The Urban Forest Hotel Amsterdam is a hotel where guests, Amsterdammers and other visitors will find a small but profoundly natural forest of native trees within the city. It is a space where human and non-human animals can come and live together. Located besides the Artis zoo, it is a place that questions the future of the zoo and our relationship as humans to nature. The hotel tries to nurture empathy for the environment that we humans share with our fellow denizens of the natural world. The project’s situation within the city of Amsterdam tells that a forest does not solely belong to that other countryside, but that it can be an integral and essential part of the city.

To the city and its citizens, both human and non-human, the forest hotel offers a place to stay, in nature. The forest of native trees is beneficial to the environment as it regenerates land, reduces urban heat stress, improves the local air quality and water storage capacity, and supports native species of animals and other organisms. These themes touch upon the very basis of our existence: we humans are fully reliant on all other life. Understanding, protecting and supporting biodiversity is therefore vital to our wellbeing and economy. This awareness is essential in moving towards the socially just and ecologically safe space of the Doughnut, the economic model that has been developed by economist Kate Raworth and which has been adopted by the City of Amsterdam.

Moreover we humans find pleasure, wonder and peace in nature. My hotel aims to offer a place where one can find these things, and where one can experience living in togetherness with other human and non-human animals.

The Future Bank, the design project for the graduation studio of Interiors Buildings Cities, questions the current role of the National Bank of Belgium withing the city of Brussels, as the institution has distanced itself from the city by the digitalization and outsourcing of former location-bound banking activities. This graduation project, ‘The Future Bank: Designing the Intermediary Space’ addresses the issue by reconnecting the bank building and the city through adopting a more public character. The building is partially transformed into an educational cluster, to house study facilities for students, a library and public archive and the banking museum. Two central courts are created within the building: the auditorium court and a public courtyard. Both of which respond to the direct urban context by bridging the height difference between the banking hall, the main entrance of the building, and the Governor’s Hotel, the most historical building part. The banking hall is transformed into a public interior square which functions as the main entrance for all users and as a foyer and lobby space for the auditorium court and the courtyard. A public route is constructed from the banking hall to the entrance of the Governor’s Hotel, which redraws the boundary between the public and private functions in the building. The design of the intermediary space, the space between the public and private functions, responds to the reconfiguration of the publicly accessible space within the building. By incorporating workspaces and social facilities within the design of the intermediary space, the relation between public and private functions is emphasized. This way, the appropriation of the building and the interrelation of its different users is manifested architecturally on the user-level.

Over the past decades the act of play has taken on an ever-decreasing form of
importance in society. This not only leads to the absence of its accompanying
architecture, but also to more boring, uniform and hollow spaces. With the ambition of designing for the homo ludens of today, research was first carried out into the characteristics of places where play arises, after which these findings could be translated in architectural objects provoking introspective play through a deep experience of place, to be found at De Hoge Veluwe National Park.

The brief of this year’s studio addresses the National Bank of Belgium located on the border of upper and lower parts of Brussels. The current fortress like megastructure that the bank occupies is imposing power and solidity, but is closing itself completely from the public. With the traditional role of the bank such as printing and storage of currency being relocated outside of the city and finance transitioning to virtual mediums, the National Bank of Belgium seeks to both redefine itself physically and at the same time rethink its role in the society. The future bank is a catalyst of change which would affect the city in various scales - through the future economy, society’s attitude and awareness.

Social equality and justice are among the foundations of the doughnut economy model which the bank and the city of Brussels strive for. However, currently the national bank is merely touching upon this aspects of the model. The national bank fails to positively contribute to the above stated core values, fails to fulfil its mission as a socially responsible and inclusive institution. Moreover, the money-based market system fails to reward many types of critical work—the work of building strong communities, revitalising neighbourhoods, preserving the environment, advancing social justice, and sustaining democracy. Therefore, I asked myself the question what is there to be done to positively influence this model and where is it lacking attention at the moment so the bank could respond to this.

In order to meet these societal, environmental needs, my proposal for the national bank of Belgium is to offer opportunities for fostering more equitable and inclusive economic order alongside with the money-based market within the institution. This way the bank typology goes back to its roots and once again becomes a place of exchange for the public. An exchange of values, knowledge, skills, experience, time. The bank accommodates different alternatives of dealing with the value of things. If we are going to actually rethink the economy in our society, then the idea of fostering alternative banking such as time banking, using local currencies, community banking, community funding bartering in the National Bank of Belgium is already a beginning of putting an emphasis on the fact that there is value in other things apart from money.

