This research project addresses the urban development issue of fragmentation in Brussels, Belgium, by using a vacant wasteland as a case study. It examines three key phenomena—Bronxification, Disneyfication, and Brusselization—that have contributed to the city's fragmentation into disjointed patches, a condition referred to as Capsular Urbanism. The research uses a patchwork metaphor to explore borders and boundaries through textiles, aiming to redefine elements that mark urban edges and define border zones to reconnect fragmented urban areas.

The methodological approach combines a literature review, site observation, and metaphorical exploration through textiles. A distinction is made between boundaries, which are physical barriers that create separation, and border zones, which are transitional areas where interactions take place. The research unfolds in two primary stages: examining the physical boundaries of the Friche to understand its structural characteristics and spatial relationships, and using textiles metaphorically to explore strategies for reintegrating urban patches. Findings emphasize the importance of overlaps where interactions happen. By strategically positioning public amenities at these edges and fostering multifunctional spaces within buildings, urban fragments can become interconnected, promoting social engagement and reducing physical and social isolation.

This strategy is applied in the design project for revitalizing an old warehouse currently used for hosting EU Parliament events. Positioned on the border between two municipalities, the site offers an ideal opportunity to address fragmentation in Brussels. The proposal involves expanding the event space and transforming the warehouse into a cultural hub that caters to both EU professionals and the local community. This transformation enhances the building's role as an event venue by turning it into a vibrant, inclusive hub that bridges diverse groups, fostering interaction and unity in a previously fragmented urban area.

The construction sector, known for its extensive use of building materials, significantly contributes to environmental degradation, resource depletion, and waste management challenges. While much attention has been given to creating circular systems in demolition, renovation processes—occurring more frequently due to varying lifespans of building elements—remain underexplored. Understanding the material output from renovation projects across different building types and their potential for reuse and recycling is crucial.
This thesis introduces a novel approach to calculating renovation and transformation waste, drawing on existing literature related to skip use for material intensity (MI) calculations for demolition and waste quantification. Renovations are defined as improving a building to enhance the physical conditions and functional performance. Transformations are similar to renovations but include a change of use of the building. Data on renovation and transformation projects were acquired to calculate the amount of waste generated as well as the renovation and transformation material intensities (r,tMIs) of different building types and for different construction years. The r,tMIs were calculated by dividing the mass of each material per project by the floor area of that project. The r,tMIs were then grouped by building type and construction year. The materials examined include Undifferentiated, Gypsum, Wood, Synthetic material, Paper/cardboard, and Aggregates. The building types are classified as detached houses, row houses, apartments, educational buildings, health facilities, offices, and ‘other’, with construction years grouped into Before-1945, 1945-1970, 1970-2000, 2000 and later, and Year unknown. The 358 projects are dispersed across the Netherlands and took place between January 2021 and May 2024.
It was found that the Undifferentiated waste stream constitutes a large portion of both renovation and transformation waste. Among renovation projects, apartments represent a significant portion, while transformation projects are limited to educational buildings, offices, and ‘other’ categories. Transformation projects tend to have higher tMI values compared to renovation rMIs. Undifferentiated and Aggregates are consistently present across all building types, whereas Gypsum and Synthetic materials are less common in number and mass. Additionally, a trend of decreasing tMI values for newer buildings was observed in transformation projects, a pattern not evident in renovation projects.
These insights lay the groundwork for a deeper understanding of material flows in renovation and transformation practices, serving as a strong foundation for future research. The findings can be used by renovation companies and contractors to estimate the amount of renovation waste from future projects by multiplying the r,tMIs with the specific floor area of that project. The findings can also be used by waste treatment companies to increase the efficiency of waste collection, transport, and treatment.

This paper explores the balance between heritage values and new identities in the redesign of 20th-century Dutch shopping mall skins. The skin of a building plays a crucial role in its external identity and communicates its history, style, and cultural context. Shopping malls, in particular, require constant redesign to keep up with changing trends and provide a fresh stimulus to consumers. However, there is a lack of strategies for balancing necessary updates while preserving heritage values. Using the case study of Hoog Catharijne shopping mall in Utrecht, the research highlights the transformation of various tangible attributes of the HC skin, such as materials, patterns, signage, and elements, as well as intangible aspects like context relation, exterior and interior character, and perception. The results indicate that the redesign significantly transformed the mall’s appearance, leading to increased footfall and commercial success. However, there are mixed opinions about the new design, with concerns about sustainability and the loss of historical and cultural values. This research contributes to the field of heritage architecture by providing a framework and guiding principles for achieving a balanced and effective skin redesign in non-listed heritage buildings. By encouraging designers to explore the cultural and historical values embedded in building skins, the study aims to reduce casual demolition and promote sustainable and circular design practices.

