The foodscape of a city is a complex set of systems and actors that is directly linked with the city through the acts of producing, processing and consuming food. These acts shape not only the surrounding hinterland but also the environment, infrastructure and social make-up of a city. The relationship between the city and this hinterland has almost completely disappeared over the last century. This has negatively impacted the way food is valued which has caused negative consequences such as environmental degradation, disappearance of relationships and knowledge, and a worsening of both human and animal welfare.

The focus of this project is to reestablish this lost relationship through an architectural project that reintroduces historic conditions and practices and combines them with contemporary flows and actors to form a program that fits the 21st century. This will result in a pilot project which will demonstrate how architecture can have a central role in reestablishing the relationship between consumer and the food they consume, and thus the creation of a sustainable foodscape, resulting in healthier and happier cities.

Humanity depends on energy, to protect our planet and maintain a secure energy system, we need to transition towards renewable energy sources. This transition also faces challenges concerning spatial demand, spatial quality, resistance from the population and an unfitting energy infrastructure. The Rhenish Lignite Mining District is one of the places where these problems come together. The area’s foundation is currently lignite mining, but from 2030 onward, the mines will close. What is left is a large energy gap, a polluted and damaged environment and a disturbed socio-economic structure. The Rhenish Mining District is faced with the question of how to regenerate through the design of the minescape of the Rhenish Mining Area towards an inclusive energy transition. Through systemic thinking and scenario design, this thesis displays the possibilities new energy production methods create by being integrated into the minescape. Their symbiotic relations strengthen various aspects of the systems present in the minescape. The scenarios highlight the importance of designing for the green. blue, social and energy systems. The thesis reveals that the footprint of the minescape expands far beyond the borders of the extraction footprint. Therefore, the impact of the energy transition expands far beyond the extraction footprint. This is strengthened by the footprint and impact of renewable energy sources needing significantly more space than the current energy system. Through the scenarios, this thesis triggers the imagination on the possibilities of the energy transition and opens a discussion on the possible futures of the Rhenish minescape.

The Po Valley is a floodplain, also known in the past as the “The Garden of Europe”. It owes its agricultural, industrial and cultural wealth to the rich system of resurgences and to the irrigation network connected to them.
Due to their suitability for agricultural activities, floodplains are preferred areas for human settlements. The fluvial landscape development was altered by the water and land management activities to create cultivable land, while simultaneously protecting communities from the risk of flooding events, which are still the most common natural disasters worldwide.
With the increasing urbanization and climate change, the territory (already densely populated and exploited for agricultural and industrial uses) is facing a difficult water shortage situation.
The focus of the research is the resurgence belt in the Po Basin, more precisely in the Piedmont region, and the understanding of the origin of the water system: the Alps and Apennine, the high plain, the resurgence belt and the low plain.
In the area of the resurgence belt, it is possible to control the mountain floods that flow downstream, causing the severe flooding phenomena that we are seeing more and more often in recent years. These traits also have the pre-eminent function of governing the waters of violent and sudden precipitations that the current rain disposal systems are unable to manage effectively. The slopes of the paths lead the waters towards wetlands and hold them for the time necessary and then gradually release them.
The resurgence belt, in addition to playing an important role in the natural water management and the ecological protection of vegetation and an fauna, is still fundamental today in the economic-agricultural context as it is the basis of the irrigation activities necessary to support production in many meadows and ricefields.
It constitutes a precious and unique natural heritage, which unfortunately has reduced in dimensions due to various factors: economic, social and environmental. It is clear that we will increasingly have to learn to live with the two extremes of long droughts and intense rainfall and consequent floods, which only a more natural territory and hydrographic network can cope with simultaneously.
By studying the area of the resurgence belt, the project seeks to imagine an alternative future for North Italy and explore a strategy to face the retreat of the resurgence belt and the water crisis. Furthermore, the project aims to imagine an alternative future for an area that is highly exploited by monoculture and has a linear economy, based on the consumption of fossil fuels and non-renewable resources.

