In the format of a round-table discussion, we bring together voices from different department, sections and roles within TU Delft to explore questions arising from the current issue of the magazine. Unlike the elusive concept of atopia or the grim reality of dystopia, utopia is a well-known vision of an ideal society, challenging us to rethink perfection in our complex world. As we delve into this timeless theme, each participant has provided their unique perspective, creating a mosaic of insights and examples that illuminate the aspirational landscapes of an imagined perfect world.@en

Numerous studies show the benefits of wilderness to humans and the environment. Therefore, preserving and developing wilderness areas within urban settings are crucial to combat and mitigate challenges like biodiversity decline resulting from urbanization. According to previous studies, human-wilderness interactions can be contradictory, e.g., relaxing while feeling anxious and insecure. How individuals perceive and comprehend intentional urban wilderness, what dimensions contribute to their perceptions, and how these dimensions influence the visitors’ perceptions remain to be investigated. Selecting Jiangyangfan Ecological Park (Hangzhou, China) as a survey case, this research investigates if and how people perceive intentionally incorporated and designed urban wilderness and how various dimensions of attributes shape their perceptions. This study identified three dimensions that may contribute to visitors’ perceptions of the urban wilderness; namely, cognitive landscape attributes, perceived environmental attributes, and their visitation experience. A mixed-method approach was employed using a questionnaire, mental maps, and environmental behaviour observation as diverse data sources to assess visitors’ urban wilderness perceptions and comprehension from the three dimensions. Results indicate a high propensity to visit the park as an urban wilderness. Our findings also revealed that visitors’ perceptual environmental attributes, e.g., the existence of vegetation and waterbodies and encounters with wild animals, as well as their visit experiences, e.g., their satisfaction with the visit and their motivation for experiencing nature, significantly influence their perceptions. In contrast, prior knowledge and experience-based cognition of urban wilderness attributes showed no significant influence on their perceptions. Moreover, attributes like plant diversity, water visibility, and plant density emerged as critical factors shaping visitors’ perceptions. These findings underscore the importance of considering visitors’ on-site perception of environmental attributes and actual visit experience when assessing the value and acceptability of urban wilderness areas. Future implications of this study for urban wilderness planning and management were also discussed.@en

The provision of vitality in neighbourhoods has become a prominent issue on the urban agenda, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to its profound impact on the well-being of urban residents. While the foundational principles of vitality are well covered in the literature, with a growing number of empirical studies measuring it in different contexts, neighbourhoods are not always designed accordingly. The mass housing areas from the previous century are even on the verge of demolition due to a lack of vitality. This highlights a gap between the theory and the methods for translating it into practice. Although practical interventions to sustain or enhance neighbourhood vitality exist, a comprehensive toolkit addressing the foundational principles is needed. In this regard, this research examines exemplary projects and strategies aimed at promoting neighbourhood vitality, focusing on Rotterdam. It employs the pattern language methodology to translate these novel and practical tools from specific cases into generic design patterns. The retrieved list of design patterns for promoting vitality, varying in scale and temporality, serves as a framework for both design and communication during the future revitalisation of neighbourhoods.

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The built environment significantly contributes to current socioenvironmental crises, necessitating systemic change. Circularity and the commons are re-emerging as potential pathways for such transition. A circular built environment (CBE) aims to close resource loops, but its implementation is often slow and neglects social and local aspects. The commons framework emphasizes local involvement and sustainable self-management of shared resources. However, the intersection of circularity and the commons in spatial production is underexplored. This paper explores their relationship as “innate spatial tactics,” referring to the ways ordinary people interact with the built environment to meet their daily needs. Through a literature review, we developed a conceptual framework of “circular commoning,” encompassing three dimensions: resources, people, and governance. We applied this framework to analyze 16 empirical examples of circular commoning in contemporary urban settings. Our research shows that circularity and the commons are closely linked and mutually beneficial. Circular commoning involves diverse resources, changing social roles, and innovative governance. We identified three forms of circular commoning as innate spatial tactics: building circular, circular use of space, and creating spaces for circular activities. The framework developed here provides a basis for further action research. The practice review demonstrates that circular commoning is not only a distant utopian ideal but is enacted daily in diverse urban contexts. Such often-overlooked innate spatial tactics can offer valuable lessons for pathways toward a CBE involving principles of a circular society. Additionally, they can help shape new narratives and channel hope for practical progress towards circular futures.@en