In 2018, a new standard was released for daylight in buildings: EN 17037. This is the first standard for daylight in buildings for Europe. In the Netherlands it will replace the NEN 2057. The determination method for daylight provision for EN 17037 is based on internal illuminance. Additional ambitions for the design quality factors: view, direct sunlight and the prevention of glare have been added to the standard. A sustainable design is all about balancing daylight performance and energy consumption. Large windows will cause the building to overheat and use too much cooling energy. Too small windows will result in low levels of daylight availability and visual comfort. For this reason, it was still unclear whether it is possible to achieve these new recommendations for daylight and at the same time meet the energy requirements for Green building certificates, such as BREEAM and LEED. The main aim of this research was therefore to investigate how much influence the European standard has on the energy consumption of a typical office building and whether the requirements for BREEAM and LEED can still be met.
The analysis shows that the European standard has an influence on the daylight and energy credits for BREEAM and LEED. For the daylight credits this standard has a positive influence. For the minimum performance level for daylight provision for the European standard this is not yet enough to meet the requirements for daylight provision for BREEAM and LEED. For BREEAM and LEED, the variants only meet the requirements if the medium and high recommendation levels for the European standard are met. However, the ASE is often too high for a design that meets the high performance level for EN 17037. It should also be taken into account that when a certain performance level for daylight provision has been achieved for the European standard using method 2 (based on internal illuminance per hour for a typical year) this same variant will usually score lower with method 1 (based on daylight factors).
The energy consumption goes up when the recommendation level for the European standard is higher. When comparing the average energy consumption of variants with the minimum performance level for the European norm with the high performance level, the total energy consumption goes up 8.33 kWh/m2 . These values can be higher or lower with different orientations. To reduce the negative impact of the European standard on BREEAM and LEED, certain parameters for the design can be chosen differently. The most important parameters for meeting the high-performance level and minimizing primary fossil energy consumption is the window-to-wall ratio and width/depth ratio. To find a balance between daylight and energy consumption, the optimal width/depth ratio is between 1.33 and 0.75. The optimum window-to-wall ratio is between 40% and 60%. To reduce the cooling consumption and ASE even more, designers can consider the introduction of overhangs in the façade, or other interventions that reduce the window SHGC.

Effective planning and control are crucial for the successful delivery of engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) projects, which are characterized by complex organizational structures, interdependent activities, overlapping phases, and a large number of disciplines and participants. However, project uncertainty, including the lack of complete information and frequent changes, can lead to delays and cost overruns if not effectively managed. In this research, an integrated planning and control approach for EPC projects that addresses these challenges by combining the Last Planner System of Lean Construction and the Scrum framework of Agile Management is developed. Through a literature review and a case study of an EPC industrial construction project, six requirements for effective planning and control and mechanisms for their implementation are identified. The approach is evaluated through interviews with industry experts. The results highlight the importance of both structured planning and control for identifiable and predictable uncertainties, and flexibility and agility for unforeseen uncertainties, in managing project uncertainty in EPC projects.

Recently, the construction industry has been confronted with changing regulations, especially with the advent of sustainability goals and circular economy ambitions. The Dutch government wants to accomplish its ambitious initial objective of using 50% fewer primary resources by 2030. Further, by 2050, the goal is to have a waste-free economy that relies mostly on sustainable and renewable resources and reuses both products and raw materials.

Steel is a fundamental building component in the construction industry. However, due to changing market and industry conditions like lack of availability of raw materials for the production of virgin steel, exponential rise in prices of virgin steel and production of virgin steel being a high carbon and energy-intensive process - the use of virgin steel is becoming a not feasible option. Therefore, to meet the ambitions of the Dutch circular economy and to comply with the changing regulations like the demonstration of the Environmental Cost Indicator (ECI) as part of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the introduction of carbon taxes or EU ETS (European Union Emissions Trade System) is forcing the construction industry to limit the adoption of virgin steel. Thus, the reuse of structural steel elements is discussed highly in the building industry as an alternative. However, the reuse of steel encounters several barriers to its implementation.

