The construction industry is under growing pressure to reduce carbon emissions in response to climate change and regulatory demands, particularly in the Netherlands, which has set a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030. Timber construction emerges as a promising solution, offering a more sustainable alternative to traditional materials like concrete, given its lower carbon footprint and its capacity to capture and store carbon. At present the domination of concrete and steel as traditional heavy construction material in new buildings poses the underutilization of using the new timber innovative technique within the Dutch residential construction industry, respectively a small market share of 3%. Therefore despite its potential, timber construction remains underutilized, and asks for research on several socio-technical challenges that are needed to advance widespread adoption.

To examine the factors affecting the large-scale implementation of timber building practices in the Dutch residential sector, a Technological Innovation System (TIS) framework is applied. By combining a literature review, case studies, and semi-structured interviews, key socio-technical elements and market actors influencing timber adoption are identified. Both embodied and operational carbon emissions need to be tackled, with the shift toward timber materials offering a significant opportunity to reduce the environmental impact of buildings. However, the construction industry and its actors remain cautious, often perceiving timber as too complex, risky, and lacking in standardization.

This study reveals that the socio-technical factors of leadership, management strategies, and business processes play a crucial role in supporting the transition to timber construction. In particular, project management and commercialization emerge as essential drivers of success. To help organizations prioritize their actions, a quadrant matrix is developed, categorizing strategies based on their level of control and impact on the success of timber projects. Moreover, the findings point to the necessity of integrated design, industrialization, and standardization as key approaches to overcoming the barriers hindering timber adoption. Practical recommendations include fostering open communication within organizations, clearly defining responsibilities, and implementing risk assessment strategies. Looking ahead, future research should explore the operational phases of timber construction and further refine the TIS framework, particularly by examining how socio-technical factors evolve over time. Continuous learning and adaptation are highlighted as vital components for driving innovation in the early adaptors phase of timber building practices.

In Moerwijk, a post-war-neighbourhood of The Hague, a large regional distribution pipe for a heat network is being constructed. This proposal aims to provide for a local heat network considering community needs, urban potential and technological requirements to create multilayered value for the neighbourhood and its residents. By constructing the pipeline above ground, costs and effort on construction and maintenance are reduced, trees can be spared, while spatial and social interventions and routing along the line become possible. By using empathy in design and community immersion as a research tool, needs, challenges and points of interest are identified and enhanced with spatial additions. These points of interest lie at the ends of the pipelines, where existing programs are made visible and opened up to the diverse users of the neighbourhood. The result is a strategy with generic and context-specific elements for the post-war neighbourhood. It can be used to design sustainable infrastructure that is intertwined with public space, local community and social activities, creating functional, urban and community by turning industrial heat to social warmth.

Becoming the Ouroboros investigates the spatial values of Boca La Caja (BLC), an informal settlement in Panama City. Often cast in a negative light due to challenges like the difficulty of law enforcement, the common lack of fundamental services, and low structural resiliency, informal urban landscapes provide a low barrier entry to the vast opportunities of cities. Further the production of space is governed by hyper local social agreements and overlapping networks of connection. The urban landscape grows sequentially with the community, as structures densify, so too do relationships and cultural expressions one step at a time. As the site has reached its geographic limit, Becoming the Ouroboros proposes the mobilisation of this process of intertwined spatial and social improvement, within a closed system. To continue evolving the community must like the Ouroboros consume itself. To achieve this, I propose the implementation of a ‘Tinker Station’ designed to turn the professions of the built environment into a public service that can be leveraged by the community to improve BLC. This is located in an aging vegetable oil factory on the site, which is consumed akin to a mining operation and used to better the suburb. The existing community can therefore leverage the expertise, spaces and tools provided by the Tinker Station, along with existing material on the site to improve infrastructure, housing stock, and urban spaces within the existing cycles of informal development. This process is just a beginning, once the factory is completely transfigured, the resources needed to better the community are pulled from their own structures and houses, materials are transformed, and the site continues to incrementally better itself through its self-cannibalism. Becoming the ouroboros.