Visie voor de TU Delft Campus, locatie Delft.@en

A vision for the TU Delft campus, location Delft, 2040@en

In rapidly growing urban contexts, water plays a pivotal role in the transitions the urban environment goes through to sustain the quality of life of its population. Spatial planning and design are essential for the facilitation and manifestation of such transitions. Focusing on Bhuj, a rapidly growing Indian city in a hot arid desert climate, its crucial yet changing sensitivity to urban water flows over time is assessed. The concept of water sensitivity is coined as a goal to pursue by the Water-Sensitive Urban Design approach. In India, however, much of the urban design and development processes are of an unplanned and informal nature, seemingly inhibiting the water sensitivity of urban transitions. Reviewing spatial planning paradigms and their manifestation in space in Bhuj over time, however, brings to light a pre-existing water sensitivity. Yet it also shows a shift from the supply security-oriented ingenious watershed expansion to catastrophe-steered and urban expansion-driven water system negligence. Review and discussion of past and present urban water transitions and management points out drivers, barriers, and their interrelationships, to enable and advance water-sensitive urban development tied to local history, traditional knowledge, and context specificities.@en

Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) identifies water sensitivity as a goal for cities to strive for and develop towards. Certain cities may face rapidly changing socioeconomic and urban dynamics, or lack of data and documentation, greater than those in which WSUD has been conceptualized. Landscape-informed, design-based fieldwork methods of walking, observing, describing and drawing can help to understand how hydrological systems are linked to local water cultures and practices. This shifts the definition of water sensitivity away from a universal ideal future scenario to one that is mutable and determined by local qualities. The case of Kozhikode, India, illustrates how fieldwork and its forms of representation, with an emphasis on the design processes that WSUD calls for to be operationalized, can shed light on urban hydro-cultural dimensions. These dimensions extend hydrological indicators by incorporating cultural insights to be integrated into WSUD, thereby enhancing the context specificity and appropriateness of the concept. As such, design methodologies and the hydro-cultural dimension offer valuable contributions to WSUD and can facilitate its adoption worldwide.@en

Interviewen is een veelvoorkomende wetenschappelijke methode on informatie te verzamelen. Belangrijk is dat het interview inhoudelijk goed aansluit bij jouw ontwerpopgave of onderzoek. Daarnaast helpt het enorm om te werken met een systematische aanpak bij het vastleggen, ordenen, analyseren en rapporteren van de informatie uit je interviews. En natuurlijk is een goede gespreksvoorbereiding belangrijk. De interviewmethode omvat drie fasen: 1. Voorbereiding en randvoorwaarden 2. Uitvoering, gespreksvoering en vastleggen data, en 3. Uitwerking, analyse en rapportage. Interviews zijn zeer geschikt voor het in kaart brengen van percepties, ervaringen, opvattingen, verwachtingen, en het ophalen van kennis uit de praktijk. Om de complexiteit van datgene wat je onderzoekt te begrijpen, is het van belang dat je in het interview zelf flexibel kunt opereren. Gesprekken verlopen nog al eens anders dan tijdens de voorbereiding wordt verondersteld. Dit hoofdstuk biedt concrete handvaten voor alle onderdelen van het proces.@en

While the wilderness conservation movement continues to grow on an international scale, a wilderness conservation system is steadily being established in China. However, as urbanization continues to accelerate, the exploitation of natural wilderness spaces in cities is inevitable. How to preserve and design wilderness as much as possible within the expanding city limits has become an issue of concern for urban planners and landscape architects in China. After reviewing the background and research progress of urban wilderness-related topics, the practical experience of urban wilderness in the Netherlands is explored. Three representative cases of different scales and types are selected to analyze the background, design considerations and site functions respectively. The four principles of nature first, wilderness protection, human intervention control and public participation are summarized, and design strategies for urban wilderness landscape at different scales in Chinese context are extracted, providing international experience for the construction of Chinese wilderness system.@en

Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) offers an approach for alternative spatial organisation of cities and infrastructures fit to address urban and climatic challenges. However, its relevance in all contexts is questioned and transferability concerns arise when mainstreamed. Instead of considering water sensitivity as guiding concept for the ultimate state of an urban environment, this article argues that water sensitivity is a context- and culture-specific variable, dictated and confined by other site variables. As such, WSUD implies an interaction between water sensitivity as context and concept, in which context shapes concept and concept provides focus on how to address context. Sensitivity therefore refers to the thoughtfulness of reading a context, highlighting to what extent site-specific urban conditions can be identified to be considered water-sensitive. This understanding enables local urban designers and water managers to appropriate and engage in WSUD fit for the cultural, socio-economic, and physical context.@en

