In a world full of consumerism, climate change, and capitalism, we face a crisis in how we relate to the world around us. Indigenous values offer a new way forward. This graduation project responds to the task laid out for practitioners to include Indigenous values in the practice. It does so by turning to the values of the Sámi people, the Indigenous people of the North and explores how this can inform architecture.
Because of my unfamiliarity with Sámi practices and beliefs at the start of this project, I looked for an alternative to the Eurocentric design frameworks, which often overlook alternative narratives or oversimplify representations. To include these different stories, there was a need to embrace the unfamiliar and employ this knowledge to design a world in which many worlds fit. This led me to the overarching question: How to make space for the Other? By engaging in interdisciplinary literature analysis and design-for-values frameworks, I gathered tools to make values tangible and translate them into architecture. Through this methodology, I intended to be very attuned to Sámi values and make inexplicit steps of the design process very explicit.
These ideas are grounded in the urban context of Tromsø, Norway—a city with limited visible Sámi representation outside of its touristic identity. Through four site-specific interventions, the Fish-Leather House, the Kitchen, the Weaving House, and the Summer Workshop and its Sheds, this project is a creative collection of practical places and relations, a set of activity spaces. They are not fixed but shaped by the times and contexts in which people engage with them, allowing for a space to find community, speak the language, transfer practical knowledge and reclaim Sámi spaces. Each space embodies core Sámi values: craftsmanship, community, care, and indigenuity.
This project is a continuous exploration of how to engage with the people you are designing for and a reflexive positioning on the role of the architect. The insights gained throughout this process not only informed my design outcomes but also encouraged a deeper understanding of how values shape practices. It emphasises that how we work is just as important as the outcome.

This master’s thesis was written as part of the graduation studio “Heritage & Architecture: Adapting 20th Century Heritage: Resourceful Housing” at Delft University of Technology. The cultural significance of buildings is increasingly recognized, with heritage structures offering glimpses into the past. Building preservation is evolving from simple protection to an integral part of sustainable urban growth, with adaptive reuse being a more effective approach.

In the Netherlands, schools are rapidly disappearing, primarily due to demolition driven by the new “Frisse Scholen” initiative by the RVO. Additionally, the declining number of students in both primary and secondary schools is causing further issues. According to Rijksoverheid (2023), merging two or more schools is a proposed solution to address the decrease in student numbers. This process leaves one or more school buildings vacant, presenting an opportunity for adaptive reuse projects.
Furthermore, the Netherlands is currently facing a housing shortage, with almost 400,000 dwellings needed. The current housing crisis demands more typologies and space for new homes. By combining the preservation of (post-war) school buildings with the need for housing, adaptive reuse strategies can transform heritage school buildings into residential spaces. Research on the intersection of these issues and the transformation of school buildings is still limited.

This thesis employs a mixed-method approach. A general comparative case study was conducted using the four approaches to building transformation by Hans Ibelings and Diederendirrix (2018). This framework was enhanced with a grid and spectrum system to classify and analyze the research cases. Further analysis utilized the "black/yellow/red" method to illustrate building adaptations. The value framework by Pereira Roders (2007) guided the identification of primary values. The research classified all cases as having either a repurpose or regenerate approach. Overviews of interventions were created, highlighting added and removed materials for one case.

Translating research into design, the Rendorpschool was studied to assess the impact on building fabric and environment of various typologies. Scenarios were evaluated based on three aspects: living quality, cultural value, and resourcefulness. The findings indicated that variants with better living quality had slightly less added volume, thus requiring fewer resources.

This thesis holds relevance for other designers. The school building intervention overviews provide a concise, visual summary of all interventions and can serve as a starting point for evaluating the comparative qualities of various interventions. It ensures that data for the three key features—interior building fabric, exterior building fabric, and function—is available. This research contributes not only to the societal impact of strategies to reuse vacant buildings but also offers professionals a tool for assessing interventions in school transformations into housing. The conclusions from the design phase can help apply results to other school transformations, understanding the impact of decisions on building volume and environmental impact, and aiding in the selection of appropriate typologies for their projects.

