The oil industry might be the most obvious system causing the North Sea to be a disputed territory in recent times. One of the main participants in this dispute is Norway: a country extremely wealthy, thanks to oil revenue. In oil’s supply chain, the Mongstad refinery plays a crucial role. Situated in a fjord in western Norway, it’s conveniently located in close proximity of both the North Sea and Norway’s urbanized regions. Reclaimed marshlands have served as Mongstads foundations, from where it directly and indirectly leaves its polluting traces. During its relative short lifespan so far, heavy impact on land and water have been caused. Even though the oil industry is of major importance for the wellbeing of Norway’s inhabitants, they lack in awareness of the processes and consequences involved with this business. Mongstad clearly represents this situation: in geographical sense bordered by either mountains and the sea, on top of this the territory is completely fenced off. Compared to other oil refineries worldwide, Mongstad is an interesting case. While having a capacity of 12 million tonnes of crude oil per year, groundbreaking research is conveyed on-site. In Technology Centre Mongstad and its adjacent test facilities, CO2 is being captured from flue gasses, and prepared for storage elsewhere. Mongstads functional future is extremely uncertain. The oil industry has to change, and Mongstad’s aim of being a ‘sustainable’ pioneer in the field allows for three possible future scenario’s: 1.Business as usual. The refinement and accompanying processes still take place, but as planned, co2 from the refinery will be caught off to be processed elsewhere on the site. 2.Transformation of the refinery. As in the case of Porto Marghera, the refinery will still function as an energy production facility, but in a ‘greener’ way. The current structures will be used, and, if needed, extended. 3.Loss of function, but exploiting potential of the site in geographical and infrastructural sense. The project is adaptable to these scenario’s. It’s an architectural infrastructure, able to grow and shrink according to time, function and place. The infrastructure stretches over a 2 kilometer line, which crosses from mountains to fjord, straight through Mongstad’s borders. While reconnecting nature over exploited land, an axis arises. Heavy labour and core production taking place at one side, while research and room for future development can be found on the other side. This axis is Mongstad’s new spine: opening up the territory, emphasizing on the natural environment, but most of all: supporting a more appropriate productive future. Nine concrete interventions serve as permanent gestures, telling the story of Mongstad through framing, directioning and their highly symbolic appearance.

We now live in a time when it is now quicker, easier and more efficient to speak to one another, yet it doesn’t always reflect on the fruitfulness in decision making and outcome of a conversation. Face to face conversation is one of the most effective means to converse and the North Sea is a space which needs to be part of the conversation. The research report found that North Sea is a one of the most dense urban seascapes in the world, with each nation taking a piece of the sea for the benefit of themselves rather than seeking to explore the notion of the North Sea as a common. One space; stronger, more resilient and profitable for those interacting with it, whether you are a fisherman or an energy company.

The architecture intervention has led to the notion of a space to gather those interacting in it, to put their nation status aside for the benefit of the North Sea. This space becomes a state of exception, where jurisdiction and sovereignty of one state no longer applies. The site is on Dogger Bank, a former land bridge it becomes a poetic reference to a past time when the United Kingdom was connected to the continental Europe. It is also one the shallowest points of the North Sea, making it physically possible to construct an island.

The design will seek for all nations to contribute to the island, building an aspect of the architecture, to create an emotional connection, so the space feel like theirs. The architecture is designed to be prefabricated and shipped across the North Sea, the island cannot follow typical building methods. The building construction is also dependant on the weather therefore the time to build the island can not follow a traditional schedule.

As a typology the building is a Parliament, but it is more than this. A hybrid building, it goes beyond the traditional parliament set up we know today. It seeks to look at conversation spaces; informal/formal as the main role to get attendees together and discuss matters on the North Sea. Every attendee would have to travel to the island and may find themselves delayed in leaving due to weather conditions. The attendees truly find themselves understanding the environment they are discussing and start to truly respect the environment they are discussing.

