Not only within the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, but throughout Delft University of Technology, the City of the Future Graduation Lab proves to have a truly unique position. It is a laboratory where students are challenged to think beyond their own discipline, creating an interdisciplinary synergy between different fields of expertise in order to find solutions for the City of the Future.@en

Chinese cities have been expanding since the early 1980s under trends of rapid modernization, urbanization and globalization. Since then they have changed dramatically, and have in the process lost many of their traditional environments and spatial characteristics. Urban planners and designers have been and are facing unprecedented challenges in China. They not only have to learn to understand the constantly emerging new urban mechanisms, and seek balance among stakeholders, but they also need to cope with the political pressures and the changing context under often extreme time pressure. In such circumstances, future- and design-oriented analysis based on a ‘designerly’ way of thinking is useful—if not indispensable—for understanding the existing city and deciding on its transformations in a responsible and accountable way that is communicable among designers and with the public. This is especially so, in light of the growing awareness—also in China—of the value and importance of local urban identity, that is always—at least partially—based on history. In this ATLAS the Delft method of historical morphological analysis is applied to the city of Wuhan, valuing the importance of and finding meaning in the local urban identity of a city with a population over 11 million with a floating population of 14 million. The series of maps show the urban development, covering a century and a half.@en

Maps represent reality in a consciously filtered and scaled way. We—not only designers but anyone who wants to interfere with the built environment—need maps to get a clutter-free overview of space. Moreover, we can project and infer very specific data of a location on a map creating a model and providing information that could never be perceived from a real-life visit. Nevertheless, we cannot perceive a space and its identity without experiencing it.@en

At the main point of intersection between the railway and the city, stations are key elements in the organization of the intermodal transport as well as catalysts of urban developments in metropolises, medium and small cities. The focus of this publication is to explore the enrichment of a renewed approach of railway stations as intermodal nodes, therefore acting as breeding grounds for both urban and social developments. This book has been initiated and built upon several activities currently running at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute), Delft University of Technology (DIMI, Delft Deltas Infrastructure Mobility Initiative and Department of Architecture of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment) and University of Paris-Est (l'école d'Urbanisme de Paris). These activities have been framed within the context of two rapidly developing metropolitan areas: Randstad in the Netherlands and Métropole du Grand Paris in the Ile de France. This volume forms the basis for a research on the 'role of stations in future metropolitan areas' with the ambition to link the two countries, learning from their different cities and distinct geographical context through comparable mobility challenges on the levels of the inner city, suburban and peripheral areas. In line with these considerations, in 2018 AMS Institute, TU Delft/ DIMI and the Dutch Embassy in Paris with Atelier Néerlandais organized a successful workshop: 'Stations of the Future', in collaboration with La Fabrique de la Cité. Together with Dutch and French planning entities, involving mass transit operators and railway companies, this workshop focused on several case studies in both metropolitan areas to understand the role of station hubs as intermodal nodes. During this joint French-Dutch event that took place in Paris, we spoke on topics like Station as intermodal node, Station as destination and Station as data center, including a debate on the relation between public space and architecture, densification and programming of station areas, pedestrian flows management and the integration of data. Following the Paris workshop, the summer school 'Integrated Mobility Challenges in Future Metropolitan Areas' was organised by AMS Institute and Delft University of Technology/DIMI with the collaboration of the ARENA architectural research network, University of Paris-Est and the City of Amsterdam. This 8-day workshop extended the debate among international young professionals, academics and master students by looking at an important rail-metro node in the metropolitan area of the city Amsterdam: Sloterdijk Station - a crucial hub in a bigger urban area for mobility and exchange, and for urban growth. The main question was: which approaches and scenarios can be tested and applied to these intermodal nodes, particularly when dealing with lack of space and growing number of users? The results were four very different plans to improve the Sloterdijk Station area and to make the station a 'future proof' intermodal hub. In this publication, invited experts from practice and knowledge institutes in France and the Netherlands share their common experience and draw on specific aspects and problems of conception, management and development of stations. A brief overview of the results of the two initiatives 'Stations of the Future' and the summer school 'Integrated Mobility Challenges in Future Metropolitan Areas' is here illustrated, accompanied by photo reportages of both events and by a curated reportage of the Amsterdam Sloterdijk station area.

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Public libraries want to contribute to an inclusive and innovative society and aim to enable their patrons to acquire the necessary 21st century skills. Dutch public libraries are therefore gradually adding more and more activities to their curriculum, teaching these different types of skills, such as ‘invention literacy’. They also often provide a ‘performative space’ (i.e. a makerspace) for their patrons. This means library spaces are no longer dominated by books, but rather reflect the current development in libraries’ core business, moving from collections to connections in order to serve their local communities. The KB, the National Library of The Netherlands, participated in the KIEM1 project Performative Spaces in Dutch Public Libraries. Stepping Stones of Inclusive Innovation, researching the development of performative spaces in libraries. This project, a collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology, fits the KBs strategic interests in providing an innovative and socially aware library system. Important research questions included how public libraries create these so-called performative spaces for inventing and creating, what modifications are needed in terms of interior design and safety, and in terms of programmatic and spatial organization? As well as how do makerspaces connect to particular maker communities? The project results provided insight into spatial and design aspects of performative spaces, which helps public libraries, and ultimately its patrons, to benefit from this new development. This book, the Atlas, presents the results of the research projects with illustrations of the different types of makerspaces as well as providing state-of-the-art information about performative spaces, focusing on the spatial characteristics. It has been an honour and a pleasure to work with experts from Delft University of Technology and we hope and expect the KIEM project has sown the seeds for a sustainable collaboration on the subject of performative spaces in present and future library research. We see the Atlas as a joint starting point for a shared agenda on the performative library space of the future for librarians, designers, patrons and other stakeholders.@en

This paper presents the partial results of a historical morphological research of the urban form of the Chinese middle size city of Wuhan. The city with over 12 million inhabitants is a regional centre for the Yangtze River basin, located centrally in China, and according to national planning transforming from a monofunctional into a multifunctional economy, while retaining its basic industries based on steel manufacturing. The research uses the method of the Delft School of morphological analysis, applying the reductive mapping technique of homogeneous areas, and adding secondary connections as the middle scale of the city. The mapping is done in QGIS, using the Georeferencer software plugin to deform historical maps to fit the contemporary base map. By way of a conclusion, an indication is given of how the results are applicable in the daily urban design and planning of the municipality for the urban transformation and expansion.@en

How can we design and develop a transformation area in anintegral way into an attractive and future-proof urban environment?This is the the central question of the research projectStad van de Toekomst (City of the Future).@en

Hoe neemt een makerplaats een fysieke plek in de bibliotheek in? De explosieve groei van makerplaatsen in Nederlandse bibliotheken vraagt om inzicht in de ruimtelijke aspecten die verbonden zijn met het opzetten en runnen van deze vorm van een performative space.@en