As urban space becomes increasingly tight and compressed, cemeteries have slowly withdrawn from our daily lives from the highly open public spaces in history. If cemeteries remain as they are, they may become completely inaccessible in the future, leaving people without a common memorial space. In order to cope with this possible future and status quo, I combined new technologies and urban renewal to come up with a conceptual vision of a new prototype for the cemetery.

This thesis explores the relationship between architecture and water in the Netherlands, focusing on how architecture can enhance the sublime experience of water in the Biesbosch. The concluding words of H. Marsman’s poem “Memory of Holland” – "And in all the regions, the voice of the water is dreaded and heard" – express the Dutch mentality towards water as a continuous battle. While the construction of the Deltaworks and the transformation of wetlands into polders may seem to show the victory of this battle, it raises the question: should we continue to adopt such a violent attitude towards water? Throughout history, water has been depicted in literature, art, and folklore not only as a destructive force but also as a source of life, imagination, and renewal. This duality aligns with the experience of the Sublime: a powerful tension Between awe and fear, urging reflection on our place within the greater natural world, while offering the possibility of spiritual engagement beyond institutionalized religion. This research addresses how architecture can create a meaningful relationship with water by examining Dutch attitudes towards water, exploring artworks and literature, and analysing the physical experience of water through fieldwork, mapping, and the study of natural processes. It also investigates water-related architectural case studies to understand how built environments can reflect and enhance the sublime qualities of water. The findings suggest that sublime architecture should embrace natural processes, acknowledging the frightening and discomforting aspects they may evoke. To deeply engage visitors, architecture should both harmonize with and challenge existing perceptions of self and place. By doing so, the dual nature of water can shift from a source of fear to one of sublime reflection.

In the pragmatic arena of architecture, where the foundation is laid in the tangible and the functional, a profound shift is underway—a shift that beckons architects to transcend the boundaries of practicality and engage with the ephemeral, speculative, and culturally resonant facets of their craft. In an era dominated by instant gratification, fleeting trends, and the constant flux of digital imagery, architecture finds itself at a crossroads. Traditionally anchored in permanence, architects have been steadfast in their commitment to designing tangible spaces that cater to human needs. Yet, in their pursuit of practicality, the discipline has inadvertently distanced itself from the nuanced realms of imagination, experimentation, and cultural discourse. As architects ardently focus on the physicality of their creations, the discipline witnesses a gradual erosion of its once vibrant and visionary dimensions. The pace of architectural innovation seems to lag behind the relentless evolution of societal values, aesthetic preferences, and cultural dynamics. The dichotomy between the practical and the theoretical persists, with the former often overshadowing the latter in an environment increasingly defined by rigidity and tradition. Amidst this tension, the need for a revival of discussions surrounding the aesthetic and cultural relevance of architecture becomes apparent. The relentless march of pop culture, marked by the ephemeral nature of Instagram reels and Tik- Tok trends, demands a recalibration of architectural discourse. It is imperative to acknowledge that innovation in architecture transcends the merely practical; it must also navigate the realms of beauty, culture, and the human experience within the built environment. In this context, ArchPOP emerges as a beacon—a platform that seeks to bridge the chasm between the pragmatic and the speculative, the tangible and the ephemeral. By drawing inspiration from the world of fashion, where the interplay of theory and practice is seamlessly woven into the fabric of creativity, ArchPOP aims to reintroduce the cultural relevance of architecture in an age dominated by disposable images and ever-shifting trends. As we navigate through the following exploration, we delve into the symbiotic relationship between architecture and fashion, examining how the latter navigates the cultural zeitgeist with unparalleled agility and applying the same treatment to the architecture realm. It is an invitation to architects to reevaluate their roles, to recognise that the discipline is not a solitary endeavour but a collective activity. ArchPOP reclaims the tradition of radical architecture magazines that embodied the spirit of the 60s and 70s. This issue aims to re-contextualise the progressive and bold positions animating these publications, delving into contemporary topics and engaging with the digital ages. The physicality and the immediateness of the magazine format allows architecture to be part of the everyday, easing the dissemination of information and drawing inspiration form to the variety of fashion editorials that to this day play an essential role in the industry, experimenting with aesthetic and fostering collaborations. Join us in this manifesto for change—a call to architects to embrace the dynamic interplay between the practical and the theoretical, the tangible and the speculative. In the relentless stream of information and the transient currents of pop culture, ArchPOP seeks to rekindle the flame of innovation in architecture, fostering a holistic approach that resonates with the ever-evolving desires of a society living in the whirlwind of the digital age.

