'A Wakening' entails a coming home to our innate essence of what it means to be human and living as part of this interconnected web of life. Through being present with the now, we can envision and work towards desired, collective, and whole futures for all on this earth. 'A Wakening' should be patient. For me, the first step in waking up is to dream. Dream more and deeper and lose myself, first trusting soil and gut and instincts. It is only coming out of the pure egoless dream of making and noticing that 'A Wakening' might be useful to me and, by extension, to the turbulent times we live in. Those whose work I admire are rooted and quiet and know how to go deep and slow and feel things before acting on them. Meanwhile, the earth itself may be waking up and considering spitting us all out.

As London is expanding in population and emerging as a financial global city, the pace of the city is rising. Factors as temporality and the notion of time as an experiential dimension is getting lost. A more sensory approach to urban architecture has the potential to incite people to reside in other measures of time to contrast the dense intensive city of London. It has to be argued to what extent architecture cultivates these atmospheric moments in the urban conditions of the center Boroughs of London. The research stresses the notion of sensory and spatial experience formulated by architecture and its relation to urban conditions. A more sensory approach towards architecture is needed to balance out the reciprocity between space and time of the architectural fabric of the city. Through notions of smell, materiality, light/darkness, pace of movement and architectural configuration, the West India Dock is transformed to a public multifunctional food hub. The design bears defragmentation of the Isle of Dogs area and draws new potentials of contemplation and programmatic synergies as a quality to the ‘frontstage’ of this ever accelerating pace of city life in London.

A decades long process of replacing biodiverse landscapes with agricultural monocultures has led to a significant drop in biodiversity in the Netherlands. The current agricultural landscape offers limited habitats for animals and insects and lacks resilience to cope with the effects of climate change. A strong departure from the current system is required by adopting nature-inclusive agriculture which utilizes and protects biodiversity in and around the farm. At the same time, there is a structural shortage in housing stock. The problem is that the increased demand for housing and the need for nature-inclusive agriculture are competing issues, where one has to make way for the other. But what if the development for new homes could be integrated with the transition towards nature inclusive agriculture? There are clear indications that demand is changing towards more spacious homes in natural environments. To build homes with the future agricultural landscape, they must be designed differently: in a nature inclusive way that facilitates biodiversity in and around the farm without reducing the current amount of food production. In addition, the integration of homes could enable the transition towards nature-inclusive agriculture, either by establishing a collective farm or by involving multiple partners. To conclude, a case study project is proposed in the Noordoostpolder, an area that is uniquely suited as a test ground for exploring the future of countryside living because it offers a relative central location and is highly adaptable and scalable.

This master graduation project presents an exciting vision of a better built environment for affordable housing in The Netherlands and abroad for many generations to come.

Established industrial manufacturing methods combined with parametric design have the potential to disrupt the conventional design-to-manufacturing processes in the building industry. Currently factors such as increasing cost of labor, stagnated productivity per employee and highly fragmented design-to-manufacturing processes in the building industry have not proved to be fruitful influences for the mass production of customizable buildings. Moreover, in order to become sustainable the building industry has to make a drastic shift towards renewable materials and integrate a high level of modularity.

With market fit solutions by product thinking a wide variety of parametrically engineered housing options can be offered to the customer without having to enter the entire iterative process of design and engineering. This strategy also allows to finally integrate a high level of robotization in off-site manufacturing facilities.

Kampung Air is set in the city of Semarang in Indonesia. This city is facing enormous problems due to land subsidence. Kampung Melayu, which is the location of this project, has a rich history based on trade and commerce. However, now it is mostly abandoned and not functioning anymore. This project tries to deal with these problems by creating a new way of living with water. This project proposes to create new housing based around an aquaponic system. This is a system in which fish and vegetables are produced with the use of water. This system can help with water storage, create a new source of income and strengthen the social structure within the neighbourhood. The architecture of the building makes use of the climatic advantages the system provides, resulting for instance in the shape of the roof.