The national bank becomes an inclusive space without hierarchies where people are welcomed to express themselves, take part into the alternative banking, protest even by being part of the what might be called a city forum. The project for the national bank aims to engage citizens to come together to form communities and to take part in the micro banking. It becomes a transparent and active institution which fosters other monetary systems apart from the money based one. The national bank becomes an active part of the citizen’s daily life and not just for its employees as it was functioning until now.

The National Bank of Belgium occupied a large, closed block on the edge of lower and upper Brussels. The building complex will become the workplace of the bank’s 1500 office-based staff. Moreover, the bank sees itself as a more open, permeable environment because of the increasingly digital finance and the move out of security functions. The bank's transformation aims to invite the public to enter the world of bank.
The project proposes the future bank as an open, inviting public interior. It provides its users with diverse urban experiences, new skills, and knowledge, and is an easy place to access for work, relaxation, eating, and learning. Elevated gardens are created in the main bank hall, connecting the public programs and leading people up to the citizen terrace on the rooftop. For staff, they are encouraged to grow their own vegetables and flowers on the newly added balconies and to cook and eat with colleagues in the lounges.

The National bank of Belgium is envisioned as an open, transparent, publicly engaged institution that draws the city into itself, hopefully becoming a catalyst for change.
The attitude the project takes is to deeply understand and interrogate what exists before proposing changes
– imbibing the studio dictum of ‘economy of means’. As an outcome, the new and old buildings merge into one another and become a congruent whole – and hopefully, a successful ‘piece of city’.

The National Bank of Belgium stands as a fortified conglomerate of historic patchwork structures, within central Brussels. With its inherent role having shifted from that of a safekeeper of physical goods towards a mere office, the building can be made publicly accessible, taking on an active role in the city.
By understanding the existing building through the layers of the shell (as physical infrastructure with a lifespan of about 60 years) and sets (of furniture and partitions which are constantly replaced) the bank can be manipulated and re-used.
The careful clearance of the inner courtyard allows for an extension of the existing ‘shell’. A new framework, inserted within the courtyard, only revealing itself as chapters within the monumental facade.
The bank's excessive storage of outdated ‘sets’ become active elements in the spatial formation of the new bank. Providing an alternative narrative to the rapid regeneration of the office interior.

This year, the Interiors Buildings Cities graduation studio
has revolved around the topic of the Future Bank. The project addresses the transformation of the National Bank of Belgium set in Brussels, consisting of a vast triangular urban block of 90.000 m2. The bank, designed by Van Goethem just after the Second World War, is an imposing building with a 200 meter long columnar façade rising up from the adjacent boulevard.

As the city of Brussels has declared itself a doughnut economy, the city is moving away from traditional forms of economics. The city is no longer aiming for unending growth, but aiming for stability, equality and wellbeing. Therefore the bank needs to be reframed within it’s new economic and societal context. What image does the bank want to portray in the 21st century?

Here the project began with the grass route movements, counteracting the heavy façade by creating more intimate spaces within the colonnade. This translated into reframing the bank into several parts with a new end stretching out towards the city. This allowed for more intimate spaces to be created within the vast urban block, creating a new public and inviting face of the bank. A new face in the city.

The project is to transform Belgium National Bank into a working environment capable of accommodating diverse activities. Given its economic capacity and social responsibility, the bank also has a public attribute that allows it to accommodate specific public events.
propose to open part of the bank's space as a financial culture center, mainly an exhibition and library related to financial themes. Since the bank is located on the border of the upper and lower town of Brussels, the financial culture center also undertakes the task of connecting the site with an 8 meters height difference. So I created a new public landscape circulation through ramps and three staircases, inviting people to enter the bank to experience the newly inserted public facilities and the existing delicate bank building.
For the office space above the first floor, the existing atrium is very barren and unused. So I propose to put balconies with plants in the atrium to make them like hanging gardens. Employees can relax or chat on the balcony, providing an opportunity to relax from a busy work schedule.

The Future Bank involves the transformation and adaptive reuse of the National Bank of Belgium in Brussels. A vast closed off urban block, designed to safeguard the states treasures hasn’t moved with the ever changing ambiguous role of the bank. The project introduces a new public plinth for the city of Brussels to appropriate together with a conglomerate of different office environments for the banks employees. As architect, taking on the role of bricoleur, the existing building structure has been approached as a source of pre-constrained materials. The metaphorical tools of the axe and pocket knife are used to eke out new meanings within the existing building structure. The misfit building will be healed by stitching together on different scales. In that way creating an architectural continuity which allows future adaptation and even an informality that invites to do so. The minimal interventions aim to heal the existing, minimizing our impact on the limited resources that our planet has to offer. The result is a strategy which must be considered before diminishing a building that misfits its contemporary role.

