal practices to produce a co-productive commons in Valparaíso's vertically stratified fabric.
The architectural proposal is located on Cerro Cordillera, a strategic urban hinge between Plaza Sotomayor and Plaza Echaurren, adjacent to Ascensor Cordillera and the metropolitan train terminal. The intervention transforms an existing bottleneck into a vertically distributed civic framework of six interconnected terraces, housing arts and crafts workshops, educational spaces, a community kitchen, productive cultivation terraces, and an informal market.
Seven spatial principles guide the design: palimpsest, porosity, port orientation, proximity,, prolonged movement, material rootedness, and framework over object. Materials including existing stone and brick, locally sourced radiata pine, textile roofing, and adobillo vernacular earthen infill ground the intervention in regional building traditions and collective construction processes.
Through co-production, the conditions for commons emerge. Shared infrastructures of making, food, and education create the metabolisms through which homophilic bubbles can be opened, weak ties can form, and collective entanglement becomes spatially possible.
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The Living City combines social housing with an algae research institute and additional public functions in one complex, and is made completely circular and self-sufficient with the use of algae. The project reacts on the migrated and evolved Garden Suburbs within the site of the assignment and the expanding high-rise district Zuidplein. It aims to strengthen the character of the existing and what is left from the Garden City design, while at the same time reacting to the future needs of the city.
The green urban design concept of the Garden City will be translated into a green architectural design by using algae. Algae is a relatively underdeveloped type of greenery within the field of architecture, but has an immense potential to become the pioneer in climate proof and circular building. Through experimental exploring, the algae lab of the Living City tests new sustainable initiatives and products, applicable for architectural design. Eventually, the gained research and knowledge will be applied into the ecological restoration of Rotterdam. The public algae park that runs through the building gives an insight in the algae-innovations that are made. It explains the visitors of the park how the building system works and brings them in connection with algae-architecture in the built environment.
While densifying the area, the project reuses the existing context and maintains the historical character of the Garden Suburbs and the complementing architecture of the Amsterdamse School. The vacant school complex on the site will become part of the project and is brought back to life with 55 housing units that fit inside the old classrooms. To create a flow in the existing rental housing market, the project provides three types of housing: two classes of social housing and one class of medium rent housing. The housing is a one of a kind project where all the benefits of the algae-architecture are experienced. Living in a green and healthy building with a strong social structure is the main goal of the residential part of the project. The shared green spaces aim to bring the residents in touch with each other resulting in a social network inside the complex. The ambition to provide big green spaces for all residents inside city centres is one of the main features of the housing complex.
The translation into an architectural design is made with a large algae-canopy structure with algae-panels on top, which is the main element of the climate design and forms the eyecatcher. The panels are closed bioreactors that produce algae biomass. The biomass is transported to the technical rooms of the research institute, where the heat is taken out. The biomass is further transported and burned to produce energy. The open algae raceway ponds are used to clean air and water. In total, the algae ponds can reduce 6 ton/year of CO2 in the air. The complete building aims to be self-sufficient and independent from other sources. This futuristic system is an innovative way in sustainable architecture that aims for a futureproof circular city. ... Read more

The thesis aims to investigate the different flows of logistics particularly goods and people through urban mobility strategies and utilizing inland waterways to improve the efficiency of logistic lifecycles. The project also speculates about the ever-changing logistic infrastructures such as a terminal, warehouse and distribution center. The transformation of the typology allows it to be redefined considering the aims of Rotterdam Municipality. With the immense potential of the inland waterways that Rotterdam has, the connection between North and South will be improved and the introvert identity of port areas will be accessible for the public while changing the urban identity of the area. ... Read more

The migration of ideas implies the movement of ideas, thoughts, philosophy, knowledge, or other non-physical conditions from one space and/
or time to another, where they are activated and manifested. As a result, this may purposefully or accidentally effect other existing conditions in a different setting, thereby giving birth to new ideas or phenomena. The thesis aims to investigate in particular the migration of mycoremediation, the method of environment decontamination through the biological properties of mycelium. The project speculates on the emergence of the mycelium industry as an autonomous mode of production within a circular economy for the Maashaven commons in the year of 2050, while investigating the utilisation of mycoremediation technology as
an apparatus for confrontation against current sitespecific environmental issues such as water and air pollution, and urban waste flows. Furthermore, the research aims to explore how digitisation and mechanisation in urban agriculture and waste management are manifested within Rotterdam, while seeking to unveil human’s relationships with water in an urban context. ... Read more

The Maashaven Bridge unlocks the potential of Maashaven - utilizing the factor of an iconic intervention, the harbor transformation process is kick-started and a previously industrial waterfront redevelops the urban identity of the harbor and Rotterdam South to a lively urban environment. The floating structure addresses the needs of the adjacent districts by providing public functions along the crossing of the harbor as well as tackles the issues caused by the ever changing climate and the rising sea level. ... Read more