The design will question the idea of performance as part of the decision making process. Parliaments today can be very theatrical (United Kingdom). The stage in this concept is very import in the design, it questions its position, is it the main assembly room floor , the informal conversation spaces or is it the North Sea? A part of the performance is the audience, the design questions if it is those attending the parliament or is it audience those beyond, and everyone interacting in the space?

Finally, I ask those reading the book to ultimately question where you position yourself when making a decision, are you an ego (authoritarian, dualistic, self-destructive, imbalanced, power-seeking or eco (democratic, sustainable, balance, interdependent). And what would you do if you attended the parliament?

The Netherlands is often depicted as a battleground, with the Dutch in a constant struggle against the water that surrounds them. This project examines this tradition in the context of the Wadden Sea and the island of Schiermonnikoog, where this battle between the land and the sea is at its most extreme.

This project traces the myth of ‘making new land’ by investigating the four major themes from the recent publication ‘Sweet and Salt: The Water and The Dutch’: conflict, concord, profit and pleasure. These themes are adapted and used to analyse the Dutch waterscapes of the Wadden Sea and the island of Schiermonnikoog. The scenario method is then used to project the outcome of this analysis into a future where West Frisian island of Schiermonnikoog is left to nature and risks slowly disappears into the currents of the North Sea. The design intervention narrates a new myth: ‘guarding the water’ by using the typology of a fort. The scenario has four chapters and each of them narrates a different time period of the island’s future. Thus the project derives its name from the heraldic motto of Zeeland: ‘Luctor et Emergo' - ‘I struggle and Emerge’.

The graduation project starts from the attention and research to the dynamic water level change in coastal area in North Sea, and by analysising the potential flooding risks, climate-sensitive mudflat, and the relationship between regional ecosystem and local people, the observation to changing coastal landscape are emphasised, to rethink how to reuse the leftover human space to reflect the changing ecological environment, emphasing people's bioregionalism awareness. By Redefining the meanings of the fortification heritage, the meanings of the Grain tower, defencing not only the national territory but defence for the territory defined by the whole nature; not only record the history, but measure the changing nature through time. Key words: Soft edge between sea and land , fortificaton heritage architecture, tidal mudflat, changing horizon, bioregionalism, changing ecological environment

Today’s land grabs are a continuation of past imperialist desires, with a clear distinction that today’s capitalist domination is associated with the transnationalisation of the class structure and ignores the ethnicity and civility narratives of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. This investigation will establish that the desire of the seemingly ubiquitous forces of globalisation and advanced capitalism, mobilised to reduce the importance of culture and identity is to better facilitate its own growth and expansion - which at its core is a process of pacification. With a departure from culture as a medium for the subjugation of people, finance has consequently turned to class for its apparent objectivity in the assessment of people as desirable and efficient for including within the system of capital. Such pervasive coercion has incepted a dependency on the compulsion of a market that rarely provides one with an opportunity to self-reflect. Consequently this project investigates the knowledge gap between politics, economics, and the built environment with accompanying forms of living.

The North is a dense space of connectivity, where submarine cables span between the population centers and economic hubs of Europe. Within this web of relations, the Netherlands play an important role as the gateway to continental Europe on the one hand and the United States and United Kingdom on the other hand. At the same time, the stable political conditions, reliable energy supply and friendly business atmosphere, have given rise to an intense economy of data centres within the Netherlands. The hierarchy of these networks is determined by other territorial factors such as economic relevance, national borders and existing infrastructural ecologies.

Equally, the typology of data centres is focused around three main parameters that determine the location and architectural design. Firstly, the proximity to high capacity fibre networks is a determinant factor for the geographic location of data centres. In many cases this also implies a proximity to the sea and the global connection this warrants. Secondly, as they require sizeable and stable energy supply, they are either located close to energy sources or transmission cables. Thirdly, they usually require a lot of space to fit as much server space as possible, which results in a backcountry location. Hence, data centres are usually planned in a remote location, consuming a lot of space while not returning any spatial quality.