Our endless pursuit of precision in measures both geographical and temporal has destroyed the ability to get lost, to be curious of what is beyond the horizon, to sight monsters and live to tell the tale! Modern society is not without its own mythos however: By making real the coordinate grid, the project generates modern monsters, and a sense of wonder for the drunken variousness, incorrigible plurality, and sudden beauty of the world that cannot be measured. This paper as an experiment on the form of the essay itself seeks to circumnavigate its own content. Always regarding the dangers of the measure and precision from the outskirts, without risking collision by claiming to execute such precision itself. In its structure, pages of the essay may fall into place like leaves of a tree in autumn, to be read as it has been written: fragmentary, leaping from one page to the next, getting lost in its content, in order to find one’s self again. The project that has emerged from this research positions 97 follies in the Pacific Ocean of Panama in order to subvert and question the measure, and embrace the unfathomable nature of the surface.

This graduation project explores the often-overlooked ecological damage caused by large man-made landscapes. It focuses on creating architecture that critiques, analyzes, and suggests new norms for evolving environments and ecologies. The project blends scientific knowledge with architectural design, using data from environmental science disciplines to make the space an educational tool.
Living Archive aims to break the isolation of Barro Colorado Island. It is an extended space, accessible to more visitors, enhancing the knowledge of a local unique ecology. It introduces a third mediating scale that addresses both small (micro) and large (macro) environmental aspects. The design features spaces that reveal ecological conditions and promote direct sensory experiences.
Inspired by scientific methods and Donna Haraway’s "Situated Knowledge," the project uses architecture as a tool to study Gatun Lake and Barro Colorado Island. Through various experiments and iterations, the project developed into a response driven by curiosity and site-specific needs.
The final structure, a "living archive," marks the space with unique floral features in each room and enhances natural processes like rainwater collection and sun path movement. It includes a series of rooms accessible by boats, creating a new connection between scientists and local inhabitants. This shared space fosters dialogue and a deeper understanding of the environment.
In summary, this project offers a new architectural approach to addressing ecological trauma, integrating scientific collaboration, and creating a dynamic and inclusive environment.

This project explores the dynamic interplay between space, time, and body in the Darién Gap in Panama, a dangerous transit territory for migrants journeying to North America. As a significant departure from everyday landscapes, here, migrants' interactions with the territory are intensified, where many face death before reaching their destination. In 2023 alone, 141 known deaths were reported, a figure that likely underrepresents the true toll due to the significant challenges in recovering bodies.

Addressing the need for a dignified end, the project proposes a living memorial through three stages: homemaking, housekeeping, and memorialization. Homemaking involves migrants performing burial rituals—collecting, washing, digging, burying, and marking—as a comforting farewell to the deceased, creating a permanent resting "home" in the territory. Housekeeping entails border patrols documenting and maintaining these sites, using a rope system to track burial sequences, tree growth, and body decomposition. Memorialization integrates the deceased and their grave markers into the territory's natural cycle, forming a living tribute that evolves over time.

Through the accumulation of countless journeys, the memorial illustrates the profound impact of migrants as agents of change in the built environment. It serves as a model for architectural responses to shared tragedies, offering relevance extending beyond Panama.

My project is an adaptive reuse architectural project of an existing warehouse supermarket into a film production house sited in Lasnamäe, the Soviet built district of Tallinn, Estonia. The design encompasses all programs necessary for the complete film making process, including a 2164 sq.m soundstage with a clear height of 14m. Besides being an infrastructure, one third of the building area is dedicated to the public with programs such as a winter garden, exhibition spaces, café and restaurant. The Southern façade of the building also acts as a cinema screen for a drive-in theatre in its expansive car parking area.

P5 presentation of Hadassah Fidder in the studio of Methods of Analysis and Imagination.