1.7 Earths currently, 3 in the next decade.
That is the worth of resources that we are using yearly, and the estimated doubling of it,
by the end of the following decade. Two-thirds out of all those extracted resources end up as waste.
It’s kind of ironic and paradoxical that we go to all that trouble to obtain these valuable resources and materials, design them, form them to become something, just to become nothing, worthless, waste, by a simple toss into the garbage bin.
But one can be wasteful only in abundance - this abundance, however, breeds a carelessness towards consumption, accumulation, and ultimately, destruction.
This is an exploratory (design) thesis that delves into how to reevaluate waste conceptualization, and what would be needed for a collective to do so. How to create a space where the Ethos of Care and Repair becomes (one of) the method(s) of this reconceptualization, and rethinking relationship with waste.

For several decades, architectural theorists have argued that there is a loss of meaning in architecture, caused by an over-emphasis on scientific thinking and the devaluing of poetic practices. Some theorists have presented ways to return meaning to architecture: Juhani Pallasmaa has called for empathic imagination and Alberto Perez-Gomez for attuned architecture. However, neither has offered methods for how to achieve those ends.

This research aims to bridge theory and practice by developing methods for attuning to a location and its inhabitants. It focuses on ways to become attuned to a place and people, in order to imagine spaces empathically and tailor architecture to the affective qualities of a place.

To best develop methods that identify these qualities, this research looks at familiar places, that is, places we assume to know well and therefore may overlook distinctive features. Accordingly, I have focussed on Brigflatts, my childhood neighbourhood in rural England.

I develop methods for attuning in two ways. First, by drawing upon three fields and their related methods: cognitive science and sensory mapping; anthropology and collaborative design ethnography; and architecture and reflections on atmospheres. Second, by creating physical objects that translate qualities and experiences of place into an interactive form.

My exploration of Brigflatts culminates in four large-format paintings that express what I became attuned to. I deconstruct and analyse these paintings to indicate how the on-site activities provided insights into the affective qualities of the location.

While this research looked at a familiar, rural location, I show how the methods elaborated at Brigflatts can be adapted to less familiar and urban environments. I discuss their broader application through a set of guiding principles for methods of attunement.

The research findings feed into a design project set at Brigflatts. “The Quaker Project at Brigflatts” seeks to re-activate a historically and spiritually significant site while balancing the needs of the faith group, the national park planning authority, and the locals living nearby.

Through this project, I explore how architecture can be attuned to a place and a people – how social behaviours, material bodies, and affective qualities can inform the design of new spaces and new experiences of the site and the protected landscape. I ground this project in a real-life scenario, responding to the Quaker testimonies and the National Park’s development requirements. In doing so, I envision a future of development in the Yorkshire Dales that protects cultural heritage, progresses building techniques, and offers a contemporary architecture attuned to its locality.

This project in Rotterdam, centered on the Meent, represents a new beginning for revitalizing the city with a Symbiocene mindset through architectural design. As urban populations grow, biodiversity declines and technology advances exponentially, it's imperative to address how we interact with our environment. The Manifesto advocates for eight key relationships to usher in the Symbiocene era: celebrate, master, connect, shelter, concert, make, recede, and familiarize.

The architectural design project aims to foster these relationships within a residential setting by renovating existing post-war buildings into a new kind of living space. The goal is to create an environment where residents can experience and cultivate these relationships through their daily lives.

The design includes various apartment typologies, including cohousing, within the renovated post-war block. The building is transformed into a canopy-like structure by removing internal boundaries and rewilding the courtyard, encouraging interaction with the living environment. Public access from the Meent side invites passersby to engage with the space, while the open grid scaffolding at the back provides a dynamic area where humans, non-humans, and more-than-humans can coexist and learn from one another.