Monsoon folio situates itself within a vast planetary system as I follow the interactions of the char dwellers with the monsoonal cycles in the Assamese borderlands of India. While in modern writings of cities, the domains of the social and natural have been understood in isolation, cities as human-made and separate from nature, I try to foreground urban developments as a more-than-human assemblage. Far from an urban backdrop, monsoon takes root and ruptures socio-spatial arrangements.

Namibia has been home to some of the world’s oldest ethnic groups since the dawn of civilization. One of these cultures is the Himba, often referred to as ‘the last true pastoral nomads’ of Africa. They are known for inhabiting the water scarce desert region of Kunene in Namibia for centuries. Now, various factors, including climate change and the absence of governmental support, are forcing the Himba population to decide which aspects of ‘modern’ culture to incorporate into their everyday lives.

After decades of declining rainfall and rising temperatures, drought and omakururukiro yokuti (over-utilized land and vegetation) are the reality. The Himba is therefore forced to rely on their nomadic origins for survival, and to travel southwards, ‘following the water’, to Windhoek which is the capital of Namibia. On arrival, they are confronted with inequality apparent in the African urban built environment and take part in the rapid urbanization of Windhoek. They settle in townships, in shacks, located on the outskirts of the city, where access to water and sanitation is limited. Due to landscape topology, climate change and other factors, the high possibility of flooding poses a new risk. Indeed a life-threatening choice: surviving drought in Kunene or surviving floods in Windhoek.

Boden – a German term that can refer to soil and land, ground and floor, territory and habitat. Overhearing Boden in Berlin’s streets these days will, however, oftentimes result in tuning into a conversation about land ownership, the soaring cost of living and the city in transition. People, it seems, are worried. They are increasingly affected by effects of market processes, speculation, a marginalising financial approach* towards the city. They are not alone: Also Berlin's diverse ecological actors are threatened by such profit-oriented practices. Therefore, the term “Boden“ in Berlin has been conceptualised for discussing processes originating in and revolving around land tenure. In turn, its tangible qualities and positive notions are covered up, buried by a merely technical and somewhat pessimistic discussion. The inherent ambivalence is leaving Berlin’s Boden, stripping it off its multiple social and ecological facets: Boden has become a bare quantifiable medium.
This overheard finding is the spark of this thesis. While unsuccessfully searching for a singular translation of Boden, I started to discover more and more dimensions, relations, associations with the term. Thus, the question arose: Can we solve the multi-dimensional issues Boden faces in Berlin by exploring its stratified character, its layers of meaning? How can Boden in the city become tangible, meaningful, a resource - Bodenschatz - again? Can Boden itself become an ally for the city’s human and non-human inhabitants to solve the Bodenfrage issues?
The resulting proposal, Bodenschatz, is a multi-layered exploration of dimensions comprised in Berlin’s Boden. This is approached by science fiction: taking into account the status quo of science and research, it is reimagining urban futures as a fictional prototype of cyber-socio-ecological cohabitation on Berlin’s Boden. Its main vector is not analysis but action towards re-taking socio-ecological urban agency in Berlin. Architecture becomes a vehicle to spatialise this, the missing link to fill in the gaps between science and fiction. Without romanticism or fatalism, the project is a comment on the current state of affairs - and how the city of the future could be imagined by the means of today.

The 1960s Amsterdam neighbourhood of Buitenveldert, with its radical open and green layout, has an appearance quite dissimilar to that of the city’s centre. Visiting my grandparents there since I was a little child, has always sparked my interest and made me curious about its history and evolution after almost 65 years of existence. Therefore, this thesis’ research question is as follows: ‘How did the general perception of Buitenveldert change over time?’. Methods such as literature studies, newspapers studies and visual analysis (photographs) research the area’s architectural historical context and the shift of perception. Combining this with my family’s knowledge and experiences obtained via interviews, provides this thesis with an intergenerational approach. What becomes clear from the research, is that Buitenveldert hasn’t dramatically changed over time. Its design by modernist architect and urban planner Cornelis van Eesteren proves to provide a spacious and livable environment for its inhabitants. Other than smaller redevelopments and a more diverse population, the area stays mostly true to its original ideology and perception. What happens to Buitenveldert in the next 65 years, remains to be seen.

