This project creates a safe-haven for the homeless women of Madrid, addressing both homelessness and gender-based violence. It explores the stigmas surrounding homelessness in Spain and the lack of dedicated facilities for women in Madrid city centre. Drawing inspiration from case studies like the Beguinages from the Netherlands and traditional Spanish patio house typology, the project emphasizes the importance of community, privacy, and safety.
The chosen site in the neighbourhood of Tetuán aims to revitalize a neglected area while providing shelter, support, and a path to independence for vulnerable women. The design integrates into the local context, fostering a supportive environment for healing and empowerment.

Over the last decades, the complexity of projects has been increasing. Studies have shown that using existing project management theories in a traditional manner has failed to bring success (Whitty & Maylor, 2009). It is impossible to predict everything and act according to a static plan (Sohi et al., 2019). Improvisation is inevitable (Alhussein et al., 2022; Hamzeh et al., 2019) and therefore necessary to be researched.
A substantial part of previous research has focussed on using a jazz metaphor when describing how improvisation can be implemented within organisations, see Barrett (1998), Hatch (1999) and Weick (1998). A specific type of organisation is the project team, which is temporary and focusses on delivering a project. However, the parallels with improvisation in jazz have not been applied to project management yet. Although existing studies on improvisation in project management show the value (Abuseem et al., 2023; Leybourne, 2011; Malucelli et al., 2021), they remain theoretical and lack the application of improvisation. Hence, the main research question of this research is: “What can we learn from applying the parallels between improvisation in jazz and organisation to project management?”.
Because of the exploratory nature of the research, qualitative methods are applied. First, a literature study is carried out, which is followed by in-depth interviews and observations of design team meetings. The combination of the methods allows triangulation. This research limits itself to improvisational actions within the design phase of construction projects, which means that the construction phase has been omitted. It is scientifically relevant by focussing on getting a new understanding of improvisation in project management using the parallels. Moreover, it is societally relevant by gaining insights into the dynamics and improvisations within design teams, which can help to improve improvisational actions.

We can learn that the parallels, between improvisation in jazz and organisation, can be applied to project management actions taking place in the so-called safe zone. This is a created setting in which all the disciplines come together to (re)act based on their knowledge and experience. The safe zone can be compared to a jazz jam session, which is characterized by its informality and the going back-and-forth between the musicians. The actions taking place within the safe zone could be described as improvisations on a microscale. Furthermore, another type of improvisation in project management has been defined. These are reactions to exogenous trigger events outside of the safe zone. Trigger events could be unexpected behaviour, an external change in circumstances, a late substantial design change or a substantial change in requirements. In jazz, there are also trigger events present. However, the reactions to the trigger events are still part of the safe zone in jazz, while in project management, this is not the case. Therefore, the parallels have not been applied to reactions to exogenous trigger events.

In general, this research suggests that by applying the parallels, a new way of understanding design teams in project management is revealed. The applied parallels show that design team meetings are not meetings in which the project manager follows a strict agenda and controls a hierarchical structure as described in traditional project management literature. Instead, the design team meetings are comparable to a jazz jam session in which the course is determined by all the disciplines. The openness of the project manager and emphasis on team dynamics are crucial in facilitating improvisations.

Migration within the European Union (EU) is becoming a complex phenomenon driven by various social, political, economic, and environmental causes. While migration is an ordinary event, vulnerable groups such as asylum seekers, refugees and irregular migrants often face significant hardships and risks throughout their journey. In recent years, the EU has grappled with unprecedented pressure of irregular migrants in its external borders, leading to strict border controls and externalisation of migration management with third-world countries. With this, there is severe stress in housing, healthcare, labour markets, and education in individual countries with the sudden increase in population with diverse cultural backgrounds. Discrimination, xenophobia, and political shifts towards far-right ideologies have also posed challenges to the humane treatment of these vulnerable groups. This raises questions about why the E.U. does not want to accept these communities despite its ageing and shrinking society.

This project explores the consequences of migration in the EU, with a particular focus on refugees and asylum seekers. Beginning with an analysis of EU migration policies and attitudes towards refugees, the project focuses on the Netherlands, examining its asylum-seeking process amidst political shifts. The research then aims to imagine the inclusion and integration of refugees living in isolated temporary asylum shelters in cities, using case studies and literature to identify spatial and non-spatial aspects crucial for fostering a sense of comfort and belonging in a new country. By proposing spatial strategies and policies to create opportunities for stronger socio-cultural connections in cities of the Netherlands, the project aims to facilitate stronger bonds between refugees and native citizens. Through a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches, it seeks to reshape formal regulated interactions, fostering informal settings for everyday interactions. The project's outcomes are evaluated to assess its impact on forming a new inclusive society.