My project challenges these paradigms in a number of ways, while adhering to the underlying network logics. Currently, the two system edges are usually separated in such that data networks are located close to the global network but far from the actual user. Therefore, my project proposes to collapse the geographic proximity of global connections and local user by bringing the data centres into the cities. The resultant urban network is able to benefit from a number of network effects and agglomeration benefits. These include the reduced latencies that are needed for the Internet of Things and the integration of energy infrastructure, allowing energy storage and dissipation on an urban scale. To achieve this integration the project distribution is based on a variety of urban parameters, which include the existing infrastructure networks and morphological analyses such as space syntax and isovists.

On an architectural scale the project proposes a typological understanding of the urban data centres, which respond to a number of different parameters and organisational modes. In consequence, the project proposes three types that are responding to three different site conditions. Furthermore, the types vary according to their socio-economic organisation, their structural independence and most importantly size. The three types or architectural artefacts range from a ‘large’ publicly maintained building, via a medium sized civic centre to small miniature private buildings. The resultant architecture proposes to redefine the standard type for data centres making them an outstanding part of the urban fabric.

While the project proposes a specific infrastructure in a specific place it is structured to be replicable in other sites. At the same time, it carries a number of important messages. Firstly, it shows quite clearly the scale and impact of society’s use of data by bringing it closer to the user and making it palpable in our daily lives. At the same time this presence also liberates the ‘world exterior’ from another predatory infrastructure allowing us to read the functional dependencies of our cities more clearly. Secondly, the project also questions the territorial dependence of data flows by illustrating the possibility of local data. In times of data scandals and increased political awareness, the vision of keeping your data close allows us to challenge the way we currently deal with this abstract matter. Finally, the project also illustrates the scale of our data use. It warns us of the impact it can have on our lives.

While the project takes place on the urban scale of the city of Scheveningen and is developed as an architectural proposal that reaches the detail scale it is part of a larger project. The project and its scale are determined by the site, the architectural proposals are specific to a location and their detailing is adjusted to local circumstances. Nonetheless, the project also proposes a territorial shift, where decentralisation and ownership are challenged. The urban component of this thesis is a case study for a larger project, a project that takes place on the personal and territorial scale simultaneously.

This project initiates by looking at the space as a territory (Raffestin, 2012), constructed through social interactions and networks. I believe the design project must anticipate the global social and economic shifts that are present within the territory of the North Sea and must be shaped in relation to the effects of these changes on local societal level. Mapping is used as a tool of associating, ordering and projecting the changes in the qualities (territorialities) of the space rather then a mere visualisation tool (Corner,1999). Equally important, The scripting of scenarios based on literature and statistical data allows for the depiction of the alternate realities that the societal shifts could produce. Taking Port Landscapes, Automation and the energy transition as drivers of change, the project aims at redesigning an automated infrastructure for windblade production, storage and maintanance, and with that reshaping the coastal form based on this process. The aim is in determining the relationship between automation, form and the port landscape. Taking both automated and natural processes into account when designing, the project is inspired by the writings of Martin Pawley, in his work Terminal Architecture (Pawley, 1998) he writes: “ The real barometer of the value of buildings today is not their aesthetic pedigree, but rather their usefullness as terminals in the maze of networks that sustain modern life.Authentic Architecture has been disurbanised. It survives only in the shape of building like distribution centers, factories, petrol stations, that are designed as instruments not monuments.” The design depicts the process and actions of the machine. An automated line, hatched by the elements involved in the different processes along it. An attempt of containment and exposure of the ever expanding developments in automation and production. Human actors are no longer present within the confinement of the interior space, and instead as automation is pushed further out to sea due to increasing vessel size and production capacity, the Human remains on the coastline, to bear witness to this new separation between themselves and production. The human is now the spectator of this ever ending automated line.