This thesis investigates both the status of gentrification on the Mathenesserweg in Rotterdam, as well as the lived experience of gentrification within the street’s inhabitants. Over the last few years, the street has been changing, both in the demographic makeup of the street and in the structuring of the houses. To get an idea about how the inhabitants of the Mathenesserweg feel about these changes, and to know more about the effects and facets of gentrification, this thesis incorporates literature on the processes of gentrification, municipal plans for the city of Rotterdam and a survey done with the inhabitants. Generally, gentrification displaces lower-class inhabitants by making the area more suitable for middle-class residents. Through time the government's involvement in the gentrification processes has increased. Gentrification is recognisable in three phases, with the first one being the increase of young and artistic people moving into the area. The second wave shows an increase in middle-class inhabitants moving in, changing the businesses and environment to fit their needs. In the third wave, exclusive establishments open up to facilitate the new upper-class inhabitants. The Rotterdam municipality uses gentrification as a tool to decrease the number of lower-class inhabitants in its neighbourhoods and to heighten its competitive position internationally. Mathenesserweg and the surrounding neighbourhoods are part of municipal-led gentrification areas in Rotterdam. Following the results from the survey, the inhabitants of the Mathenesserweg seem to be quite positive about the changes happening on their street. The inhabitants consider the large number of student inhabitants that have been moving into their street as the biggest disturbance. Not in line with the statistics of the Mathenesserweg, Turkish and Moroccan migrants, who make up a large percentage of the inhabitants and are the most vulnerable to gentrification effects and policies, did not participate in the survey. A reason for this might be because of the chosen method of study or method of gathering participants. In further studies, other means of gathering the experiences of inhabitants can be applied. When looking at the research it can be said that the Mathenesserweg is showing signs that it is moving from the first phase of gentrification into the second phase.

their places of living. This media became popular and applied as real-time responses during the massive protests in 2019 in Hong Kong. One of the anonymous streams of mapping produced more than 500 maps over the year and attracted thousands of views per each map. To understand the significance of real-time maps, this thesis investigated the history of social cartography in Hong Kong and explained the emergence of the maps from the perspective of the protestors. It also includes a critical reflection on the maps using the contents from an interview and alternative examples of communication among the protestors. At the end of the thesis, the archiving format of the maps was discussed in a way to reestablish their role after the protests. Foreign precedents were brought into analysis to find a better way to construct the archive of tragedies and present it to future generations who may want to defend their rights in a similar manner.

This thesis explores the impact of the Whole Earth Catalog on architecture practices in communes during the late 1960s and early 1970s, focusing on the relationship between people and the built environment. By analyzing the Catalog's contents, the real self-build works in communities, and the critiques it received, this study reveals the Catalog's rich heritage for sustainable architecture today, including passive design and the promotion of new energies. In addition, the anthropological approach of the Catalog, which emphasized the connection between architecture and people's daily life, is highlighted as a valuable perspective for architecture today. This study argues that the Catalog's approach provides a framework for seeing architecture as an ongoing process shaped by interactions with other realms, challenging the traditional relationship between designers, users, and architecture. By involving amateur builders and urging an insider perspective, the Catalog's approach could bridge the gap between designers and users and enable a more comprehensive architecture practice.