De TU-campus is in de loop der tijd letterlijk en figuurlijk verschoven van universiteit in de stad, naar een ‘enigszins zelfstandige sector’ (Van de Broek, 1971) en vervolgens naar een letterlijk klassiek campusmodel (gebouwen in het veld) ten zuiden van de Kruithuisweg (fig. 1). Deze ruimtelijke visies volgden het veranderende programma, de ambities van de universiteit en invloeden van buiten. De sporen van deze ontwikkelingen zijn zichtbaar in de oude binnenstad tot aan de stadsrand in Zuid. In dit essay beschouwen we de positie van de faculteit Bouwkunde aan de Julianalaan binnen zijn stedenbouwkundige context.@en

Observeren is een van de meest basale methode van onderzoek; in de sociale wetenschappen, maar zeker ook binnen de ingenieurswetenschappen (techniek en ontwerp). Maar hoe doe je dat eigenlijk? Het eenvoudige antwoord; dit gaat vanzelf. Wij zijn de hele dag door aan het waarnemen met alle zintuigen. Onze hersenen krijgen per seconden 4,2 miljoen prikkels van onze zintuigen, maar ook van ons lichaam (honger, dorst, pijn). Van al deze informatie bereiken er 5 tot 9 prikkels ons bewustzijn (Miller, 1956). Observeren in onderzoek en ontwerp vraagt dus enige focus om niet te verzanden in alle beschikbare informatie. In dit hoofdstuk gaan we in op hoe we waarnemen, wat we kunnen waarnemen in de (on)gebouwde omgeving en hoe je gericht en bewust observatietechnieken kunt inzetten om meer van je planlocatie te weten te komen. Daarnaast bespreken wij hoe je waarnemingen kan vastleggen als ingang voor het ontwerp(en). In dit hoofdstuk gaat het ook over het waarnemen van de sociale omgeving, naast het waarnemen van gebouwde en natuurlijke omgeving.@en

De visie gemeenschappelijke voorzieningen is tussen oktober 2020 en maart 2021 ontwikkeld in opdracht van de stuurgroep Gemeenschappelijke Voorzieningen van de TU Delft. De opdracht was de volgende: ‘het ontwikkelen van een langetermijnvisie waarmee beslissingen over de gemeenschappelijke voorzieningen genomen kunnen worden’. Deze publicatie geeft een richting aan het bepalen van de wenselijkheid van voorzieningen en voor het nemen van beslissingen over de huisvesting van deze voorzieningen. De visie doet uitspraken over de wijze waarop de gebouwde omgeving de gemeenschappelijke voorzieningen optimaal kan faciliteren, over het combineren van programma’s binnen de TU Delft en de samenwerking met organisaties op en buiten de campus. We spreken hier doelbewust over ‘een richting’. Voor een visie waarmee werkelijk knopen kunnen worden doorgehakt is een groter kader nodig. Dit kader is een eenduidige visie op de campus, een visie die niet alleen over de gemeenschappelijke voorzieningen gaat, maar ook de wensen en behoeften van studenten, het wonen op de campus, de relatie met de stad, duurzaamheid, ondernemingen op de campus en alles wat de campus de komende decennia nog kan gaan bieden beschrijft. Op dit moment is de visie op de campus verspreid over diverse studies en beleidsadviezen. Als kader voor de visie op de gemeenschappelijke voorzieningen is er een aanzet tot een integrale visie geformuleerd, in de vorm van een vijftien punten document: Manifest 015. Ook een samenhangend ruimtelijk model was nodig en is door ons op basis van het Ruimtelijk Ontwikkelperspectief uitgewerkt en aangescherpt. Deze rapportage geeft vervolgens in hoofdstuk 4 een visie op de gemeenschappelijke voorzieningen zoals die nu vast te stellen is, hierbij bespreken we de belangrijkste thema’s voor een visie en aanbevelingen voor de verschillende voorzieningen op de campus. In hoofdstuk 5 geven wij tenslotte de aanbevelingen voor een vervolg.@en

Informal face-to-face communication and chance encounters encourage knowledge sharing. This Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) examines how well a new building of a Dutch University Institute (DI) supported interaction and perceived privacy among faculty members. The study is designed as a qualitative research project with in-depth interviews among faculty members before and after relocation into the new building. The transparent and centrally organized floor plan supported face-to-face communication but generated a lack of privacy for faculty members. Not all perceived affordances of the design were planned. Lack of visual privacy and the sense of being controlled by others were related to the hierarchical position of teachers in this Higher Education Institute (HEI) between students and the dean, which caused tension and diminished their well-being.