This project investigated ways to reinvent and reinsert value into functionless, unimportant objects and places. The site chosen - Maleva Quarter, was formerly a brick manufacturing facility that was part of the Soviet military production ecosystem in Kopli. After Estonia’s independence, the factory facilities were fragmented and left behind as a collection of odd spaces. Thus, a recycled brick factory was proposed to reintroduce the material flows that existed in the past and insert relevance to the surrounding fringe spaces.

The methodology utilised was urban mining, which involves reclaiming construction waste and turning it into productive architectural components. The design exploration was centred around available materials in the area, resulting in a material-focused design, much like spolia - where the structure of old buildings drives the project’s visual and structural expression. Four building strategies were outlined depending on the structural systems of the existing buildings, the desired spatial quality and the characteristics of waste materials catalogued.

In conclusion, this project aims to encourage a more sustainable and resource-efficient practice in architecture amidst the depletion of building resources. Adopting this mindset could lead to more resilient and adaptive urban environments that honour their past while innovatively preparing for the future.

This graduation project for the studio "A Matter of Scale" at the Technical University of Delft addresses an architectural intervention in Tallinn's coastal zone, focusing on the ruins of the Pirita Convent. Established by St. Bridget’s Rule merchants, the Gothic-style convent operated from 1407 to 1575 before being destroyed. Today, it serves as a tourist site and event venue, necessitating temporary structures for functionality. This project proposes a sensitive, year-round architectural intervention that respects the historical elements while introducing a community music school and event space.

Four key themes guided the design process: historical connection, spatial organisation, sensory experience, and local (natural) materials. Historical research informed the layout, proportions, and functions of new additions, preserving the convent's essence while incorporating contemporary elements. Spatial organisation considered visitor flow and accessibility, ensuring logical routing and wheelchair access. Sensory experience focused on sight, sound, and touch, maintaining the visual prominence of the ruins, optimizing acoustics for the music school, and preserving the limestone's texture. Local natural materials were prioritized to minimize environmental impact and support the local economy, while also following the original St. Bridget Rules.

The project illustrates integrating ruins with new structures, balancing preservation and modern use, and offers a practical example for similar historical sites. By engaging with Tallinn's community and stakeholders, this design aims to enhance the cultural and functional value of the Pirita Convent, presenting a vision for its potential as a year-round public space.

This paper delves into the potential of local and nature-inclusive cultivation to serve as a sustainable source for biobased building materials. The research is projected on a case study of the design of an estate house at country estate Nederrijk, to address the application of such agricultural and constructive practices.

The results cover available methods of nature-inclusive agriculture, by conducting a thorough literature study on nature-inclusive agriculture methods, with a focus on intercropping, season rotation, and buffer zones. In addition, a thorough location analysis of the design location Nederrijk will provide data on soil, vegetation, and climate conditions to understand the unique context for potential cultivation. This information is combined into a matrix that outlines viable biobased building materials for cultivation at Nederrijk, considering availability and suitability.

The findings result in the observation that for the case-study Nederrijk, a variety of available tree species are most suitable for construction and finishing. The use of grass is optimal for insulation. These results are quantified and visualised.

The thematic research aims to explore the potential of locally sourced building materials, with a particular focus on agriculture as a resource for biobased construction materials. It investigates the possibility of future farmers transitioning from solely food production to also providing sustainable building materials. Thereby answering the thematic research question:

To what extent can the local and nature-inclusive cultivation of crops and tree varieties be utilized as a sustainable and viable source of biobased building materials for the construction of an estate house at the country estate Nederrijk?

