This is a story about an archive that could sit in the heart of Appingedam, Groningen, commemorating two diasporic cultures which, against all the odds, found refuge in this quiet, mediaeval city.

The first Ashkenazi Jewish population saw its birth in Appingedam, Groningen in the early 17th century. Despite centuries of difficulties the community flourished in this small rural city for centuries until it was all but eliminated in the 1940s, starting with their forceful eviction to the Dutch concentration/transit camp Westerbork. My grandmother is the last survivor of this community.

After the war, Kamp Westerbork - renamed Schattenberg - saw the arrival of a new community, the Moluccans. Intended to be a temporary stay whilst the Dutch negotiated their independence as a state from Indonesia, the years saw little progress as it became evident that this temporary stay was quickly becoming permanent. In 1960 it was proclaimed that the Moluccan community would be rehoused permanently across the province of Groningen, with the first city of permanent dwelling being Appingedam. A city which can be walked across in 25 minutes now bore witness to the birth of two significant communities within the Netherlands, centuries apart. Although there could never have been any crossover (one community terminated prior to the other starting) this is the story of how to analyse the intrinsically spiritual connections between two vastly different communities, and how a new syncretic direction for commemoration - one the focuses on the power of a multiplicity of memory rather than the privacy and exclusivity of a single collective remembrance - can be brought forward.

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.

The proposal incites the collectivisation of maintenance and organisation of the electricity grid in Afrikaanderwijk, Rotterdam Zuid.

In times of unproductive polarisation along a ‚Political Spectrum’ and the proliferation of a reactive subjectivity that lacks contextual attunement, the citizen appears to become incrementally more a consumer of politics rather than a productive participant in the organisation of our togetherness.

As the progressive automation of our lives intensifies the general proletarianisation of the citizen, the capacity to productively participate in politics turns quite literally forgotten and invites for determinate governmentality to continue its recursion.

Drawing from Schizoanalysis, philosophy of technology, cybernetics, and care ethics, the research focuses on the exploration of libidinal, political, and energetic engagement with the formulation of individual and collective desires, beliefs, futures, and values through our environments.

Questioning the degree and value of the automations that surround us in our daily lives, the project aims to integrate the subject with (locally to globally) outsourced problems that it has progressively been alienated from and turn the paranoid architecture of electricity into a convivial tool that allows for the experience of collectivity, work as leisure, and political participation on a daily basis.

Through the necessity that is electricity as a collective (political) problem individuals can learn about parts-to-whole relations and dependencies. Via participatory spatial production, immediate material engagement, and the making sense-able of day-to-day automations, the project turns the inaccessible and intangible local electricity grid and transformer station of Afrikaanderwijk into a didactic environment to learn to care and to problematise desire as well as the coming together of individual and collective. It is a plea for an architectural process rather than product that is assisting in the emergence of literate, active subjects that can productively inform local and global collective efforts and challenges via a politics of transindividuation.

Modern cities are often characterized by their fast paced environments and levels of sensory overload. Consequently, these environments often pressure individuals and can create feelings of (emotional) detachment. These feelings of detachment call for interventions that enable people to connect to the full scale of their emotions and reconnect to their surroundings. Art and architecture have the potential to offer environments and encounters that can stimulate this (re)connection. Therefore, this research investigates the architectural principles and embodied visitor experiences of objects in (semi-)public spaces.

An overview of design principles and accompanied visitor experiences is created. The main types of experiences that have been identified are: contemplation, experiment/play, movement, surprise/wonder, and (unexpected) social interaction. Useful architectural tools to achieve these experiences entail, among others, the use of material, play with light, the relation (or disconnection) to place and its history, shape, sound, and perspective. Lastly, it is important to note that experience is rather subjective, even though these architectural principles can guide the experience. Therefore, urban planners and designers are encouraged to thoroughly investigate the case specific context to determine the most fit design.

These findings have been used to create three interventions following Kostverlorenvaart, a body of water located in the city of Amsterdam. By using the history of place as an additional guiding theme and incorporating a flexible structure that can be adapted to temporary needs, three pavilions have been created to help (re)connect city inhabitants to their direct surroundings. The project outlines a blueprint for urban interventions that can be implented in other cities to help counterbalance these fast paced environments.

How can an open relation between bodies, movement and architecture lead to new ways of bodily attunement in space?