Transitioning to the eight relationships detailed in the Manifesto:

Celebrate – Recognize and appreciate the gifts of our environment, inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer's concept of the Earth's gift economy. It calls for a celebration of Gaia, fostering gratitude and reverence for nature.
Master – Continuous learning and the pursuit of knowledge are crucial for understanding our environment. This relationship emphasizes an ongoing quest for understanding and mastery of our world.
Connect – Engage with the environment through sensory experiences and active participation to foster respect and responsibility towards nature.
Shelter – Balance protection and security with interaction with the natural world, avoiding isolation from the environment.
Concert – Collaborate with other species for a balanced ecosystem, understanding and respecting various forms of interaction within our ecosystem.
Make – Focus on the ethical implications of human creativity and design, fostering positive behavior and aligning with symbiotic dreams.
Recede – Step back and allow nature to reclaim spaces, appreciating and protecting neglected and abandoned areas for biodiversity and ecological balance.
Familiarize – Understand emerging technologies as new "species" with distinct behaviors and impacts, thoughtfully integrating technology to enhance our connection with the natural world.

As summarized, the project aims to create a living environment that not only houses people but also nurtures these eight relationships, fostering a deeper connection between residents and their surroundings. By reimagining the urban landscape in this way, we can move towards a more sustainable and harmonious future.

Moving Atmospheres explores the intricate relationship between spatial design and human experience, advocating for an embodied approach to architectural practice. Through a phenomenological lens and experimental approach using personal experiences, the study investigates the nexus of emotion, movement, and spatial perception. Utilizing intuitive movement, exemplified by the practice of improvisational dance, the research aims to uncover insights into the creation of atmospheres within architectural settings. Methodologically, the study employs a structured approach termed the Movement Lab, involving five steps how one could observe, document, translate, interpret, analyse and reflect on the relation between spatial atmospheres and its effect on the body through emotion and behaviour, in this case studied through a zoom onto intuitive movement. In this process, architectural research is conducted using filmmaking, photography and (poetic) writing, conveying the relation between body and space.

Analysis of data collected from diverse environments reveals how spatial qualities shape emotional responses and bodily movements. The findings of this study underscore the complex interplay between spatial atmospheres, emotion, and movement characteristics, highlighting the potential of intuitive movement as a tool for architects to understand and manipulate architectural atmospheres, facilitating the design of immersive and emotionally resonant spaces. By emphasizing the importance of bodily experience in architectural design, the study advocates for a paradigm shift towards more responsive built environments.

Overall, this research contributes valuable insights into the embodied dimensions of architectural practice, encouraging architects to engage with the human body as a central tool for creating meaningful spatial experiences.

Hoptille in the South-East of Amsterdam was created to foster a sense of human-scale architecture amongst the high-rise manifestation that was the Bijlmermeer project. Fourty years later this neighborhood still exists as a modest yet dense neighborhood flanked by an increasingly densifying Amsterdam.
This neighborhood is one of the more fragile areas of the city socially and economically. With new housing planned all around the region will there still be a place for everyone in the city?
To effect change the point of attention is the area where systems meet. An intermediate space between the individual and the industry or larger urban network. This project explores how cohousing can benefit Hoptille, socially, economically, and ecologically. And proposes a strategy to do this.

This thesis is concerned with the search and exploration of Juxtaposed Interiors - a form of Public Interior, however localized in the exterior. It seeks and finds in it the theme of Care, which it further develops in both Theory and Design. It represents a protest against the expanding influence of the private in the public sphere - but, paradoxically, precisely through the introduction of elements and agencies belonging to the sphere of the private (Interior) - Juxtaposed Interiors.

Engagement with the city in provincial Russia is currently lacking a framework of care for the historical urban fabric. Listed buildings decay with no revitalisation plans made by the municipality or the citizenry. On the other hand, theatre in modern-day Russia is an acknowledged political entity – a pocket of free(er) thinking and civil engagement. This research studies the historical trends in theatre to define the spatial qualities of audience engagement. The goal is to harness such qualities and apply them to a dilapidated building in Rostov-on-Don, reconnecting it with the city and the citizens, and hopefully begin a revival process all over the historic city centre.