The presented project concerns the design concept and process, as well as the preceding methodologies for the development of an architectural intervention in the Rotterdam South. Main notion of the project is the idea of permanent transition in the architectural and urbanistic realms. The concept of migration is used as the starting point for the project. Migration can be understood as a dynamic process from the perspective of the moving object, or idea; however, it may also be a study of change of factors in the given area. In order to enclose this definition within urban context, it can be said that the migration is the multiplication of the architectural idea with variable alterations in time and space. It is necessary to analyze permeability in the search of the solution for the temporality balance. The city of Rotterdam is used as the case study for this research, because it allows for a valid description and evaluation of all processes ongoing in the migration mechanism.
With the resultant findings, based on literature studies and site analysis, a design brief is defined, with a subsequent concept. The intervention resolves the urban borders, allowing for the connection of the surrounding neighborhoods. Hence, a high degree of permeability is achieved with the use of introductory and reoccurring temporalities. ... Read more

The climate is changing and to deal with this climate change, adaptations have to be made to the way we live. This research focusses on a particular site in Rotterdam Zuid in terms of climate change. The research question is the following: How can both- social and hard infrastructure contribute to the creation of a climate proof, resilient community? This question will be answered in the form of a building. Starting with a research about the climate change that has to be dealt with in Rotterdam Zuid. As a group we defined a new vision for the area and we all designed one building that contributes to that vision. In this case solutions for climate change contribute to the vision. This research about the location determined the location of the intervention. After this a research is done into the subject social infrastructure, changing the habits of people from an individual mindset to a communal mindset. This can save lives during a disaster. This research determined the target groups and the function. The elderly and the children and the function should be a combination between an aid organization and a communal center. The Red Cross Social Center. Then a reference research started, different types of communal centers and red cross headquarters have been analysed to come up with a program bar for the project. Along with the program bar, different ambitions have been established in terms of function, site and design. Having all these guidelines set the massing could start. After trial and error the final massing has been established. A rectangular shaped building with a courtyard in the middle. The courtyard can be reached through a large (water)square which creates passages underneath the building. The large green roof is connected to the ground floor to make it accessible to the public to reach the second floor. The ground floor, second floor, third floor, and fourth floor contain public functions for people to establish this social connection, this social infrastructure. On the first floor the headquarters of the Dutch Red Cross is placed. This location and the design of the building will increase their visibility. The aim of the design was to create a building that deals with climate change in terms of hard- and social infrastructure. The hard infrastructure is achieved by various interventions. The social infrastructure is a more difficult topic, the building offers the ideal circumstances for people to create this social infrastructure themselves and create this resilient community. ... Read more

From carriages to cars, from steam engine trains to HS trains, the modes of mobility has been changing through the time. Mobility as become more and more relevant to people’s daily life and also plays an important role in city planning. With the rapid development of mobility modes, more facilities are also needed to fulfill a complete transportation network. Nowadays, more and more infrastructures such as highways, railways, are built to connect different districts. These infrastructures are usually built elevated from the ground and create a large amount of leftover spaces underneath. Various problems such as lowquality space, divisions in urban planning, and safety issues will arise because of these leftover spaces. Therefore, my research question becomes: How to activate the leftover spaces caused by infrastructures in public places? From the researches, to activate leftover space, four aspects need to be paid extra attention to. The primary aspect is accessibility, which is the capability and opportunity of leftover spaces to be reached and entered. The second aspect is diversity, the fact of many different types of atmosphere, activities, people can be included into the leftover space. This aspect could attract users to these spaces while allowing them to stay. Thirdly, inclusivity, which is the capability of including people from all groups, especially vulnerable groups such as children, elderly people, and disabled people, and treat them all fairly and equally. By improving inclusivity, it could allow leftover space to be used by people from different groups. The final aspect is reconnection, which is to link the leftover spaces together and reconnect with the city and become part of the urban planning. In this study, Tarwewijk district in Rotterdam South was selected as the site for designing a new mobility hub to solve the leftover space problem at site, while targeting to increase the four elements of leftover space from the research outcome.By comparing the research and design, this thesis can provide a new perspective for rethinking the characteristics of leftover space and provide could further a new methodology for activating the leftover spaces in other districts as well. ... Read more

Zuidplein 2030 joins the new development in Rotterdam Zuid. New cultural services are being added in Hart van Zuid. Zuidplein 2030 will bring new creative residents to recreate a new city center by adding new homes and hotel to maximize local, regional. social and cultural impact. It will kick start future development in Zuidplein and play as the core vocal. ... Read more