In this research, I strived to explore solutions to the question:
How to maintain or enhance a sense of community in post-war neighborhoods undergoing regeneration processes
The outcome of this research provides a guideline for architectural planning, in creating an environment that reflects the importance of a sense of community in the built environment. The outcome can be viewed as a manual for analyzing and retrofitting neighborhoods, focusing on the shared spaces and maintaining or enhancing a sense of community. By focusing on a specific site, and examining its characteristics, I formed a guideline on how to treat specific issues with architectural interventions. I examined theories by various researchers (such as Gehl, Whyte, David Sim, and Bernard Tschumi) as well as architectural drawings of master plans that focus on shared spaces as an integral part of the vision.

The growing concern about a mental health crisis and a looming threat of the loneliness epidemic worldwide that was further escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic forced people into isolation and created a new form of ‘work from home’ lifestyle. Nonetheless, the loneliness epidemic can be traced back to the 19th-century design principles that designed our current cities with reference to industrial tools such as the car instead of the ‘human scale’. Many of these modernist ideals had negative implications on the mental health of the residents in post-war districts. Moreover, with the need to build more homes, the current housing market values densification strategies that are primarily for profit and not for the needs of the people, which continues the pattern of ‘living together apart’. Consequently, there is an urgency to tackle isolation among the inhabitants of Groot-IJsselmonde, specifically Thamerdijk and post-war neighbourhoods being primarily targeted for future densification schemes. Interventions are therefore required to encourage degrees of social encounter. A research-based approach explored within five different lenses, sociological, historical, urban, building and dwelling scale is translated into a design project that could potentially allow for more positive densification for both current and future residents.

Urban densification is essential to keep the green spaces surrounding Dutch cities, especially in the Randstad. The current Dutch housing stock, of which a significant portion was built during the 1960's and 1970's, lacks a flexible layer in which people in urgent need of housing can find (temporary) affordable housing. Short-stay housing, which encompasses people living somewhere for a day, up to a couple of years, could provide this flexible layer. Target groups for short-stay housing fare well by social interaction, stimulating integration into Dutch society and opening up new possibilities in their life. This social interaction can be partially provided by introducing the sharing economy into an existing neighborhood, providing sustainable options regarding ownership or mobility.

The project 'Between a Day and a Lifetime' therefore proposes an urban densification strategy in which a short-stay housing concept, based on principles of co-housing and the sharing economy, creates densification in a way that it enriches the lives of the current ánd future inhabitants.

As housing shortage has to do with the insufficient supply of inexpensive houses and limited capacity for offering qualitative demands of the actual users, there is a discrepancy between what the current housing market provides and how new target groups want to live.
Especially, the existing post-war houses show how they were originally designed solely for the nuclear family, where the currently predominant target groups such as single-person households, young professional, the elderly, and student do not fit in.
One of the reasons is that the meaning of home during the twentieth century, when the post-war residential projects were realized, does not match with the one in the current housing situation.
For example, the meaning of home in the twentieth century was grounded to a physical unit of a ‘house’ where ‘home’ implied the (nuclear) family life apart from social, public, and working life. Consequently, the meaning of the home around the nuclear housing has been strictly divided by the dichotomous logic between home and work and set as the default setting around majority of domestic architecture.
Now, as the meaning of home has become less grounded in the physical space of a ‘house,’ ‘home’ can be defined by emotions, memories, and rituals. Therefore, the meaning of home today is more flexible and ambiguous, from where home can be a place to be productive as an integrated workspace. For instance, the kitchen and the balcony become improvised offices while simultaneously serving the traditional domestic functions. These new forms of productive home-life imply an indistinguishability between work and home.
Despite the radical changes over the last fifty years in living society, the traditional form of the home is still the most prevalent idea. Because the architecture in the housing market still reproduces the existing parameters of which the home is traditionally conceptualized, the architecture perpetuates the tradition in its spatial organization. Therefore, it is significant not only domestically but also societally to examine how this shift of the meaning of home has influenced the residential environment as it lost its initial characteristic as it had.