This graduation project is focusing on and looking for the function and role of the future national bank, as an outcome of its current physical and social situation. The site of the project is the National Bank of Belgium, located in Brussels.
For its program, the bank has a public function and a reception hall, but mainly consist of office spaces and meeting rooms within a, with security line protected, area. The traditional program, like pressing and storing money, is already replaced to new buildings outside of the city center for better efficiency and land use. Next to that, the public and office program is losing its role due to digitalization. Organisational and programmatic changes are already made, but the architecture is still in its former state. Therefore, it is important to seek for new possibilities, and looking to the future role and image of the bank, whilst learning of the history of the Bank and its site.

The project rethinks the City Hotel and its accommodation of tourists within Amsterdam. Additionally, the building answers the question of urban densification and building within the historic centre of Amsterdam and revises the social precepts of privilege inherent to the elite architecture of the ‘Binnengasthuis’ area.

‘De Nieuwe Doelen’ constitutes in a social framework functioning as a collective house for diversity, effectively acting as a charitable institution, where twenty four rooms offer a place to students disadvantaged by their ethnicity and the white, secular tradition that exists within University of Amsterdam. The underprivileged citizens are welcomed to build on a grounded community where they are empowered by the architecture and grandeur of the context and recognised as an integral part of the campus, solidifying their position within the university.

The building enacts as a public platform, resonating notions of discourse inherent to the direct historic context. The project uses the fundamental models of the ‘Intimate City’ as a dogmatic approach; the ‘Venetian Campo’, the ‘Urban Loggia’ and the ‘Vienese Café’ inform the collectivity, informality and public permeability of the project. The notions of hospitality and charity, inherent to the morphology of the context, clarify in the social and spatial characteristics of the contextual model of ‘het Gasthuishof’, the Dutch analogical model to the ‘Venetian Campo’, which are inscribed into the tenet of the building.

‘De Nieuwe Doelen’ opens up a sequence of courtyard spaces that exist within the morphology of the ‘Binnengasthuis’ area. The building naturally extends the colonial architecture of the context, yet it reimagines the characteristics of privilege by creating an open and continuous public interior, existing of the continuous topology of the ground floor and basement and a highly permeable plinth to the context. The community floors rise above the gravitas of the construct; a formal public room of discourse where a telescopic seating system constitutes a sense of fluidity, aiding its multiplicity. By agency of intricately organised thresholds, an open and continuous interior is organised, existing of a collective gallery, as a place of residing, and contiguous rooms of privacy, resembling the highly informing model of the Gentlemen’s Club. Throughout the construct, integrated furniture in both collective and private spaces, establish instruments of appropriation. The formality of the social construct, enacting as a blank canvas, awaits appropriation of its inhabitants, awakening the significance of ‘De Nieuwe Doelen’.

The project sets out to investigate what the architectural model could be like that offers shelter to parentless refugee children that now live in camps throughout Europe. To offer the children the prospect of a brighter future, the building sets out to create a safe and protective environment, one that allows them to withdraw and cope with trauma, but also presents means to build new relationships and interaction with the child's new setting.

Therefore the project combines a public nursery and after school care to be used by the refugee children as well as local kids, which acts both as a means of interaction between kids of differing cultures as well as a financial model to fund the private quarters of the building, where refugee children are offered temporary stay until they find a loving foster family.

The project seeks to stabilise and reverse the degradation of the pier’s walls so it remains available to its users. The structure acts as a stabilizer for this piece of land, so as not to let it disappear.
The light structure takes inspiration from a bird perched on a branch, a metaphor for young Amsterdammer’s searching for their place in the city. I relate this lightness with the temporality of a youth hostel, where young people come and go, renting cabins within the structure and using the campsite on the pier.
The project encompasses a conversation between the new structure, which encases floors and spaces, and the existing structure of the pier. The essence of the project is showcased in an investigation of the structure, which is expressed as a piece of architecture in its own right.

The topic of the studio, “city hotel”, concerns sustainability and hospitality at the same time, aiming to provide a temporary living space within the doughnut model. Since the location of the project is the historical center of Amsterdam which has been largely affected by tourism and become less livable in recent years, the project aims to design for the community and especially for vulnerable groups including the elderly and children.
The project is a respite care hotel locating next to Nieuwmarkt square. It weaves into the context by collaborating with its surroundings to improve the well-being of the whole community. On the one hand, the project provides short-term stays for people in need of care to release the stress of informal caregivers. On the other hand, the project benefits the community by reclaiming the existing infrastructural space as a playful urban space.