The Bajau Laut or Sama Dilaut people are an ethnic group of sea nomads who used to roam between the Filipino, Malaysian, and Indonesian maritime zones. The Bajau are known to be amazing freedivers, being able to dive in depths of up to 30 meters and having the ability to hold their breath for more than 5 minutes, making them a group of people that biologically adapted into an amphibious lifestyle.

In 1877, most present-day Sabah, Malaysia, was surrendered to the newly constituted British North Borneo Chartered Company. The reforms constituted by the Company gradually forced them to self-build the first pile house setlements in 1955 and abandon nomadism for a sedentary lifestyle along the shore in 1979. Due to their nomadic lifestyle in the past, none of the three SE Asian countries have recognized the community as indigenous people, making them stateless and hence depriving them of the right to civil registry, subsidized healthcare and education with the exception of Alternative Learning centers that are run by NGOs and volunteering teachers. However, what is the position of Alternative Learning Centers regarding indigenous educa􀆟on and the importance of school as an establishment?

Alternative learning centers offer basic literacy classes such as Malay language and Mathematics. Still, volunteering, uncertified teachers have the freedom to improvise by introducing classes related to their major or the children’s wishes. However, only a small part of the curriculum has anything to do with the community’s traditional ecological knowledge or identity.

How do we define literacy nowadays? What deems a person illiterate? This project aims to redefine schooling by introducing a culturally responsive curriculum in a community waterscape that acts as a mediator between the community's built environment and the surrounding marine landscape, prioritizing knowledge stemming from both environments.

The sustainability of the building industry and the increasing demand for new buildings creates an opportunity where materiality and adaptability of the build environment needs to be reassessed in order to answer to the following issues. The research paper delves into the subject of adaptability in the built environment and checks the influence of materiality on such topics. The research scope touches on spatial adaptability in addition to the high-rise oriented case study where mass-timber buildings with potential of altering its function in the future. The result of the research will provide a quantifiable score of spatial adaptability for each case study that will indicate the degree of spatial adaptability.

Saint Petersburg is a second-largest city in Russia, having a population over 6 million people. Located in the northern part of the country on the edge of the Baltic Sea it was founded by tsar Peter the Great in 1703 as a future capital for Russian Empire. Tsar was wishing the new capital to become the most beautiful city in Europe and the city was built with an intention to open up Russia towards western traditions and western European world. Today the first core of the city – its` historic part built through 18-19th centuries – is world known as Northern Venice and conquers the hearts of millions visitors. But through 300 years of its’ history the city turned from being one of the most progressive cities in Russia into the city with the prejudice to anything new. Today the city is trying to keep its’ “historical appearance”, to preserve how it looked like when it was envisioned by one of the greatest tsars in Russian History, but this intension is leading the historic city centre of Saint Petersburg to its` devastation.

In this Research and Design project I was reflecting on how to approach the consvervativist thinking about applying contemporary architecture in historically important areas of the city. In my research I explored what are the origins of conservatism among the citizens of Saint Petersburg and the reasons behind historic centre of Saint Petersburg being captured in its` past. I aimed to understand how to re-interpret the gaps in the historic fabric of the city and how to use them to bridge the gaps in-between progressive intentions of the architects and conservative view of the citizens of Saint Petersburg. As a result of this research I was designing a small scale architecture university on the edge of the historic city centre, which main aim is to be as open to the public of Saint Petersburg as possible to invite people for inspiring observations, thoughtful discussions and unexpected discoveries about the approaches that are used in the realm of contemporary architecture today...

The project strives to imagine a district of commoning in Warsaw, where the common praxis is to be fueled by capturing the desires of visiting subjects. It is followed by an investigation of the relations of space and desire, finally culminating in the design of a cinema, which is to be a centrepiece of the desiring district.