Intergenerational co-housing could provide a solution to enable the ever-growing group of older people who want to live independently for as long as possible. The government also encourages older people to age in place to relieve pressure on healthcare services. For this form of housing to succeed, there must be good social cohesion between generations, where both older and younger people benefit from mutual exchanges of knowledge and support, ensuring they both feel cared for and valued. Building mutual relationships is essential to making these communities a success.

The aim of this research is to identify architectural elements and best practices that promote social encounters among different age groups, thereby enhancing social inclusion. This interaction between built environments and social dynamics originates from Foucault's concept of architectural influence on behavior and Bourdieu's idea of habitus.
To increase the willingness to move among different age groups, their housing preferences have been researched and categorized into the eight domains established by the World Health Organization to create an age-friendly neighborhood.

An analysis of case studies from intergenerational communities in Germany, Belgium, and Norway revealed insights into privacy levels, collective spaces, safety perceptions, and circulation patterns. The findings highlight the importance of creating in-between spaces that serve as informal meeting points, promoting social inclusion and community cohesion. By integrating functional design elements and fostering intergenerational interactions, the research aims to identify best practices for developing inclusive and supportive housing environments that cater to the needs of all age groups.

Chapter 1: National Productive Park Delfland
This chapter summarizes casestudies from “Redesigning the Deltas.” It discusses the various factors that led to the design framework of the Urban Dyke.
Chapter 2: Research
The second chapter provides the foundational research that informs the design. It critically examines contemporary approaches to real esta-te concerning environmental impact. This chapter investigates whether architecture can play a significant role in minimizing the environmental footprint of the construction industry. The findings offer practical gui-delines for architects, designers, and developers to achieve real estate projects with minimal environmental impact.
Chapter 3: Research by Design
The third chapter involves design-based research that led to the concept of the Urban Dyke. It explains how casestudies and existing architectural theories can lead to an integrated design. This design aims to enhance the valuation of post-war neighborhoods like Tanthof in Delft while also serving as a flood defense. Each chapter is interconnected, providing a comprehensive understan-ding of how the Urban Dyke concept can address both environmental sustainability and urban development challenges.

The post-war reconstruction period in the Netherlands marked a significant time for the housing industry, where demand and necessity resulted in ground-breaking innovations, and construction technologies advanced by leaps and bounds. The high-rise typology proved essential in tackling the housing shortage owing to the fast and affordable system-construction using abundantly available concrete. While these innovations enabled the creation of a large number of houses, solving the housing crisis temporarily, it was soon observed that the living conditions of these neighbourhoods were far from ideal. The creation of standardised units and floor plans afforded developers the ease of vertically stacking units to create a large number of dwellings. However the principal flaw in this planning strategy was the lack of consideration of how households function in reality.

As the government of the Netherlands plans to build up to a million new homes by 2030, it becomes pertinent to ask the question, will they be suitable homes? The large-scale construction and demolition that is required to achieve this promise will require an immensely large stock of raw material and natural resources. So how can these homes be made different from the ones that already exist? How will they mitigate the problems that plague the widespread post-war neighbourhoods of the country?

This project examines the post war neighbourhood of Westwijk, Vlaardingen and the spatial as well as social problems that it faced soon after its construction. To be able to densify such neighbourhoods in the future, a vastly different strategy needs to be adopted, to make not only the new homes as a safe, happy and inclusive environment for all its residents, but also to alleviate the condition of the surrounding neighbourhood and its residents.

Drawing inspiration from traditional housing topologies, and some greatly successful projects by architects such as Aldo Van Eyck, Herman Hertzberger and Charles Correa, transience emerges as a key aspect in their success. It exists not only in an absolute form such as ‘in-between’ spaces, but also as a concept of growth. When houses are designed to accommodate change, to encourage communal interaction, while allowing the freedom to draw one’s own boundaries, it leads to the creation of a 'society'. The formation of such a society is what is crucial to the upkeep of a neighbourhood, camaraderie amongst neighbours and the possibility of multiple generations being able to benefit from their family home.