This paper fills in the research gap about understanding to what extent does commercial co-living match user preferences of young adults in The Netherlands. The existing literature primarily focuses on analysing user choices, while this study examines the revealed preferences of young adults specifically regarding co-living arrangements. By conducting a discrete choice experiment and traditional comparison, this investigation shows which commercial co-living attributes are preferred by young adults in The Netherlands and assesses the overlap between the user demand and built supply. These findings can be widely used by governmental bodies or other public entities and private sector stakeholders such as real estate developers to study the commercial co-living market and understand how to improve housing situations by understanding people's preferences.

The housing market in the Netherlands faces two challenges which are the housing shortage and the climate crisis. Modular construction can help solve these challenges due to the many advantages that modular construction has over traditional construction. The advantages that are most related to solving these challenges are the reduced construction time, reduced waste production, reduced transportation movements and the reusability of modules. On top of these advantages modular construction offers many more advantages over traditional construction such as reduced construction cost, reduced failure cost, increased quality, increased worker safety, reduced disturbance for neighbouring buildings and reduced need for traditional labour. Despite all these advantages, the uptake of modular construction is still quite low, mainly due to three problems. The summary of these problems comes down to that there is a lack of knowledge about how to implement modular construction properly, so that the advantages of modular construction can be realised. Therefore, in this graduation research, recommendations will be given on how modular construction can be implemented better so that modular construction performs well. To do this, the following main question has been used: “What is the current performance of 3D modular multistorey student accommodations in the Netherlands and how can this performance be increased?”. As the research question says, this research will focus on 3D modular construction that is used for multistorey student accommodations in the Netherlands. This research will include theoretical review, a performance measurement of modular buildings and recommendations to improve this measured performance for future modular buildings. The theoretical review forms the basis for this entire research, as it gives knowledge to the state of the art about 3D modular construction. The performance measurement considers the objectives of the entire built environment and the student housing association DUWO. Based on these objectives the performance of three modular student accommodations will be measured. The final product of this research will be to give recommendations about how the measured performance of the modular buildings can be increased. These recommendations are based on interviews with experienced stakeholders, combined with the theoretical review.

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.

An ever-changing modern society imposes new challenges for city development, namely how the built environment can be designed for a changing population and urban housing density. This article argues that current large-scale top-down demolition and construction strategies for densification are not the most efficient and sustainable approaches. Alternatively, a proposal for a more flexible system, consisting of small-scale interventions, is put forward, with the goal of creating resilient neighbourhoods that can adapt to different dwelling densities. This article takes the neighbourhood of Hillesluis in Rotterdam South as the research subject to explore possible densification strategies. Afterwards, a new housing model of ‘Sponge housing’ is proposed that can self-regulate the number and size of houses , creating a system capable of having flexible densities.

Currently cities are becoming more densified, resulting in overpopulated areas with fewer green spaces. Together with this rising health care expenses caused by mental health and current environmental design questions such as water nuisance, heath island effect, densification demands and creating a healthy living environment, leads to questioning current city structures. This thesis rethinks existing city structures, by creating a new way of designing cities which respond to current environmental design questions and offers restorative nature. It explores methods of creating restorative nature and by researching restorative theories and their affiliation to movement and bodily experience. Movement acts as a tool for designing with an eye-level - and sensorial experience which are both crucial for perceiving nature and its beneficial effects. To design a new city structure, a historical overview is created to research healthy living environments and how these can be spatially recognised in landscape structures, urban plans and ideal city movements. The Garden City movement is used as a starting point for the research. From this research the Urban Forest Movement is designed, working through three scales: the city/region, a main structure of the city and the site. The movement focusses on creating healthy living environments by reacting to current environmental design questions and by emphasising the importance of how green spaces are experienced. The generic model is applied to the city of Den Haag, testing it in the process. The site was chosen because of its history and its different relation to the surrounding landscape due to the lack of a city wall. To apply the Movement, it is adapted to fit the design brief that is concluded from an analysis of the site. A vision is created for the city/region scale that focusses on the main spatial framework, densification and green spaces. One of these elements of the spatial framework is further elaborated, zooming in to the line scale. To implement the ideas on the lowest scale on how to create restorative green spaces which help to create healthy living environments, a design on eye-level perspective and movement is made. These crucial design methods are used to design a park along the line. Here elevations, buildings, water structures, materialisation and a planting plan are used to create various bodily experiences through movement. Three different movements are introduced in the park; Gliding, Grazing and Wandering, offering different levels of emerging in nature and experiencing its restorative effects. Finally, conclusions and limitations of the thesis are discussed and evaluated to provide future suggestions.