Challenging a predominant focus in academia on studying societal and spatial challenges primarily in the Global South or non-Western environments, this project investigates the urban fabric and hidden socio-political mechanisms of precarity in the city of Munich, Germany. Houselessness appears as the manifestation of a global housing crisis and is with its implications exclusive to the neoliberal city. Within the context of housing distribution and provision, the neoliberal housing market's association of performance with ownership implies a necessary exclusion based on financial capacity. Accepting that the scope of this reality lies outside of the discipline of architecture, shifted the focus on an analysis of the city through the lens of the guiding motif of urban displacement. The aim was to find out how the city defines spaces for public use, what mechanisms are at work in terms of inclusion and exclusion of certain groups of people, and which spaces are essential - but missing.

The visibly precarious conditions of public living imply that public space is not a place meant for all functions. Theories on human motivation suggest that basic human needs are not linked to spaces per se but to an action rendered possible by the protective frame of the built environment. Thus, the project explores the potential outcomes of reimagining domestic patterns outside the confines of conventional residential units. Through ethnographic fieldwork paired with experiments on filmmaking as an architectural method of analysis, a human-centred design evolved that aims at transforming "street dwelling" into a tangible and viable alternative to conventional urban living.

The design endeavours to embed a system for both residential and commercial use within the existing urban reality of Munich. Building on current and necessary transformation processes of the urban fabric, the redevelopment of an exemplary streetscape of the Baaderstraße in Munich houses different acts and scales of appropriation in a design frame that works at various temporalities. The first and most permanent intervention docks on the cities' above- and below-ground infrastructure. On top of it, units are placed that in their design adapt in shape, size, and functions to the local ground-floor conditions. Different lifetimes are included in the temporalities of the site by designing the initial unit for a possible future disassembly. The modularity of the prefabricated wooden construction and sanitary units also allow for a possible scalability to other streets.

Highlighting a necessary shift of the role of the architect to a mediator between the user and the corporate client, the project presents a compromise at the intersection of realism and utopia, offering new dimensions to concepts of urban, communal, and private notions of comfort and emphasizing the importance of inclusive spaces and innovative approaches to address the housing crisis in Western cities.

The Rhythmic escape propose a retreat in Rotterdam based on environmental features in nature that is of significance in rituals held in nature by people living with nature.

Today, the building construction sector in the European Union consumes 40% of primary materials, and the same percentage of primary energy, making it an exhaustive industry responsible for resource depletion. At the same time the Netherlands is in need of more affordable housing. Drastic change is needed to produce the necessary housing in a way that is consistent with planetary limits. Timber as a renewable construction material could be a solution. However, careful consideration of the entire timber system is needed in order to make building with timber not just another way to exploit natural resources. This graduation project proposes a possible solution by building social housing with locally sourced timber in the Netherlands.

This thesis ‘Growing Social Housing’ is part of a joint graduation project with Yael van Mengden (Msc Landscape Architecture). This interdisciplinary project proposes a new system from dynamic production forestry to social housing in the Netherlands.

The essence of my project is to present a prototype as a statement against the ridiculousness of building a permanent stadium used only or mostly during a major international temporary sports events. In which the inhabitants of the place gain no real benefit from the investments of such a building after the tournament is finished. My prototype of a modular stadium aims to be that benefit for locals of all ages. Where they can play a wide arrange of different sports and enjoy different events organized in the year. This could range from a food festival to extreme sports, from daily sports and leisure activities to being a platform for experimentational architecture or art exhibitions. The stadium provides the building blocks to form that basis.

The objective is to research modularity to find design principles for the design of a multifunctional and adaptable stadium. Modularity can contribute to the circular economy through the use of a modular design and optimization of modules, generating benefits that can contribute to the implementation of strategies for the circular economy in order to maximize the lifecycle of a product. It is a way of giving order and solutions to complex problems of achieving adaptability. Such strategies will be researched for a new stadium typology. Which accommodate for the afterlife use of a stadium for a major temporary sports event. That could benefit the city and its community on the long term. The context in which this will be designed is, the what-if scenario, of The Netherlands one day hosting the FIFA world cup or the Olympics.

Design for a co-housing development near Lelylaan station in Amsterdam, based on the concept of the Homo Ludens. The design is supported by thematic research into the use of a design game for the co-creation of co-housing.