Emergence of humans as the dominant species of the planet have come along with extreme manipulation of the earth’s systems to sustain this dominance. The Anthropocene has lasted a little over 200 years has perhaps seen the most shift from completely natural systems to requiring an additional man-made system to aid exponential growth of our species. Among earth’s systems, climate is one of the most complex factors determining energy balance of living organisms and determines energy gains and losses from organisms.
India encompasses a wide range of complex territories with rich biodiversity living alongside some of the world’s highest population densities. Historically the Indians have lived and adapted to these resource abundant terrains through traditional ecological practices that aligned with the ecological systems and governed the socio-cultural practices. The current globalised world has been built upon with technological, infrastructural, sociological political and capitalistic growth has wretched devastating effects on the environment that supports us. India being a colonised country and exploited for its resources for centuries still holds traces of it in the infrastructural and production systems, in this case in the Periyar-Vaigai river basins. The region characterised by complex terrain, excessive manipulation of landforms and alteration of its resource cycles especially in water cycles by storing water in multiple dams experiences excess water flows during monsoons, causing flooding on its western slopes and proves to be the only hope for drought prone region on its eastern side.

Governing such complexities lies with arbitrary administrative borders dividing the control between different states and various different departments controls the flow and management of resource which often falls short of preventing catastrophes or just management of resources.
Extreme weather events in the recent past has exasperated the effects in these fragile habitats, thus the project aims to firstly mitigate the risks associated with failing monsoon, further restore the balance of the ecological system in the region. By building back resilience through co-habitation of social-ecological systems, aligned to nature using human knowledge the design aims to place value on nature rather than exploit it. The project envisions the transition from a local adaptation towards building up the system on the regional scale. It deals with primary production, anthropogenic control with respect to grey infrastructure, values and the role of ecosystems in maintain this balance. By synchronising these various systems the projects attempts at bringing back a dynamic equilibrium to this region, through methods like literature reviews, synthetic cartography and research by design.

The Festival Machine is an experiment that tests the feasibility of the urbanization of the contemporary festival. The project provides a sustainable indoor festival experience that encourages the exploration of music, which is a hybrid between an outdoor music festival and indoor music venue. It covers a wide spectrum of music genres that include all walks of life and it consist of flexible music halls that can be divided. Dual functions are integrated to keep the building running on a festival and a non-festival day.

People’s perceptions change over the years. People’s needs and interests are also changing. As designers, we have to be flexible in thinking and design to adapt to the wishes and standards of the current eras, we have to evaluate ourselves in an innovative sense. This in turn is reflected in spaces where people come together and do activities in company, or rather: ‘public buildings’.
I find it interesting how we as designers, through architecture, adapt to today’s society with regard to public spaces on different scales. In addition, I am looking forward to looking at solutions to somewhat bring people together in extreme cases such as the COVID19. These kinds of extreme events can lead to certain perspectives that we as designers have never thought about. My vision is therefore: limitations lead to creativity.

In order to approach a public building in an alternative and innovative way, the functions are not linked on the basis of function, but on the basis of sound. For this, each layer of the building gets its own sound cluster, namely: 'vibrant', 'harmonic' and 'silence'. The various functions are subdivided into the sound zones in which it fits. This ensures that the building is perceived with a typology that deviates from the 'standard' what we are used to.

Exploring the possibilities of the future ambition for Binckhorst in The Hague, a key music venue is set to integrate a modern high density residential neighborhood as part of the city centre.
However, contemporary music buildings functioning as catalysts for urban development are often focused on urban connectivity. As a result, they tend to forget the true function of music, which is to provide a mental escape for the audience. Therefore it becomes paramount for future projects to consider a migration from an exterior iconic character to an introverted oasis for musical performance. This notion establishes a degree of transposition in the experience of a visitor, a passage between the public realm and the specific main function of the building, which can be referred to as liminality. Layering phases of separation, transition and incorporation can be used as a strategy in architectural route design to construct a liminal odyssey. Finally to conceive the greatest sense of escapism within the musical oasis, parameters of intimacy and visual relations play a significant role. Nevertheless, other parameters can be used, depending on audience personality, which is related to musical genre.
Another aspect of designing for escapism is to create a world specific to music. To achieve this, the architecture should be a complete opposite to the organisational and contextual rules. In spite of this contrast, the building will still have to respond to the surroundings in a way that is characterised by its own architectural language. Only then will it become a fluid visitor route free of all limitations, purely based on the people and their liminal odyssey in anticipation of attending a concert.