In recent years, population ageing is becoming more and more of a challenge for cities to prepare for. Improving facilities for an all-age-friendly city can provide a healthy and supportive life for both the young and the old living in cities. One of the cities of interest in this is Amsterdam. Amsterdam has been exploring sustainable and healthy city development, such as garden city in the 1920s. In Amsterdam Noord, a central area of Amsterdam, the post-industrial IJ bank and the attached garden villages currently need renovation. Amsterdam Noord is the potential site for an all-age-friendly development. Amsterdam Noord was built with the concept of garden city, where urban forest is used mainly as green buffer and formed entities from industrial nuisances. However, since the industry is moving out, the existing urban forest becomes barriers for connectivity and undermines the dike-polder landscape of Noord. Thus, this project takes urban forest as a key element to renovate Amsterdam Noord and aims to explore an urban forest framework for Amsterdam Noord to be all-age-friendly and to develop the Noord identity as a dike city and a garden city.
Firstly, theoretical study is executed in topics of urban identity, all-age-friendly city, and urban forest to conclude a theoretical framework of restorative and identity-narrative green network. Secondly, based on the theoretical framework, site study is executed in topics of urban fabric, site visit of the dike, and urban forest tradition. Thirdly, these studies provide site-speci c strategies to build Amsterdam Noord with a restorative and identity-narrative plan, to develop the all-age-friendly-ness and its identity. As the result, this project proposes a multi-scale plan for Amsterdam Noord. In city scale (L), Amsterdam Noord is divided into 3 zones, with different urbanization plans, to integrate into the expanding Amsterdam center as well as preserve and develop its identity. In green system scale (M), a multi-functional and restorative urban forest network is designed with the old dike as its spine, to improve connectivity within and beyond Amsterdam Noord. In green space scale (S), urban forest places are designed to offer sensorial experiences related to identity elements, as well as provide all-age-friendly space and program for Noord. The results of this project will provide a new view about how Amsterdam Noord can be developed into a future garden city, which is all-age-friendly, green, and related to its own identity as a dike city.

This thesis project, as part of the urban forest places graduation lab, focuses on the relationship between urban environments and the healing aspects of nature. Urban environments affect our body and state of mind, and are not always beneficial for our mental health. Landscape and urban design can do something about this. But the question is how? The city of Amsterdam is used as a location to investigate this. The city is surrounded with a diverse metropolitan landscape, which enters far into the city in the form of green wedges, also called the Scheggen. Amsterdam has a long history in investing in green spaces during urban expansions. Since the sixteenth century every period of growth has been accompanied by planned investment in green spaces. First by planting trees along the canals in the sixteenth century. Than by creating city parks in the nineteenth century. The existing green structure was planned during the General Expansion Plan in 1934, made by van Eesteren. The purpose of the General Expansion Plan was not only to expand urban development but also to create a balance between city and green space. This green structure ensures that every resident of Amsterdam can reach a green space within ten minutes, even from the heart of the city centre. Nowadays, the city of Amsterdam has to deal with the following problems. Firstly, the big pressure on the housing market, is forcing the city to densify as well as expand outside of its current urban borders, which makes the Scheggen vulnerable. Not only densification is a problem, but also the fact that more and more people suffer from mental health issues, such as stress, burn-outs, anxiety and depression. Of course we all need a little bit of stress, but if people cannot restore from too much stress for a prolonged period of time, their health will be negatively affected in many ways. Additionally, the city also has to deal with a number of other complex issues, such as climate change issues and biodiversity loss. This has led to the main research question: How can a forest park be designed in such a way that it contributes to reducing mental stress in an urban environment? The findings from the literature study provided evidence that a forest park can contribute to reduce mental stress. Visiting or viewing a forest has a positive effect on people’s mental health and recovering from stress, especially for people from urban environments. The literature study, together with a thorough site research, formed the site specific design principles for the design intervention. The result of this thesis is a design proposal for an urban forest park for Amsterdam Sloterdijk. The project shows that the design proposal for a forest park not only contributes to reduce mental stress in an urban environment, but also increases biodiversity, and acts as a climate buffer by managing rainwater and cooling the environment.

Since the economic crisis there is a shortage in both dwellings and offices. As a reaction on this the building consists out of dwellings and office spaces for internation orientated companies and expats. By combining dwellings and offices, the building will be used 24/7 with which the building will be used in an efficient way.

