The research and design show how to use local wood from an ex-production forest in het Goois Natuur Reservaat (GNR) in an affordable (social) housing project. With the use of efficiënt building and community housing principles affordability is established, while still creating high quality housing in a natural environment. Damage to the environment due to building in such an area is limited by using prefabrication, a good layout and nature-inclusive design.

This thesis examines the role of collaboration in water-adaptive urban development, focusing on the residential location selection process in the Netherlands. It identifies challenges in balancing housing demands with water and environmental constraints, exploring the Collaborative Governance model by Ansell and Gash (2008) to enhance multi-stakeholder engagement. Key stakeholders—municipalities, provinces, water boards, and developers—face power imbalances, inefficiencies, and conflicting interests, necessitating early involvement, especially of water boards, improved communication, and shared ownership. Strategies such as trust-building, shared goals, and both formal and informal interactions are highlighted, alongside the critical role of facilitative leadership in fostering collaboration. The study concludes with a proposed framework emphasising early engagement, institutional design, and leadership to enhance collaboration, addressing sustainable housing needs in water-sensitive areas and integrating key aspects of the Collaborative Governance model into the location selection process.

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.

New York City is one of the most densely populated megacities in the world and specifically Manhattan one of the metropolitan areas with a constantly rocketing population growth. The delirious urbanization is mainly the result of mass migration both internal and international thus forming a society of diverse economic and cultural backgrounds. As climate change emerges, Manhattan constitutes one of the areas with great flood vulnerability due to coastal flooding and storm surge. According to IPCC statistics, New York will experience a sea level rise of about one meter by 2100.

The metropolitan area itself is the epicenter of patterns, from the Grid to the skyscraper. External forces such as the impending housing crisis, social segregation and the emergent flood risk will reconfigure the pattern image of the city in the future. The region has been altered extensively during the years by significant drivers which turned the primitive green paradise into an artificial world of skyscrapers. Natural elements of the past have been covered due to the increasing demand of building industry forming a compact environment. The Grid offered the fast and effective organization of the metropolitan area, however it did not take into account in a great extent the natural landscape.

The graduation thesis explores the possibilities of the Grid into the mitigation of Flood vulnerability while bolstering the Social Inclusion in an aim to reconfigure the pattern image of the city in the future through the unraveling of important elements of Palimpsest Landscape. The flood adaptation of the Grid will question the impact on housing densification strategies for the future of the island. The identity as well as the resilience of the metropolitan area will be reinforced and people will come closer to nature.

Churches have always been the centre of Dutch society to gather under one roof (De Kruijf & De Roest, 2010). Due to the secularization of the Netherlands, church vacancy is increasing. Currently, churches still fulfill a central function within a city, village or neighborhood (Kerkmagazine, 2022). The Grote- of Mariakerk is one of them, and the vacancy of buildings in such prominent areas of the city will detract from social and physical quality of these areas (De Kruijf & De Roest, 2010). The church should not withdraw from the public domain (Kennedy, J. C. K., 2010). A transformation towards a public interior could avoid this. Kloos (1993) describes public interiors as buildings in which the city’s public space is continued. The social and functional diversity of urban buildings is reflected in their façades (Jürgenhake, 2014), especially around their interior and exterior; the ‘transition zone’ (Gehl, 2011). Therefore this paper focuses on the role of the transition zone when transforming the Grote- of Mariakerk towards a public interior, whilst maintaining its heritage values. By combining literature research , case studies, and field research, the role of the transition zone in public interiors is clarified. By analysing the existing transition zones of the Grote- of Mariakerk and linking them with the criteria of a public interior, opportunities and challenges for the transformation towards a public interior result in design approaches regarding the transition zone.

The urgent need to decarbonize the energy sector marks the beginning of a post-fossil fuel era, leading among others to a significant decrease in coal production and a corresponding shift towards energy from renewables. This transition will bring changes spatially but also socio-economically and will affect primarily coal mining communities as their primary economic driver gradually declines. This thesis sets out to investigate the coal phase-out as happening in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland - Europe’s ‘coal heartland’. It focuses on the spatial aspect of it, a twofold challenge, that stems from the two contradictory conditions: the abundance of vacant land (land supply) that results from the coal phase-out and depopulating-shrinking trends in these coal regions and the spatial pressure (land demand) that the emerging deployment of renewables triggers in combination with possible unregulated land takeovers. The thesis conceives the coal regions as a systemic zone and proposes a shift to another form of the carbon economy, one based on forestry. It builds upon a timeline of actions starting from the phase-out of coal and shapes a narrative for a transition to a more sustainable and lower-carbon-intensive economy in the affected areas. The project approach this with a multiscalar perspective, zooming gradually to Lusatia, a historic region marked by many years of intensive lignite mining, an area in which four lignite extraction sites are still operating, and proposes a systemic approach to how another form of use in this cluster of mines could affect the ongoing depopulation in the area and care for the damaged and exhausted environment by fostering economic growth through sustainable timber harvesting and the creation of valuable ecosystem services that will trigger biodiversity growth. Last it looks at the area around Cottbus, where a former mine, and a currently active one, Jänschwalde mine, have shaped a unique landscape, surrounded by the characteristic pine forests of the region, and small scattered settlements. Spatial elements and their synergies are unraveled that facilitate sustainable wood production, the energy transition, and the care of natural ecosystems. The project works with a timeline spanning from 2025 until 2090, during which the area transforms as forests take over and grow while at the same time, several settlements and infrastructures decommission, depopulate, shrink and retreat. The final outcome inspires an alternative understanding of the coal regions, one described by a ‘spatial growth-retreat dynamic’ that builds upon the shrinking built environment and expresses itself with constant fluxes of carbon storage and carbon releases.