Dancing weaves Bodies and Space with the World. Social and (anatomo-)political conventions compose a foundational understanding of how I experience my former dancer body in architectural space. In my research, the moving body weaves threads between art, architecture, performance, philosophy, body politics, and everyday practices. As a designer, I perceive our bodies as intertwined actors within the spheres of art, architecture, and urbanism. As a former classical and contemporary dancer, I bring a certain sensibility to surrounding spaces, with a high resonance towards rhythms, materialities, and interventions in the built environment. Assembling both aspects, I use the moving body in the city as a tool to design.

The reciprocity between the body, movement, and architecture is historically solidified in well-established systems of power by the repressive state apparatus. (Wark, McKenzie. 2019. Capital is Dead.p.154). Differences in power, entitlement, and access to being accepted as human (bodies) make us all different from each other. The project liberates the body from the state of oppression of social, political, and reproductive regulative systems. Essentially, we are made of the same flesh – we are all bodies that express how we sense space through actions and emissions of our physical energy.

The research explores the relation between the body as a subject and its mirage in space, thus creating endless shapes of being (within) a human body. The aim is to open up a creative dialogue between architecture and bodily resonance ,paging body in space and space in body.’ (Diller, E. Scofidio, R. 1994. Flesh – Architectural Probes. p.23.) I walk, move, dance, and think with my own body as extended matter to absorb the space around me in its energies. By translating these experiences into notational drawings, collages, physical models, poetry and chronophotographic images, the moments of reciprocal attunement between body, dance and space come forth.

Design Brief
:
The floating water theater beats like a heart to the rhythm of Rotterdam’s waves. The desired design will allow new encounters between water and land, bodies and space, spectators and actors. It is a space to make you aware of your bodily potential to climb, rise, hide, run, scream, and dream. It is a manifestation of what it means to move your body in this journey of space.

This project presents a response to the pressing issue of women's safety in public spaces, particularly in Latin American cities. Women worldwide are disproportionately affected by safety issues and fear in urban environments. I explore ways in which public spaces can enhance perceptions of safety and freedom instead. Based on extensive four months of fieldwork, including semi-structured interviews with thirty women and a survey, I identify common themes in women's experiences and propose planning and design strategies for enhancing the perception of safety. These guidelines encompass six categories: temporality and sustainability, inclusive functional programs, equal access to localized and high-quality infrastructure, planning trajectories and areas of influence, supporting existing networks of care, and creating spaces for organizing and collective action.

In response to these findings, I introduce a design concept for pavilions dedicated to women, strategically integrated within the network of the UVA (Units for the Articulation of Life) in Medellín, Colombia. Through the project, I emphasize the creation of a community of mutual care among residents, exploring how bonds can form both during construction and utilization of space. These pavilions are envisioned as transformative places, where women are encouraged to actively participate in construction, subsequent management, and adaptation of the building to evolving needs. The project is tailored for community construction, ensuring local ownership and long-term sustainability.

The selection of bamboo as the primary building material comes from the appreciation of its environmental sustainability benefits but also its transformative potential to empower women in construction. Being lightweight, safe, and easy to work with, it is suitable to facilitate active participation of women in the construction process. To maximize bamboo’s sustainability benefits, I complement it with a choice of biobased materials for the roof, and I propose concepts for demountable foundations and joints to ensure the circularity of the design.

This project contributes to the broader debate on urban safety and social inclusion. Through addressing both social and environmental aspects of sustainability, it enhances women's safety while fostering a more equitable and resilient urban environment.

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.

Linking Worlds – Rewilding the Netherlands represents an ecological approach towards the architectural design practice. By utilizing interdisciplinary methods, the project proposes an architecture that is concerned with the relation of all living organisms to one another and their environment. Therefore, the focus shifts away from a mainly human benefit to an inclusive life-promoting purpose at its core.

Building upon conservation biology theory of rewilding it addresses urgent matters such as population management issues and species extinction to accomplish a resilient and self-sustaining ecology within the Netherlands. Proposing habitat expansion and connection spanning from the Oostvaardersplassen, over the Horsterwold up to the Veluwe the goal is to create a diverse range of unmanaged land that facilitates natural migratory flows and behavior. The wolf as keystone umbrella species is granted access to new territories, where the carnivore can serve as natural manager through predation on large grazers.