The extraordinary appears as meaningless in the lack of the ordinary. The etymology of ordinary sheds light on the orderly; referring to patterns or traits taken to be typical in the behavior of a social group. Since banality finds its way into every corner and situation using automatization processes and normal making mechanisms; it defines the majorities; nonetheless, it is the backbone that can save the extraordinary from becoming kitsch by rerouting it to the more tangible roots it stemmed from, marking a subtlety that defines the boundary between science fictions, and in-depth surreal practices. Banal Dreamscape; is a reflection, and research into the coexistence of the two contradicting forces, and the subtle combination of them using an architectural language through the exploration of each one and them together. influenced by the cinema of David Lynch, and the Lynchian adjective the project tries to reimagine everyday spaces of Dutch suburbia by the creation of objects as products of a certain space and time among the mass-produced entities with a long-lost aura. Banal Dreamscape is a critical reflection on the homogeneity of space, activity, and users in the defined, and defended mosaics of Dutch suburbia, by introducing subtle out-of-context-ness, and a more sympatric territory in the monotonous, least potent places for wonder, seldom considered as architecture and worthy of scrutiny leftovers of suburbia.

Vinex (the fourth report on spatial planning extra), an infamous, widespread, yet successful housing solution by the Dutch Ministry of Housing in its core is a Dutch suburban solution to the housing crisis. Eight hundred thousand mass-produced housing units built in ten years dislocating middle-income families from the centers to small towns surrounding them, shapes the banal context for this project. The Vinex location Eschmarke in the municipality of Enschede in particular in this case, with its border situation, reinforcing the conflict between its neighbors and German drug tourists, called for an integration of sympatric relations to host both conventional and unconventional activities within a neighborhood and to welcome the otherness and formerly sanctioned activity in such neighborhood. The formerly nuisance became a new meaningful sub-layer for the monotone context of the neighborhood in favor of a more resilient, and robust urbanity. Thus, the garage spaces, leftover spaces, and grey zones of architecture became the host to the new activity within this region. Everyday spaces of these low-importance Sub-urban spaces became the backbone for the architectural investigation that came afterward.

An architecture invested in the uniqueness of space, and the importance of atmospheres regardless of the scale of the intervention when no pre-defined value or sublime quality is present. With an eye for the details and cherishing human tangible desires through a redefinition of architectural agents on such small scales. Banal Dreamscape is a concentrated exploration of micro-adjustments to the architectural element where every line plays a defining role, that not only goes beyond the limit of the mundane but explores limits of architecture in ways that no artificial intelligence nor mass production procedure with a focus on bigger pictures and simplification of perception can create nor value. Focusing on creating subtle, bizarre situations in familiar corners of the built environment.

Hoptille in the South-East of Amsterdam was created to foster a sense of human-scale architecture amongst the high-rise manifestation that was the Bijlmermeer project. Fourty years later this neighborhood still exists as a modest yet dense neighborhood flanked by an increasingly densifying Amsterdam.
This neighborhood is one of the more fragile areas of the city socially and economically. With new housing planned all around the region will there still be a place for everyone in the city?
To effect change the point of attention is the area where systems meet. An intermediate space between the individual and the industry or larger urban network. This project explores how cohousing can benefit Hoptille, socially, economically, and ecologically. And proposes a strategy to do this.

During the time of industrialization, the city became methodologically constructed from a repeatable pattern based on a grid. A methodology that leads to design from the large scale towards the small scale as the grid as an outline of property. Through this the industrialization of the house brought a specific kind of representation forth. A house as a machine for living that shapes the nuclear family as the diagram on which society is based. The family apartment is still what developers are trying to provide to the market where all our habitual habits are being standardized to specific commodities. One of the issues is the fact that the home is a kind of neutralized entity that we take as common sense.
Within this infrastructure, the home/apartment is viewed as a relationship from the urban condition. From this we tend to that the outline of the house/apartment, outline of the property, is the first engagement with the city. Within the borders the home is perceived as a private domain, away from the public. A space outside time, politics, and economy. Through this the home/apartment is a composition of functions with a possible range of different configuration that follows the logic of the grid.
Within this configuration of function its inhabitants can decorate the home/apartment as a form of representation of someone who lives inside the home/apartment. Which is a range of selection of objects that fits within function of the room. The décor of the home/ apartment is widely understood as a sort of memetic representation of its inhabitants, despite the obvious falsity of this. In other words, the home is a particular genre of space theoretically an infinite array of possibilities laid out, but this becomes the same through cultural appropriations.