The project is all about the relevant topic of (the lack of) phisical movement in society. The link between health and architecture has always interested me, in this project these two topics come together to give an answer on the future dwellings in the Netherlands.

During the Paris climate conference in December 2015, 195 different countries recognized the dangers of climate change. One of the key points on which the participants of this conference agreed on was that cities should built resilience against the effects of climate change. The changing climate has amongst others major consequences for water systems. In a country such as the Netherlands – which is extremely vulnerable to the consequences of flooding – water should be treated and used differently according to J.M. de Vries, former Secretary of State for Transport, Public Works and Water Management, in order to keep the Netherlands safe and livable. The climate will change considerably in the coming decades. Cities and their buildings will be affected. My graduation focuses on how water can be treated differently within the built environment related to climate change resilience. As project location, I have chosen 'Het Marineterrein' in Amsterdam. This area belongs to the Royal Navy until 2018. In this year, the Navy will leave and the area will be open for redevelopment from then on. My research on how water and its natural cycles can be integrated into a hotel building leads to a design of a bio hotel for 'Het Marineterrein', in Amsterdam. Within the hotel building and its surroundings water is purified, recycled and harvested. The hotel is an inspirational place for hotel guests, visitors and locals, where people can learn about water treatment related to climate change and where they can share their ideas and thoughts about the subject.

Vedado is the western modern city grid part of Havana, soaked in a history of entertainment, casinos and mobster money which was halted by the "Triumph of the Revolution" in 1959. Currently a slumber town due to it´s lack of public space and social space which precludes a lot of Cuban activity which traditionally takes place in the public sphere. The entertainment era left a number of hotels along the sea front which now have no connection to the vibrant Cuban experience that tourists seek, leaving little incentive to visit the area.

The merging of a failing luxury hotel in embargoed Cuba with an architectural invention, a tower of stacking levels of public and social space, allows for a new opportunity to revitalize Vedado. Cubans in Vedado are able to construct temporary spaces to make use of for their social activities and tourists are able to partake in these spaces and activities, creating a merger of the two worlds. It brings a new business model in tourism, allowing for hotel visitors to meet the new Cuban reality within the hotel itself.

Hunters Point, a vacant naval yard in San Francisco has potential to be developed as a community and research hub that focusses on water related challenges. For socio-economical challenged neighbourhoods that surround this area, the community and hub can provide jobs and an identity. Within the studio Delta Interentions, water is a central theme. As Hunters Point is prone to flood, this makes it an interesting case. Most of the challenges related to water are adressed in the master plan, while the connection to the water is addressed in the design. A dry-dock splits Hunters Point in two, the community centre that I have designed connects both these parts by enabling the water in the dry-dock for interaction.

Recent years, several developments are visible within the theatre sector. Most theatre-organisations throughout the Netherlands cope with the same challenges. Revenues are decreasing and the very limited use of the theatre buildings is an issue. The buildings should be used in a different way by their users. In many cases, theatre organisations see an expansion of the hospitality function as an answer to these financial and social challenges. The organisations aim to (1) gain more revenues, (2) transform their building into a “living room of the city” and (3) improve the “theatre experience” for visitors of the performing arts. However, in the end the synergy between theatre- and hospitality-organisations turn out to be very complex and it does not always lead to added value to both organizations. A new procesmodel is presented in this research; the theatre-real-estate-strategy-model. The model provides guidance to theatre organizations in four areas: the structure of the process (“WHEN”), content (“WHAT”), involvement (“WHO”) and useful tools (“HOW”). The model is based on a literature study to the real estate management theory, the projectmanagement theory and the procesmanagement theory. This led a theoretical framework. Based on this framework, two casestudies are carries out to gain insights from practice.

Cities are the backbone of the economy in most countries, serving the corporations they house and enjoying the benefits of their business. They are also a beacon for many who flock to these urban areas in the hope of better employment opportunities and quality of life. Cities are thus constantly growing and evolving in an effort to create a competitive advantage that can attract and retain more business. The pattern of city growth can be traced back to several factors that influence the location decisions of businesses to cluster. Service sector led cities witness the most prominent impact in real estate development, given that their economy is heavily reliant on business networks and economies of agglomeration. As such, these cities also bear the drawbacks of being popular migration destinations, including overconsumption of resources, crowding and high costs. Creating an environment that can benefit corporations, residents and the Government, while still tackling the negative externalities of agglomeration is crucial to maintain a city's competitive advantage. This tension is researched through an empirical study of the factors that have established Bangalore as the Silicon Valley of India. The dynamics between the private and public sector is therefore explored, making a case for more cross-sector collaboration in order to sustain Bangalore’s competitive advantage as an IT destination.