Key words: North Sea, Ports, Infrastructure, Automation

Since the industrial revolution we have become estranged from the sea. We became opponents instead of working together, and put up high walls to protect ourselves form the vagaries of an unpredictable sea. Somewhere along our path of progress, we lost our human connection to the sea. Before the sea became something we secluded, it was known for its reviving properties. In our increasingly intense society of busy cities and never ending incentives from globalization, leading to stress and burn-outs, there is a need to rebalance our cities and ourselves. Taking into account future projections for sea level rise, sea defence systems will have to grow intensively if land below sea level is to be kept habitable. This will result in a cumulative gap between the sea and the human system. Combined with the ever increasing amount of re-urbanisation, a whole new level of pressure on the border between coastal cities and the sea will arise. An example of this is the city of Den Helder. This city is disconnected from the sea by a eleven meter high dike, protecting the country from engulfing this geographical anchoring point of the Netherlands. The project focusses on actively leaving the city behind, projecting itself on the water in the solitude created by the dike, to return to the city revived again. The dike is presented as a public space, turning it from a border into a threshold before entering the territory of the sea. Transgressing this border generates a route of reflection from the rigid and intense city, into the wideness and freedom of the sea. The project consists out of a bathhouse, a swimming pool, a restaurant and a public roof and a viewing point. These are connected by a series of different routes. First the visitor leaves the city and enters the tower of entrance, here orientation is lost by the spiral stairs leading to the bridge. The bridge turns crossing the dike into a deliberate act of transgressing the border. The bridge ends in a high central space which is focussed on the changing, the abandonment of once responsibilities and stigma. This space splits into two elements with their own direction. From this space three routes lead through the diverse functions relating to the water, each in their own way. At the end of the two elements one finds himself surrounded by the water. One reaches for the view and the endless horizon of the sea and the other frames the touching of the water. After this experience of projecting oneself into the water, the visitor can return to the city revived again or linger a bit longer on the public landscape of the dike and benefit from the qualities of the sea.

The relationship between industry and market, in the Netherlands of the 17th century, was based on a sustainable model. It linked small scale producers with consumers through a system of canal boats, maritime technology and agricultural innovations.
This marketproduction connection was carried out by farmers known as ‘warmoeziers’. In 21th century Netherlands, canal transportation or ‘binnenvaart’ is acquiring more importance thanks to economical and sustainable benefits.
Complimentary to the global seaports, the canal boats can reach directly the customers in the cities. This revival of ‘binnenvaart’ can allow for a new type of city market to emerge, where automatization, innovations in food production and vibrant public life goes hand in hand with a lower CO2 footprint. The aim of this ‘warmoezier market’ is to merge the state of contemporary port-cities with the expertise of the past resulting in a market building.

This project traces the role the North Sea has played in the history of the United Kingdom, with a particular focus on territorial control. In a post-Brexit scenario where supply chains between the island and the continent are interrupted, the contiguous zone just twelve nautical miles from the coast of the UK provides an ideal economic grey zone. A free-floating object in occupying this territory is not subject to the UK’s visa or customs regimes, nor is it at the mercy of the high seas. The project thus capitalizes on its position to subvert the exclusionary act of Brexit. Tapping into existing flows of secondary resources across the North Sea, the project manifests as a recycling plant which utilizes waste to produce recycled concrete made of bottom ash and plastic waste recovered from the sea. This new raw material is moulded into modular islands which are given birth to by the machine; thereby using unwanted matter generated in a terrestrial context to create a productive landscape in the middle of the sea. The project contests the exploitative nature of natural extraction within the North Sea and renders visible processes that are easy to forget by creating a physical structure that thrives at sea and exists independent of the land.

Research in the field of climate change, requires the access to, and knowledge in data of the specific subject. The research we -as graduate students- started off with a general but deep understanding of the changing environment, borders, cultures and landscapes in and around the delta areas surrounding the North Sea. Building up our research through mapping, there was one question that would repeatedly come up; where does the data come from?

Although the question aimed towards the sources upon which the research was done, the question for me went further than that. It became part of my research into the question, What is the source of climate change data?

The first step was to look into the sequence in which we as humans translate the raw data into something we call knowledge. In other words, giving context to raw data and giving meaning to information to create knowledge. Although this is an existing sequence, the concept provides the base upon which I further developed my research. Besides the basic sequence in which raw data is being turned into knowledge or wisdom, I found a similar sequence connecting the natural landscape as we know it, to the digital and immaterial artificial world of data.

