This research investigates the transitional landscape between the Port of Rotterdam and Voorne-Putten Island, with the objective of reconfiguring the relationship between natural systems and anthropogenic environments through the lens of landscape infrastructure. Situated at the forefront of the Rhine-Meuse Delta, this region has been substantially altered by land reclamation, industrial development, and urban expansion. These interventions have resulted in compounded spatial and ecological challenges, including freshwater scarcity, landscape fragmentation, land-use conflicts, and heightened vulnerability to climate change. The freshwater lake system—once a vital ecological and productive resource—is now increasingly compromised by saltwater intrusion, intensive agricultural practices, urban runoff, and extreme climatic events.

Informed by the theoretical framework of landscape-based urbanism, this study proposes the reorganization of hydrological-ecological networks, agroecological systems, and industrial-port functions through the implementation of multi-scalar landscape infrastructures. At the regional scale, the research identifies critical spatial tensions within the existing infrastructural landscape and proposes three interrelated strategies: a dynamic, climate-adaptive network; an ecologically inclusive network; and a network that fosters spatial identity and collective experience. The design methodology integrates spatial and temporal dimensions, positioning landscape infrastructure as a catalyst for the sustainable transformation of port-related territories and their surrounding productive landscapes.

By conceptualizing infrastructure as an operative structure, the project transcends conventional functionalist paradigms, embedding ecological, socio-cultural, and aesthetic dimensions into its design. The research demonstrates the potential of landscape to mediate between urban-industrial systems and vulnerable ecological zones, offering both a spatial prototype and a methodological contribution to the discourse on resilient urban development in deltaic territories. ... Read more

This master thesis rigorously explores the integration of a genetic algorithm-based workflow in the design and optimization of a passive fixed shading system utilizing ETFE cushion panels, with the objective of enhancing the thermal resilience of an existing building envelope. The case study focuses on a mid-rise office building located in the port of Athens, Greece. The central research question addressed is: "How can a genetic algorithm-based workflow be effectively employed in the multi-objective optimization of a shading system to improve the energy efficiency of an existing building envelope?"

To answer this question, the research investigates four interconnected domains: ETFE double skin structures, resilience quantification, multi-criteria decision-making approaches with genetic algorithms, and the analysis of the case study building facade system. The study centers on the preliminary design phase of the shading system, highlighting its potential as a retrofit solution for existing infrastructures challenged by rising temperatures.

The outcomes of this research include the development of a versatile workflow for evaluating the energy performance of existing buildings, facilitating interdisciplinary feedback within a design team, and applying multi-objective optimization to design problems. This work provides a comprehensive framework for integrating advanced computational methods in architectural design, thereby contributing to the improvement of building energy efficiency and thermal resilience. ... Read more

The Netherlands is facing a housing shortage and adequate housing provision is lacking. Citizens are eager to act on their own through bottom-up initiatives. However, bottom-up initiatives (such as cooperative housing) do not thrive within the current housing market and therefore significant development of cooperative housing in the Netherlands stays off. This research aims to support the development of cooperative housing in the Netherlands. This is being achieved through constructing an alternative reality of the housing market through composing a play script. The script is being informed by interviews, literature review and analysing case study projects. The interviews were conducted among the present stakeholders (the academic, the advocate, the architect, the bank, the cooperative, the developer, the dweller, the municipality). All together, the research hopes to transfer these thoughts and findings on cooperative housing to continue this collective process. ... Read more

The Hospital of Thinkable Boundaries: Methods for Noetic Design; addresses how the modern city and knowledge-context deals with mental illness and healing. Rather than studying medical spaces this research stems from personal evidence of embetterment through the noetic experience, where productive and vital experience is materialized by the ingestion of psychedelic/synaesthetic compounds. By studying and experiencing non-western/shamanic healing practices where these mind altering plant medicines are culturally integrated, the research on the noetic concerns topics of perception, cognition, body, collectivity and ecology. The design methods derived is what is called situated design, where the personal, material and the situated becomes the main directionality for design; a layered architectural method that concerns the following: (i) the dialogue between the material and the immaterial context, (ii) the notion of liminality, and how to respond to binary opposition through approaching the threshold as process, this also inquires approaching architecture as process, as an event ontology, materializing this sense of continuity, ritual, agency and intentionality (iii) the body as mediator, where the main method is about getting insight into the immediate context and relation through bodily experience. The design proposal The Hospital of Thinkable Boundaries is a system of healing interventions on the site in Skanstull, Stockholm, a liminal place in the city and an abandoned train track where modern vernacular interventions of awareness and healing relates to the material symbol of the industrial locomotive. The proposal includes seven interventions relating to the shamanic ritual of healing where the ceremony is the main spatial and perceptual experience, but it also includes the production of the psychedelic compounds, as well as functions that relates to the cleansing and preparation of the body before entering the ceremony. These additional spaces becomes a means of extending and rethinking the shamanic ritual in an urban modern context, intending to bridge between knowledge-contexts and cultures. ... Read more

The binding factor of the European Union's diverse nations is their practice of democracy. However, recently the EU has been dealing with the rising power of populism, increasing polarization and strong bubble forming; all leading to a weakening practice of local, national and union scale democracies. An important factor in this is the lacking tradition of Public Sphere in our society; a safe and comfortable space that invites and facilitates dialectic engagement between people of different believes. Bringing back this sphere into the spatial realm, accessible to people, will strengthen the local practice of democracy. An institution that has played an import role in the traditional practice of European Democracy is that of the Public Domain; the space that derives its function and value based on the peoples' needs. This locally strong embedded institution already facilitate the Expression Sphere and Protests Spheres hence it needs to evolve, adding to it the Public Sphere. Public Domains through the whole of Europe need to spatially evolve in a bottom-up and gentle manner. Above all; the manifestation of Public Sphere needs to become deeply rooted in the local society and context to connect to the local society and its people. This relation between local people and the Public Sphere is coloured by the qualitative application of architectural atmosphere as it has the capacity to colour and define the emotional relationship between institution and space. One of the evolved manifestations of the public domain is that of the Demo Domain of Nowa Huta; a former utopian socialist town, close to Krakow, Poland. ... Read more

The elevator diagram is a proposal concerned with the question of how to intervene in the contemporary city, with Luxembourg as an example. The proposal takes as a ground point the geography of the city, analyzing the dichotomy of the valley and the plateau as a particular characteristic, and intends to create an architectural interface capable of revealing that specificity that is often clouded by the congestion of the contemporary city.

As a tool to develop this awareness, the proposal uses the mechanisms of perception and patient detection where cognitive activity is required to build an architectural experience. Lastly, the project explores the possibilities of intervention in the underground space of the city and the programmatic alternatives to the current model of food production.
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