Urban and agricultural lands occupied more than 40% of all land surface globally in 2022. Most of these areas are managed through industrial processes that deplete the soil, pollute the water, annihilate biodiversity, and contribute to runaway carbon emissions. It’s all anthropogenic sprawl. Large scale ecological and hydrological restoration, by way of transforming anthropic land use, is essential if we hope to prevent further climate catastrophe.
Focusing specifically on soil health would have implications that reverberate throughout the entire ecosystem. Soil stores more carbon worldwide than is contained in all plant biomass above ground. Healthy soil prevents erosion and mitigates drought and flood due to its ability to absorb and store high quantities of water. Soil is a living composition of multispecies entanglements that determines the viability of plant and animal life above ground. Humans are agents in soil production as much as ants, worms, bacteria and fungus, and thus locate our place within these systems of exchange, rather than without.
Gunkspace is a methodology that demonstrates how agroforestry principles that promote decentralized modes of soil care infrastructure can be integrated into urban and agricultural areas with the hydrological basin serving as a scaling device that zooms in to the narrowest street and all the way out to the entire planet: it’s all connected! What’s more, it can all be done within the existing frameworks that govern much of our anthropocentric space today — in the interstices where gunk already accrues or where it could.
The first case study is the Matanza-Riachuelo river basin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is the most polluted waterway in the country. In other words, if this basin can be restored, any basin can be.

The acceleration of the sea level rise will have an immediate global impact, especially on the Delta works. This projection increases the challenge for flood protection strategies and the existing flood barriers that currently lack adaptation for the higher water level. As an opportunity from the negative outcome of climate change and the most extensive maintenance period of the Delta works. This design research initiates by considering the further innovative stage of the flood defense system in Zeeland. Either way of strengthening the hydraulic systems, removing the flood barriers for environmental respect, or adapting both directions with the surrounding and biodiversity concerns.

This paper studies three crucial phasing investigations about the Delta works: the principle and life cycle, the alteration of the biodiversity, and multi-functionality. The research indicated two sides of the outcomes, leading to the methodology of the integration between the typology and methods of dam, locks, and storm surge barriers to create diversity in the specific context of Oosterscheldekering. Together with the multi-functionality of the new architecture, that could be a solution for the future adaptation of existing flood barriers.

Increasing density of housing in postwar neighbourhoods can simultaneously help in reducing housing shortages, address social-economic issues and enable a 2000-watt-society. Shifting household compositions have seen household sizes reduced and floor space usage increase, which corresponds to higher energy and material use. Reducing floor space usage per capita is a prerequisite for enabling sustainable housing. Usage of efficient principles from cooperative housing, such as sharing functions and spaces can allow for greatly reduced floor space usage per capita, without reducing quality of dwellings. The application of these principles in the postwar neighbourhood through transformation of existing buildings can be key in ensuring that they become suitable for a circular economy by 2050.

René Char's aphorism 'They installed us heirs without a will' as a cause for reflection locates the inability of the man of the 21st century to perceive what the past of the place has left behind. In general, it demonstrates the failure of our instant culture to understand the meaning of urban heritage and the dismissal of a consciousness of the past. This consciousness and its identification within the space of ruins is a prevalent theme in architecture ever since renaissance, and today it’s becoming even more pressing especially in the light of cultural provision along the New Silk Road. In the case of Istanbul, and more specifically the port of Haydarpaşa, this space is under scrutiny since the system of values that governs it is shifting drastically. Among ancient ruins and neglected industrial heritage, the city fluctuates through a process of change, in a constant state of in-between, struggling to tolerate the unresolved borders of different social, cultural, and historical layers, all of which are interwoven within the same urban narrative. How can we use architecture as a medium to bridge the gaps between the different layers of cultural and historical importance that contrast and intersect within the urban fabric? How to enable a ruin space pivotal to Istanbul’s modern and ancient history in order to become part of the landscape of a new coastal development that has been closed off to the city for decades? The design proposal aims to the prospective revisiting of the ruin space as a field of interpretation, revision and reconstruction that is reflective instead of restorative towards the potential future. It suggests a place existing so above as below the current site that reflects the contradictory forces of its very creation, the underground archeology of antiquity and the overground industrial heritage. The design phase includes the activation of the programmatic potentials informed by the intermediate (in-between) spaces identified within the site and reflects the meeting of different eras that happens on the ground level, the ‘in between’ space of the investigation.