German artist and landscape architect Hans Dieter Schaal worked aroud this theme in his 1978 essay and accompanying sketches, Paths and Passages and Spaces. The book is a synthesis of his previous work on continuous spaces and the fluid dynamics between the natural and the artificial. In his book: Paths passages and spaces, he describes one of his drawing as a landscape as ‘a path from a scientific-technical environment to a romantic environment. To me, it establishes a certain relation between ‘nature’ or as Schaal names ‘romantic’ and the artificial environment, as Schaal names it the scientific-technical environment.

First, Second and Third Nature
In Garden Perfections: The Practice of Garden Theory, John Dixon Hunt identifies the cultural landscape (agriculture, urban development, roads etc.) with Cicero's 'second nature.' In De natura deorum Cicero wrote "We sow corn, we plant trees, we fertilize the soil by irrigation, we dam the rivers and direct them where we want. In short, by means of our hands we try to create as it were a second nature within the natural world. The second nature is based upon transforming and framing the landscape by the use of physical borders.


" 'First nature' - wilderness - is the realm of the gods, but it is also the raw material for second nature. John Dixon Hunt thinks that Cicero's formulation would have been in the mind of Jacopo Bonfadio when he wrote in 1541 to a fellow humanist that gardens make a 'third nature, which I would not know how to name.' Later in the century, another humanist Bartolomeo Taegio also used the term 'terza natura' or third nature, in describing gardens. The third nature is therefor based upon having total control over nature, in what and how we exhibit nature through the human controlled design of a garden.

Using the concept of the first, second and third nature as an analogy, I am translating the concept of the second nature to the adaptation nature from which we no longer extract agricultural resources, but rather extract data. Secondly, I loop at the third nature no longer as the garden that Cicero describes as the manifestation and exhibition of nature, but rather a curated exhibition of the extracted data. By doing so, I open a new

The Fourth Nature
With the concept of the first second and third nature defined, it arose the question about a possible fourth nature. It is an environment furthest away from the first nature; the natural environment as we know it in the first second or third nature no longer exist. In the fourth nature, it is assumed that every part of the natural environment is translated into the digital environment and therefor, the natural environment is no longer present. It is important to understand that to the inevitable step between the state of the natural environment and the state of the digital environment

The Atlantic Wall bunker ruins stand on the coast, abandoned and falling apart. There is a kind of beauty in this scene.

Contradiction between the rough concrete volumes defeated by asoft, ephemeral and seemingly delicate mass of water was the beginning of the research. Analysing the biggest territorial scale -the North Sea- the notion of “clashes” re-appeared. Historically, the North Sea was always an area of conflict. The constant fight between nature and the people trying to harness its power is it its very essence. In this context Atlantic wall seems to be the most contemporary example of the conflict on the area of the North Sea. Remains of Hitler’s plan stretch along the whole coast and in that sense are a direct translation of the territorial scale of the “war” into the architectural one- of a singular building- a bunker.

Yet, the conflict around the Atlantic war was in fact deemed to be a failure from the beginning. From the 15 000 bunkers planned only 6000 were realized by 1943. Then, suddenly, without any actual battle, the war ended. Observing the horizon was the only task of the soldiers until the war came to an end. The “absence” of the war is the essence of this narrative. Conditions of waiting, observing and experiencing the present moment surrounded by nature became a base for guidance and exploration.

Being part of theWadden Sea protected area, the location on the island of Terschelling emphasizes the contrast between the solid bunkers and dynamics of nature. Wadden Sea Islands are known for beautiful constantly changing dunes, inhabited by rich fauna and flora and influenced by regular tidal flows. One of many strong points on the island is the one located just next to the sea-shore, on top of the highest dune was chosen. It consisted of several buildings that were spread around that dune, serving primarily as an observation point.