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The aim of design education is that students learn to think and act like designers. However, the focus in the design studio is mainly on the design product, whereas the ‘why and how’ of the design process are barely addressed. A risk of learning by performing real-life tasks without addressing the skills involved, that is, without receiving appropriate support and guidance, is that learners are overwhelmed by the complexity of the tasks.
To make the design process explicit, a conceptual framework is developed in earlier research. This paper reports a first evaluation how articulation of basic designerly1 skills with the help of a conceptual tool is perceived by students and teachers and whether it changes students’ conceptions of the design process and their self-efficacy.
In two exploratory case studies, questionnaires give insight. The first is a short intervention in which student’s perception is measured. In the second case study the design process was addressed in the design studio. It measured changes in student’s conceptions and self- efficacy. Also, insight is provided in teacher’s perception of working with the framework.
The results of these exploratory studies indicate a positive effect. The teachers involved perceived the framework as a structuring factor during the tutoring sessions, for both teacher and students. Students did perceive explanation of the design process as being helpful. A change in students’ design conceptions and an increase in self-efficacy is seen.
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The aim of this commentary is to present the position that a pattern language approach facilitates, even catalyzes (comparative) learning in planning for young professionals. This position builds on literature and is supported by the research work of six MSc Urbanism graduation projects, in which the students adopted a pattern language approach. Additionally, these alumni have been asked in retrospect to evaluate their pattern language experiences for their learning. The students say their pattern languages give focus, enrich the knowledge field, are flexible, and they do not prescribe what to do, or how to make a plan. Students see and appreciate the value of the simple, yet thoughtful structure of a pattern with both visual and verbal information. Additionally, they observe that this method enables the connection between disciplines, between theory and practice, and between stakeholders, and that, potentially, it is a helpful tool for all kinds of stakeholders. They refer to the method as a tool for communication, a tool for design and analysis, and a tool for learning.@en

Previous research has shown that the urban environment could influence people's behavior and wellbeing. However, little is still known about how the objective and subjective measures of the momentary experience of urban public spaces could contribute to the satisfaction with the urban environment of cities, which eventually could influence the momentary and long-term subjective wellbeing (SWB) of citizens. Therefore, the aim of this research is to gain insight into how momentary experience and satisfaction with the urban public space could contribute to the SWB of citizens, and thereby control for personal, contextual characteristics. Relationships were simultaneously analyzed using a multi-level path analysis approach based on a sample of 1056 momentary experiences of urban public spaces reported by 161 citizens of the urban area Eindhoven, The Netherlands. The results showed that personality and personal characteristics are highly important for explaining long-term SWB and subsequently long-term SWB positively influences momentary SWB (the degree of feeling secure, comfortable, happy and annoyed) together with the momentary satisfaction of urban public space characteristics. In addition, contextual characteristics, such as time/day and distance to facilities are important for explaining people's momentary SWB. Policy makers and urban planners can use these results when developing policy and designing a healthy, attractive, livable and safe living environment for citizens.

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The purpose of the architectural design studio is that students learn to think and act like designers. However, communication between teachers and students seems to be problem- atic. Teachers barely seem to explain how designers work, which may be confusing for stu- dents. To learn professional reasoning processes and strategies, different teaching activi- ties are involved, such as modelling, coaching, scaffolding, reflection, exploration and artic- ulation. In the design studio it seems tradition that teachers only ask questions, while not articulating the design process.
This paper focuses on the research question of whether teachers in architectural design education articulate the main ‘designerly’ actions and skills, performed by expert design- ers, and if so, to what extent and in which manner? To answer these questions video-re- cordings of 13 tutorial sessions are analysed with the help of an educational framework of five generic elements. The framework consists of the basic design process actions and skills, and is specifically developed as a vocabulary for making the design process explicit and to train students in the design process elements. The main conclusion is that teachers refer to the design product in an implicit way. They leave it to the students to discover the structure and components of the design process more or less by themselves.@en

A fascinating and rich landscape of personal views and approaches can be seen in architectural design and in architectural design education. This variation may be confusing for students. This paper focuses on the question: is the framework of generic elements that we developed for explicating the design process helpful to compare the differences in architectural design approaches? The results of interviewing a variety of 15 architectural, urban and landscape designers show all kinds of personal approaches that have a set of five underlying generic elements in common. Therefore, the framework may be helpful for teachers and students to describe these personal approaches and may help students in understanding differences and similarities and in finding out what their own personal approach may be.@en