This work aims to infuse theoretical knowledge of queer space to further the understanding of the history of luxury retail stores. It analyses certain spaces of a metropolis inconspicuously connected to the history of fashion, by taking three Parisian boutiques of influential designers in the belle époque as examples of the origin of maison de haute couture culture: maisons Worth, Paquin and Poiret. In a pioneering attempt, while combining queer historical literature with a ficto-critical approach, this work strives to clarify the ties that bind queerness and boutique history together. Interactions between architecture and queerness are sought out in books and articles on queer space, such as the eponymous literature of Betsky (1997), and linked to fashion historical literature, i.a. Joseph (2014), Steele (1988, 2013) and Vänskä (2014). The findings of this thesis exemplify the knowledge gap that seems to be present in the connection between interior space, fashion and queerness. Moreover, the theoretical framework of what queer space entails, is employed to show the evocative qualities of the discussed boutiques, using definitions of closet and mirror space, fabricated fantasies and collections as queer modernist interiors. Despite the fluid definition of queerness complicating the forming of rigid answers, this research contends that there is a multiplicity of indications connecting queerness to the boutiques of the belle époque.

The main research question of this paper is “How do concepts about urban planning stemming from the Swedish Million Program relate to children’s safety in Tensta nowadays?” This question will be answered through literature research on the history and critiques of the Swedish Million Program, site visits and interviews with residents in Tensta, and literature research on children’s safety in urban planning. In Tensta several playgrounds and pedestrian crossings are observed and compared to contemporary thoughts on children’s safety in urban planning. The main considerations about children’s safety in urban planning in the Swedish Million Program in Tensta include the courtyard system and the separation of traffic. The courtyard system aligns with the contemporary design principle of having “eyes and hands on the street”. The traffic separation does not line up with the contemporary thought that it is beneficial for children to safely engage in risky play.

The city of Batavia was the administrative capital of the V.O.C (United East India Company). Initially, the city’s construction followed the Dutch style, the Dutch administration going to enormous lengths and putting colossal efforts to segregate the ethnic groups present in the city and t exert their dominance. Over time, the city’s built environment started to adapt to the surroundings and its inhabitants and created a so-called hybrid style. This thesis hypothesizes that the architectural style in the 19th century represents a merging between the Indonesian vernacular architecture and Dutch style.

In order to research this hypothesis, the thesis compares the situation of the archipelago prior to the European arrival with the initial situation of the city in the 16th century and with the19th century situation from an architectural point of view. As such, the thesis research is based on a series of images of the built environment of the city, obtained from the colonial archives and literature sources describing the city archipelago and its buildings from the European and Indonesian points of view.

Lastly, the thesis analyzes a series of case studies from the 19th century, such as the Grand Java Hotel, the ‘Japan’ house, and the ‘woodhuis’ houses, which shows the merges between the two cultures not only from an architectural point of view but also a social-economic perspective.

The landhuis is nowadays the most recognizable aspect of the Curaçaoan plantation landscape. The reality of the history of the plantation now hides behind these colourful villas. This thesis focuses on placing the architecture of the plantation in the spatial and historical framework from which they originated.
The main question answered in this thesis is: What was the typology of the Curaçaoan plantation, and how is it now represented in the island's cultural heritage? This question is answered by literary and archival research, picturing the history and trajectory of the plantations on Curaçao. The research is textually and visually, through maps and diagrams, translated into the thesis.
The architecture of the landhuizen is the most maintained and preserved aspect of the plantation landscape, while most other structures such as the settlements of the enslaved, the corrals and mangasinas have mostly vanished or fallen to ruins. These are precisely the functions referring to the original history and function of the plantation. When looking at the plantation's redevelopment, this does not seem accidental. Most of the landhuizen have left their history in the past and chosen an entirely new function.

Beyond Colonialism: Macau’s Struggle for Postcolonial Architectural Identity will look back at the emergence of architectural images that shaped Macau's current Special Administrative Region (SAR), particularly during the transition from colonial to postcolonial times. The 442-year colonial state and the post-colonial period, which began in 1998, have influenced architectural ideologies over time due to an evolution of self-identity, place identity, people, and material culture. Beginning with the earliest colonial settlements and progressing to current international applications. Throughout history, urban and architectural decisions have always been associated with economic prosperity and foreign culture when it comes to shaping a city’s identity.