Istanbul Water and Sewage Administration’s estimations of decline of water supply is calculated as 24%, with a 2 °C increase in temperature by 2030 caused by increasing evaporation from reservoirs (van Leeuwen & Sjerps, 2016, 12). Considering the fact that 97% of water sources are these dams/reservoirs, it is obvious that İstanbul is vulnerable in terms of water supply without any alternative water supply. It can be indicated that the water that is supplied to the city is not being used efficiently. Even though the water comes from the taps are drinkable, according to a study made by Kanat (2017, 526-527) the use of tap water as potable water is 4% in the city. Furthermore, the treated wastewater is discharged to the Marmara Sea, and the Black Sea through Bosphorus Strait. Because of low water regeneration caused eutrophication of the Marmara Sea, higher effluent quality wastewater discharged in there, while the less advanced treated wastewaters are discharged to the Bosphorus Strait to reach the Black Sea by the currents (van Leeuwen & Sjerps, 2016, 7-8). It can be concluded that the current water management of Istanbul has many technical problems that affects and will be affecting the everyday life of its inhabitants. Examples can be given to these water related problems as drought due to lack of available water, or nuisance due to precipitation. If these current practices continue, with the effects of climate change and the fast, uncontrolled urban growth, problems affecting daily life will get worse in future. ‘Modern Water’ understanding of today sees water as a service to be provided and makes it invisible to users, thus, causes lack of awareness, responsibility and loss of a socio-cultural value which is the meaning of water. While these problems could be answered by spatial solutions, lack of integration between infrastructural and urban design only enlarges the deficiencies. This research aims to discover the relation between the modern water understanding and the unsustainable water practices that currently exist in İstanbul. This is aimed to be done through questioning ‘Modern/Rationalized Water’ and discussing how this caused the abstraction of the socio-cultural aspect of water. The thesis mainly studies the spatial manifestation of this rationalized water that is reduced to be only a natural element of H2O especially in public spaces. This is done by creating a new approach to water related problems in cities, which is inspired by the newly introduced fields of Hydro-sociology and Socio-hydrology. This new approach that aims to preserve the cultural and the social meanings of water while understanding the hydrological cycle of a city is later combined with Urban Water Mass Balance analysis that provides the quantitative examination of the water cycle. After concluding that the natural drainage network of İstanbul is damaged and is under the pressure of the fast urbanization of the city while the trends in the planning still using outdated methods and technologies to control the situation. The needed new approach is studied in the scale of the Kagithane Creek Basin of the Metropolitan Area of İstanbul. The study continues with a proposed design for a specific location near the Kagithane Creek to discuss how this new approach can lead to design activities and change locals everyday experience of water in the city.The thesis concludes that changing the perspective on the water management by including social and cultural aspect to it, changes the way of finding solutions to the technical water management problems by making more integrated management principles necessary.

The city of Amsterdam is prospering, the amount of residents and visitors continues to grow every year. With this rapid population increase there are more people seeking to travel each day. This increases the pressure on all types of modalities in Amsterdam. As a result of this, the city becomes more busy, congestion increases, the air quality gets worse, noise caused by traffic increases and the public space diminishes. The current mobility systems have negative and positive effects on the livability in Amsterdam. The way people move through cities is changing rapidly. New technologies in mobility are making it possible for people to navigate through their city more safely and efficiently. Different modes of automated mobility will emerge in the next 30 years. (Papa & Ferreira, 2018) There are still many uncertainties related to their spatial impact on our cities. This graduation project attempts to identify how automated mobility can contribute to enhance livability in Amsterdam. It explores the spatial impact of automated mobility in Amsterdam. To understand this spatial impact the research projects first identifies the scenarios on how automated mobility will be implemented and subsequently researches how this new mobility system can contribute to enhance livability. The design project seeks to propose a model for the implementation of automated mobility in Amsterdam that contributes to enhancing livability.

The project act as an example of how biophilic design can be applied into the rehabilitation area of a hospital.The aim of the project is to achieve a faster recovery rate of patients, a better performance of staff and to create a unique experience for the visitors in AMC . Many researches have showed the benefits of using biophilic design in hospital building. Therefore, biophilic design principles were taken as the key strategies for the project. In the research phase the linkage between biophilic design solutions and energy efficiency was being studied. In the design phase the site constraints and operational requirements of AMC were considered. The chosen biophilic design solutions was modified to create the optimum biophilic environment in the rehabilitation area of AMC.

The greenhouse landscape is one of the newest landscapes in the Netherlands. Due to the fact that the landscape exists out of build-up greenhouses, the landscape is criticized of its lacking of aesthetics, green and overview/orientation. Despite this critique, the landscape is valued as well for its technological level, its big scale and its rational spatial character but still divers character. This thesis will focus on reshaping the greenhouse landscape in such a way, that the landscape can be valued easier and by more people. This thesis aims for creating beauty in the Westland by creating a clash between the idyllic romanticism landscapes on the one side and by creating a high-tech futuristic world on the other. The Thesis will begin with the theoretical chapters. The analysis is split up in an historical analysis and an analysis about how we perceive the greenhouse landscape in the current situation. Three scenarios will be used to generate design ideas. In the last chapter a final design will be presented.