Now, many years after the bunkers were placed there, some still remain. The passage of time and power of nature has however, changed them. They’ve became ruins. Some walls fell apart, some volumes tilted and moved, some were covered by the sand and overgrown by the grass. The “present ruinous state” of the remnants of the Atlantic Wall was understood here as the fundamental and relevant experience of the history itself and the starting point for the design. Instead of protecting against the forces, the project tries to use them as the main actors in the architectonic setting. The dominant, always present, unstoppable forces of nature are the base for design decisions. The way of
dealing with the knowledge was a strongly intuitive approach, mixing scientific knowledge with atmospheric perception of the nature. Inspiration for dealing with the composition, landscape and the ruins of the bunkers was taken from the archaeological excavation sites- the calculated geometric intervention against the vast masses of land in search of the “treasure” was to be used as the main concept in the design. The project relates to the landscape and experience of walking through the dunes. The wild nature is interpreted into rational concept. The different spaces and their architectonic qualities lead the visitor through subsequent spaces, constantly referring to the context.

The ritual experience begins by leaving the village or the parking area and entering through one of two gates. From a distance, only some of the bunker ruins and the skylights protruding through the sand are visible. Only when cutting through the ground and the building inside are the dimensions of the places revealed. The main buildings are almost all underground and are developed by taking from the architectural language of the bunkers.


The project tries to anticipate the flows of nature and takes the future time into consideration. Even though the building has a function to serve people at the beginning, it doesn’t have to be occupied all the time. It is a monument and its future role is to be there, in the constant condition of anticipation. Following the story of the bunkers that were left on sand to become ruins the concrete buildings are also going to stay and slowly deteriorate.

The cycle will close waiting for yet another chapter.

Past to Present to Past is an architectural investigation responding to the growing need to address sea level rise in the built environment. The two sites of focus are Leysdown-on-Sea, UK and Red Sands Fort in the Thames Estuary.

The interventions around old industrial areas are based on a landscape design, which can also be regarded as an introduce of the nature. The green land protects the heritages and absorb rain water. On the green land are renovated factories, which in a different environment, are given new identities. Connecting those old buildings are wooden promenades standing above the wetland. People will work or have recreative activities inside those renovated heritages. This kind of intervention shows a different attitude towards how to combine the past and future.

During the studio Delta Interventions, I designed an intervention based on research within the San Francisco Bay Area. Basically, my intervention is about transforming historic real estate along the waterline and creating a new relation with the water. The intervention is mainly focusing on transforming a landmark in to a building that strengthens and complements the experience of the landmark.

A design proposal for the modification of the Merkato area in Addis Ababa. A design approach for an organic growth though out the grid. Integrated within the Ethiopian lifestyle.

Hunters Point, a vacant naval yard in San Francisco has potential to be developed as a community and research hub that focusses on water related challenges. For socio-economical challenged neighbourhoods that surround this area, the community and hub can provide jobs and an identity. Within the studio Delta Interentions, water is a central theme. As Hunters Point is prone to flood, this makes it an interesting case. Most of the challenges related to water are adressed in the master plan, while the connection to the water is addressed in the design. A dry-dock splits Hunters Point in two, the community centre that I have designed connects both these parts by enabling the water in the dry-dock for interaction.

The building I designed for my graduation project focused on finding ways in which to break the rules governing functions of the historic building, as said by Paul Virilio, to “inhabit the inhabitual”, by reusing and giving new functions to buildings that have been abandoned. The building will host three main functions related to a water knowledge hub. It will be a space where a water research center, a water educational facility and finally a practical water company come together. The combination of these functions and programs is intended to increase the development and growth of each one of these fields. The space was envisioned as a way of helping these three fields interact with each other. The research facility can benefit from the education facility, and vice versa. The private company can benefit from the research done by the research center, and the research center can benefit from the founding of the private company. Finally the education facility can take advantage of the company in order for their students to learn from real practice. These new ways of interaction can benefit all three parties and help them innovate and progress in new ways. This new typology of building needs to embrace the connection and communication between the different parties by exploring new configuration of spaces. This new space will reuse a historic building located in Hunters Point, San Francisco, CA. The reuse of the historic building embraces and reminds the users of the technological advancements that took place in Hunters Point at the time when the building was being use. The reuse of the building will also help developing a more sustainable project by reducing the use of materials.