The project takes its basis in a concern for the future liveability of European cities in regard to public space, public buildings, and public life, looking specifically at the capital city of Budapest in Hungary. Studying internal migration patterns within Hungary, it is clear that while the Budapest conglomerate region have grown in population over the last 30 years, there has been a negative net migration to the Budapest inner city. The urban population is choosing to a larger degree to move to village suburbs in the conglomerate region, mainly due to the access to nature and recreational space that these places offer, suggesting that the city is failing to supply an attractive alternative for the local living environment of the inner city. Though large efforts and funds are already dedicated to address this, my research and design questions the impact current developments in the city have on the perceived recreational value of the living environment within the local city block. The project investigates the core concept of “publicness” and the separation of public and private realms, aiming to challenge the ways public space and public buildings are configured and realized.

The investigation resulted in a design for a multifunctional building and an urban green strategy which aims at addressing the “everyday” aspects of public space and public lives. The focus lies on ways in which public buildings to a larger degree can offer spaces for everyday activities rather than curated experiences and ways which these spaces can become appropriable for users to utilise as they please and in the ways they see fit. The specific mixite of functions and the configuration of program around loosely programmed “in-between” spaces has been crucial to achieve a degree of ambiguity in terms of use and purpose of space, something which becomes a driver for appropriability and the perception of public space as an extension of the private living sphere.

The project takes as a starting point the architectural exploration and revival of the typology of a courtyard block – a type that has a long history in the city of Budapest and yet, is getting abandoned and rejected in the in the last decades – a predicament that surprises as the type has been realised successfully for centuries and even millennia across the world. For that fact, I take a stance that a courtyard is a universal and everlasting type, but in need of adaptation to the changing conditions of current times.
The main flaws of the majority of Budapestian courtyard blocks derive from the very failure to adapt to growing and densifying cities – in pursuit to densify the plots, the courtyards became overly elongated, narrow, dark and uninviting. Another common weakness is the deteriorating state of the courtyards resulting from a complex and inefficient system of ownership in Hungary. As a result, even once beautiful courtyards and facades became neglected and deteriorated as it proved difficult to make the residents look after them on their own account without any system.
The revitalisation of a Budapestian courtyard is then two-fold – systematic and architectural. As part of the design, all properties in the project come partially owned by the municipal/civic body to ensure organised maintenance and enduring quality of the building. The main architectural improvements are opening up the dwellings to at least both sides of the block introducing more light and diverse views, and careful proportioning of the courtyards ensuring sufficient access of light and a more usable space.
The project lies in a in a mainly residential neighbourhood in a place that is historically and morphologically very heterogenous. It aims to give back coherency to the urban tissue that is currently broken, by working with a rectangular perimeter. The buildings use the courtyard system to break down the scale of the block and create multiple different environments and more private spaces within.
The project explores the diversity of the courtyard typology and plays with the juxtaposition of different types, introducing both outdoor and indoor courtyards, large and small ones, public and private, loud and quiet, exposed and secluded, green and paved, colourful and toned, densely and lightly programmed. A vast study of courtyards across the world brought forth the forms and techniques that make them successful, giving inspiration for the design that aims to capture these different qualities and collect them creating a diverse courtyard maze.
The project is of mixed program – housing with retail, restaurants and cafes, and a library. The mixed use, together with a variety of courtyards introduced life into the block and creates an engaging living environment.