The central architectural structure is an ecoduct or wildlife crossing bridging the A28 highway located between Ermelo and Putten, where the travelling human becomes a witness of architectures agency serving non-human needs. For a moment animal mobility becomes the main actor and therefore center of attention in a place that was claimed for exclusively human activity. A place of danger and potential death for all species is transformed into a place and symbol for concession that connects worlds. The project reveals that coexistence can be solved in a way of overlapping worlds for different species designing a path of less resistance. Beneficiaries are all the participating parties. The architectural result of this project can be seen as a metaphor. A human-made structure to facilitate animal movement. An inanimate object facilitating life on it and across it. A living bridge that promotes life.

The basis and underlaying motivation for this project was the quest for a newly gained attitude towards design, through an exploration of personal spirituality. Linking Worlds advocates for a new worldview. A worldview that demands a shift in perspective, lifts the value of life above all, is inclusive rather than exclusive, fosters a feeling of kinship amongst all species, welcomes diversity and facilitates coexistence.

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.

The Bananeira Garden (Horta da Bananeira) is a guerrilla garden in the escarpments of Porto that has collectively been created by a group of people with no claim of ownership or fixed identity. These gardeners explicitly refuse to recognize the state’s authority over the forgotten urban spaces in the city. Gardening turns into a political act, a quiet but constant form of spatial activism addressing climate change, social inequality, and real estate speculation. Porto’s administration is solely focused on expanding the city’s brand as a tourist destination, with tourist accommodations and rising prices forcing the local population to the margins. This could have consequences for the Horta da Bananeira, as it does not have any legal protection.

This project is an attempt to support the Horta da Bananeira in its struggle for emancipation. ‘Garden as Protest’ acknowledges the garden’s complexity and its value beyond the garden’s borders. A network of acupunctures makes sure that the border conditions of the garden are secured, fulfilling their social purpose and catering to the actual needs of the neighbourhood.
The project follows an eco-feminist approach, demonstrating a new role for the architect.

This research is rooted in defining the marginlands of Istanbul; comprised of the city’s backstages, cracks, and fissures. It proposes an intervention along the historic margins of the city’s Land Walls, now swallowed by urban sprawl and existing as an interstitial inner-city threshold. The lands of such margins harbour an air of latency, having recently been razed to the ground, or earmarked for oncoming ‘urban transformation’; one that can only be described as ‘hyper-commodification’. Local planning authorities commercialise lands historically hosting informal practice under the guise of creating common public space. However, the resulting parks, playgrounds or sports fields simultaneously erase the material and cultural fabric of such margins.
Through ethnographic research, the project documents and celebrates the hidden spaces carved out of the marginlands for marginal actors to co-exist in the relentlessly commodified city. I will introduce three Custodians doing so within the framework available to them: the Street Gleaner, the Moat Gardener, and the Last Inhabitant. The proposed intervention provides a physical and social framework to host such custodians, their practices, and the materials that have already seeped into the city’s fissures. This design proposes a toolbox of affordances at three scales: Territorial, Structural and Habitual, to foster a Contemporary Commons in this context. Enabled by the toolkit, it begins the transition away from the more precarious occupations of the Custodians towards more productive practices engaging a wider and more diverse network of actors associated with the chosen sites. The resulting Commons acts as a platform for enrichment of involved actors’ roles: master, teacher, pro-sumer, maker, activist, learner, apprentice - diversifying and strengthening the former margins.

How can the national library best accommodate the collection and curation of
knowledge to encourage learning in an age of digitalisation?
During the graduation studio Complex Projects the role of the national library in
Germany was put under investigation. The national library functions as a central place where all published work of the nation is collected. How does the library position themselves to stay relevant for information that can be curated for it to be easily accessible. The use of the building will need to be revised to continue serving its users and engage a new generation and audience. Currently the collection is stored in multiple cities in Germany, which defeats the goal of the national library to centralise the collection. As the collection continued to grow it resulted in buildings with multiple extensions and not optimal storage conditions. The design of the national library emphasises the representation of all media such as books as well as online publications, providing a welcoming space for the public, organising events and encouraging learning.

​Europe Central Station is a new kind of station in the global railway network, airming to replace air travel with a more environmentally sustainable option. This thesis conducted research on the essential requirements for designing an intercontinental train station, anticipating a future where train travel becomes the standard mode of transportation. As a result, new programs such as border security measures and well-designed arrival and departure halls were implemented. In addition, it illustrates how such a large train station can be strategically positioned within the city of Berlin, serving as a catalyst for future urban development. It also shows how such a large train station can be designed, providing an efficient, safe, and comfortable travel experience for the passengers.