This years graduation project is set In the city of Amsterdam. A city that has seen an exponential rise in tourist numbers and housing prices. Resulting in a city wide gentrification that made the city undesirable and too expensive for citizens to live in. In an attempt to deal with this the city adopted the doughnut economic model of Kate Raworth in an attempt to create a more inclusive and sustainable city. And with in this context we where asked to design a hotel. Something i found quite ironical, as locals see tourists rather go than that their numbers grow. However that what the crux of the project was. Trying to find a solution where the problem lies, and come up with a new kind of hotel that does more that is short stay counter part now dominating the city. One that contributes to the city instead of taking advantage. For the location of my hotel I choose MR. Visserplein. A central located site, between the old city and the golden belt extension. However its piece of city that is very undefined and where people rather go than stay. The projects complexity lay in two questions. the first being, How can the hotel adapted itself to the mix urban context consisting of pre-20^th- century build buildings (such as, The Mozes and Aron church, the Portuguese synagogue, and the architecture academy, and the 21^st-century film academy)? And how can the hotel deal with the modernist project of the city of Amsterdam that left a subterranean structure under ground? The result is a city block that mends the urban context/tissue of this pieces of Amsterdam and gives a new function to the tunnel underground.

I researched the city planning history of Amsterdam and the specific model of the residential hotel. The research on the characteristics of the Amsterdam canal house and the hofje inspired my proposal of the city hotel. Both the spatial sequence and the operating mode will refer to the traditional hofje. The hotel can be considered as a part of the Raepenhofje and can strengthen the relationship with this community. Like traditional hofjes in Amsterdam, my hotel can also be operated by charity organizations such as art foundation, aiming to provide high-quality studio space and related facilities for artists. The hotel rents out studios to artists and provides them with accommodation.

Jordaan’s Driehoekstraat Hostel targets a group of people that are intent on learning more about material consumption and shared knowledge potentials for more sustainable living. The building and its architecture aims to underline the sustainable values that will lead Amsterdam and various other European cities into a new circular economy. Its guests will co-habit and join together as part of a learning experience that explores a new route into
sustainable tourism.

A strong emphasis on reuse of building products and materials is imperative to show the public and necessary organisations that there is an urgent need for a shift in the resource efficiency discourse in the Netherlands. By reusing and repurposing different elements and materials, buildings, such as Hotels or Hostels, can be justified for their implementation into city models. The chosen site (Driehoekstraat, Jordaan) was intentional to show how such a building could operate and influence the conditions of a neighbourhood and its attitude towards its new economic system.

Stenen Hoofd City Hotel together with a wetland create a new conditions on a previously not maintained pier in Amsterdam. Based on the Doughnut Economics and Hotel Typology research this intervention responds to the local ecological lens of the Amsterdam's Doughnut Model. Biodiversity of the site is enriched by the wetlands flora and fauna while the City Hotel helps to support Stenen Hoofd economically. The project aims to provide a new quality to the pier and its users.

After 2000 there has been a great globalization and enormous development in Istanbul. Which has ensured a strong economic growth, but had some negative social influences. With “Kentsel donusum” (urban transformation) projects, deprived neighborhood have been transformed. The inhabitants of these neighborhoods were forced to move somewhere outside of Istanbul, an example of “gentrification” projects. An advantage of this Kentsel donusum was that these people could live in a new home. But in addition, they had to build a completely new social life, adjust their daily habits, their school ,work, etc. An example of this type of neighborhood is Balat, where projects have been designed since 1980. None of these projects have been realized due to the removing of the historical and social identity. Balat is an old neighborhood where Greek Christians and Spanish Jews lived. Over time, other migrants such as Romanians Bulgarians and now Syrians have come to live. An old resident of Balat describes his neighborhood as the neighborhood where you learn the real life and learn to survive. The colorful neighborhood is characterized as a deprived area and criminality. But Balat is a neighborhood with harmony between the inhabitants of today and earlier and where even the old ateliers of Istanbul still exist. Most buildings are in poor condition and are not strong enough to survive the expected earthquake. Also, the public buildings and public spaces are not maintained and out of use. The aim of this project is to design collective rooms that can be an example of how you can protect the social and historical identity of Balat and to expand the social and educational possibilities for all the layers in the society.