In Macau, postcolonial architecture has been adopted, demonstrating the influence of colonial ideology and modern capitalist globalization to the present day. Gambling and tourism have transformed the city from a traditional enterprise with a self-sufficient culture to Asia’s global entertainment and financial hub. Aside from colonial architectural ideologies, the thesis seeks to demonstrate how other Western ideologies and preferences, such as Chinese and American, can influence local architectural and community identities. Furthermore, it attempts to interpret the social and cultural implications of architectural transformations. This will be investigated through a variety of sources, including books, research papers, and articles that examine both local and Western perspectives on Macau’s urban development history.

Certain economic developments added a new dimension to a city that had grown due to significant changes in local architecture. As a result, architectural meanings are evolving in unexpected ways, resulting in disparate ideas of monumental architecture that contrast with the cultural context. This thesis will also investigate the extent to which foreign perceptions of casino architecture reflect historic identities and social values brought into the modern era.

In recent years, activists and researchers have been raising their voices to confront the amnesia of ninety years of colonial memory that affects Italian society. One of the main objects of study, and now an active subject promoting debate, is the Colonial Museum of Rome, a fascist institution for colonial propaganda, which eclipsed into oblivion in 1971, only to be unearthed in 2017.
Reading this museum as a text, this research explores: what narratives concerning colonial memory have been constructed by displaying and storing objects? The question is approached by connecting the wider narratives identified by historians with the displays of the Colonial Museum, through images and historical accounts.
Four phases were identified in the history of the museum. During the first phase (1914-1937), the museum was born and functioned as an unscientific instrument at the service of the colonial mission, exhibiting a broad variety of objects for a universal propaganda. With the advent of the war and the independence of the colonies, the museum remained trapped in an inertia memoriae. It kept perpetuating the same narratives, only stripped of its fascist symbols (1937-1971). In 1971 the doors of the museum closed and remained locked for almost half a century, hindering social awareness and historical research on Italian colonialism (1971-2017). Since 2017, as the deposits were opened again, an ongoing process is re-evaluating and re-exhibiting the collection to problematise its history.
By investigating the narratives shaped by the museum from its origins until the present, this investigation brings attention to the power of storing and displaying in constructing the histories we want to tell today, at the intersection of memory and identity with issues of race, civil rights, freedom of movement and international relations.

The fragmented urban landscape of the metropolitan area of Athen and Piraeus with its local specificities is strongly related to demographic flows. The arrival of more than 220.000 refugees in the metropolitan area of Athens and Piraeus after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the population exchange that followed the Treaty of Lausanne posed the great challenge of refugee rehabilitation since the population of the area almost doubled in a period of limited financial resources due to the preceding two Balkan Wars and the First World War. This led to a rapid expansion of the city, signified the beginning of the history of social housing in modern Greece, and contributed to the acceleration of the procedures for planning legislation in Athens.
46 refugee settlements resulted from the imperative need to house this population. Housing units ranging from unauthorized self-housing and almost slums to prefabricated wooden parapets, to single-family buildings, to organized apartment buildings influenced by the modernist movement, emerged. Nowadays, these morphological and typological forms have survived and constitute a considerable part of the city.
To synthetically provide information, show relations between the different forms of housing rehabilitation, and answer the question of how the refugee housing rehabilitation in Athens and Piraeus was realized and how it evolved historically this paper will analyze the urban footprint of these settlements by examining plans, maps, photographs, and through textual secondary sources, the criteria and policies that shaped them, giving an overview of the extent and influence of these areas to the contemporary image of the city. The focus will be sharpened on the architectural scale, by examining housing typologies, including self-housing and social housing, through archival material and photography. The housing typologies, which emerged will be divided into categories and analyzed based on one representative example for each of them. These will be illustrated with consideration of the actors and policies involved in the creation of the housing, the location and organization of the settlements, within which the typologies are to be found, their architectural characteristics, their transformation throughout history, and the situation encountered today.
The thesis will shed light on the origins, historic development, and transformation of these settlements throughout their 100-year long history and argue on the arising topics, mainly the involvement of the state in contrast to the lezzes faire, the influence of the settlements on the city’s urban structure, the architectural characteristics of the housing, the subsequent decline of the social housing sector in the city and the notion of sociability and neighborhood ties. The qualities and faults of these spaces and the policies that created them will be assessed. The thesis will argue for the significance of these parts of the urban fabric for the collective historic memory and their preservation and adaptation, as well as an interpretation of their qualities as a countermodel to prevailing housing developments.