Namibia has been home to some of the world’s oldest ethnic groups since the dawn of civilization. One of these cultures is the Himba, often referred to as ‘the last true pastoral nomads’ of Africa. They are known for inhabiting the water scarce desert region of Kunene in Namibia for centuries. Now, various factors, including climate change and the absence of governmental support, are forcing the Himba population to decide which aspects of ‘modern’ culture to incorporate into their everyday lives.

After decades of declining rainfall and rising temperatures, drought and omakururukiro yokuti (over-utilized land and vegetation) are the reality. The Himba is therefore forced to rely on their nomadic origins for survival, and to travel southwards, ‘following the water’, to Windhoek which is the capital of Namibia. On arrival, they are confronted with inequality apparent in the African urban built environment and take part in the rapid urbanization of Windhoek. They settle in townships, in shacks, located on the outskirts of the city, where access to water and sanitation is limited. Due to landscape topology, climate change and other factors, the high possibility of flooding poses a new risk. Indeed a life-threatening choice: surviving drought in Kunene or surviving floods in Windhoek.

Boden – a German term that can refer to soil and land, ground and floor, territory and habitat. Overhearing Boden in Berlin’s streets these days will, however, oftentimes result in tuning into a conversation about land ownership, the soaring cost of living and the city in transition. People, it seems, are worried. They are increasingly affected by effects of market processes, speculation, a marginalising financial approach* towards the city. They are not alone: Also Berlin's diverse ecological actors are threatened by such profit-oriented practices. Therefore, the term “Boden“ in Berlin has been conceptualised for discussing processes originating in and revolving around land tenure. In turn, its tangible qualities and positive notions are covered up, buried by a merely technical and somewhat pessimistic discussion. The inherent ambivalence is leaving Berlin’s Boden, stripping it off its multiple social and ecological facets: Boden has become a bare quantifiable medium.
This overheard finding is the spark of this thesis. While unsuccessfully searching for a singular translation of Boden, I started to discover more and more dimensions, relations, associations with the term. Thus, the question arose: Can we solve the multi-dimensional issues Boden faces in Berlin by exploring its stratified character, its layers of meaning? How can Boden in the city become tangible, meaningful, a resource - Bodenschatz - again? Can Boden itself become an ally for the city’s human and non-human inhabitants to solve the Bodenfrage issues?
The resulting proposal, Bodenschatz, is a multi-layered exploration of dimensions comprised in Berlin’s Boden. This is approached by science fiction: taking into account the status quo of science and research, it is reimagining urban futures as a fictional prototype of cyber-socio-ecological cohabitation on Berlin’s Boden. Its main vector is not analysis but action towards re-taking socio-ecological urban agency in Berlin. Architecture becomes a vehicle to spatialise this, the missing link to fill in the gaps between science and fiction. Without romanticism or fatalism, the project is a comment on the current state of affairs - and how the city of the future could be imagined by the means of today.

"Arctic Symphony" is an exploration into the intersection of architecture, music, dance, and the temporal dimensions of the Arctic landscape. This project, originally started as a graduation project, transcends traditional architecture by embracing the ever-changing dynamics of the Arctic environment and human interaction.

At the core of the project is the concept of 'time', investigated through physics, poetry, and neuroscience. Based on this research a series of 'graphic scores' was made as a visual representation of the seasonal rhythms of the Arctic landscape. These scores further inspire the design of the architecture later referred to as a 'living structure, an architectural entity that evolves in with the natural elements, accommodating human interaction while simultaneously undergoing a cycle of deterioration and rejuvenation.

The graduation was complemented by a performance, brought to life by dance, music, and a narrative that echoes the architecture's journey through the Arctic seasons. The performance is an interpretation of the scores and offers an experience of the Arctic's temporal reality. This part of the project has gotten its own legs and is accessible through the 'Arctic Symphony' YouTube channel.

The essence of 'Arctic Symphony'-project lies in the temporal aspect of the architecture. Just as music and dance is not static, frozen in time, neither should architecture be. Architecture should be dynamic and ever-changing, echoing the ebbs and flows of the Arctic landscape itself. The project signifies a dance with time, where the architecture, the landscape, and human activity are all performers on the stage of the Arctic Symphony.