This thesis investigates the squatting community Freetown of Christiania as a case of self-built housing that is both affordable and circular. Affordability of housing has been an existing problem in Europe, followed by a relatively recently identified need for transition from a linear to a circular economy. Squatting communities have emerged in Europe as a response to the lack of availability of affordable housing, while the conditions of their existence have also provided a stimulating environment for the circular reuse of materials.

To gain further insights into building processes and the origins of the used materials, I have visited Christiania, where I made observations and conducted interviews with its inhabitants. Additionally, the conducted archival and literature research provides the historical context of Freetown, demonstrating its development over time. The thesis begins with the analysis of changes in building policies and processes that have occurred in the last 50 years of Christiania’s existence, followed by an investigation of material availability in Copenhagen and general building considerations based on the experience of Christiania.

Although in recent years the use of secondhand materials in Christiania has reduced, its development has shown how self-built housing can be more affordable and at the same time also circular. It also presents the current challenges of reusing materials in buildings as well as the existing possibilities for solving them.

Harbin and Changchun, although geographically adjacent to Manchuria, developed different architectural styles and urban forms due to completely different planning and colonization strategies during the colonization process from 1895 to 1945. The study contains an analysis summarizing the historical and cultural context and land treaties. Based on the redrawing of the master plan and historical photographic evidence, several possibilities that could lead to the differences are analyzed to illustrate how the two cities were shaped.

This paper aims to explore the ways in which the designs of Sergio Rodrigues can be comprehended within two European design movements: the Danish Modern, between 1940’s and the 1960’s, and the Italian Radical Design movement between 1966 and 1972. The research aims to answer the following question: ‘How do the chairs designed by Sérgio Rodrigues in the 1950’s and 1960’s express Brasilidade [Brazilianness] while contributing to international furniture design?’. The goal is to provide new insights on the the possible ways in which Rodrigues’ production was influenced by Danish Modern design, through a case study on the Chifruda armchair (1962), and how it subsequently impacted Italian Radical Design, through a case study on the Mole/Sheriff/Moleca armchair (1957/61/63). The rhetorics of design defined by Buchanan, which comprises technological reasoning, emotion, and character, is used as a framework to establish such comparisons. For each of the three aspects mentioned, one chair from the Danish Modern and the Radical Design are compared with the Chifruda and the Mole armchair, respectively. Apart from the case studies, the research methods include a document survey placed within the field of art and furniture design. The results show that Sergio Rodrigues did not only play a central role in shaping the national identity, also referred to as Brasilidade, in furniture design, but also contributed to the establishment of international furniture design trends.

Within architecture, design is not always inclusive. This research looks at how a safe space can be developed in Rotterdam, in the neighborhood Coolhaven. To achieve this, a feminist community-based design approach is applied. In this method one designs together with the community, looking at the residents of the neighborhood and what their needs and wishes are. The research shows that the people who have mixed feelings about the neighborhood indicate that this is, because they feel unsafe in the neighborhood. By tackling the unsafe areas and getting the residents more involved with each other and the neighborhood, presumably more people will start to feel good about the neighborhood. This can be done by improving visibility, atmosphere, and the liveliness of the street. In addition, physical, safety, and social indices will improve when residents become more involved with each other and the neighborhood. This could be achieved by placing more community facilities. A modern community center can, therefore, be the translation for the development towards a safe space in Coolhaven.