A combination of these barriers results in a paradoxical tension during the decision-making process in the design phase of the project is that “whether is it feasible to first locate existing reclaimed/demountable materials available for reuse from the market and then design around them [Material-Driven Design] or design first with the intention of sourcing/ identifying the required materials later during the procurement phase [Form-Focused Design] ?" The contradictory tension is called the design-acquire paradox. In this research, Biopartner 5, a project which has successfully implemented large-scale reuse of structural steel elements, is used as a case study to analyse the processes involved in adopting the reuse of steel. The successful implementation was facilitated by several favourable conditions that do not match the current market scenario and industrial conditions. Thus, the approaches adopted cannot be used unanimously for all projects that intend to consider the opportunity of reusing steel.

The Ambidextrous Management Approach is identified as a feasible solution to deal with paradoxical tensions. In this research, with the principles of ambidexterity, an intervention is made into the existing industrial practices adopted to develop an Ambidextrous Process Tool. The tool can be used by various parties involved in the design phase of projects which intends to reuse steel. The tool aims to improve the potential and optimise the reuse of structural steel elements in buildings by mitigating the design-acquire paradoxical tension. The process tool emphasises balancing the exploration to improve the traceability of materials available in the market and the exploitation of identified materials. Furthermore, the tool focuses on embracing the potential of both Material Driven Design and Form-Focused Design simultaneously without making a trade-off between them.

Despite its importance for the functioning of society, the building environment is a major contributor the global GHG emissions. Although there is an increasing attention for the transition towards sustainability, this sector seems to struggle in realising this transition. As a result, environmental conditions are still exceeding (some of the) planetary boundaries. Moreover, for engineering organisations it is important to integrate sustainability into the project approach, in order to continue their business activities in the future. In order to improve the sustainable performance and stimulate the transition towards a zero-emission economy, literature suggests to study the missing link between formulation of corporate sustainable ambitions and vision (sustainability strategy) and the implementation on project level. This research responds to this suggestion, as it identifies the main barriers that hamper the implementation of sustainability strategy in engineering and consultancy organisations, and derive factors and activities that stimulate the application. As industrial ecology is described as the ‘toolbox’ for sustainability issues, this research considers this discipline and evaluates its application for the implementation of sustainability strategy. Besides the insights in the barriers, this research includes the results into a framework: the VOC framework. This framework stimulates the incorporation of sustainability (understood as implementation of sustainability strategy in this research) within construction project development. The starting point of the research is a background study, including literature on businesses, corporate strategy and sustainability in the building environment. Next to these aspects, a specific chapter will review the relevance of industrial ecology for the incorporation of sustainability, by focusing on three industrial ecology tools: Life Cycle Assessment, Industrial Symbiosis and Supply Chain Positioning. For the structure of this research, the methodology was divided into three phases: exploration, design and evaluation. Before the implementation of sustainability strategy in practice is investigated, the sustainable elements in the corporate sustainability strategy should be clear. Next, primary data is collected via case analysis. Within these cases, semi-structured interviews were conducted. In this way, both primary and secondary data is included in the analysis. The data analysis is part of the exploration phase. Within the design phase, barriers and stimulations together with perceptions of professionals were included in the VOC framework. As part of the evaluation phase, the conceptual framework was tested in a online focus group. The main barriers that are considered the starting point for implementation of sustainability are (1) communication with the internal project teams, (2) organisational support and (3) value creation out of sustainability. The results show how the three barriers on the corporate level are influencing all indirect limiting factors on the project level. On the project level, sustainability is in many cases considered a cost, without thinking about the value that is captured by sustainable interventions. To enhance this value creation, Life Cycle Assessment, Industrial Symbiosis and Supply Chain Positioning are integrated in the VOC framework as industrial ecology tools. VOC framework is not about applying the specific IE tools directly, but use the tools to inspire and convince the project owner on sustainable options in the project concept. In addition, sharing of experiences and best practices needed to be emphasised as crucial actions for the incorporation.

In the Netherlands, almost half of the energy supplied to households is used for space heating. Since natural gas supplies heating fuel to almost 95% of residential buildings Dutch municipalities have to investigate the possibilities of diversifying their heating infrastructure in order to comply with government environmental goals. Possible heating alternatives included in this study are; biogas, district heating and all-electric. In this thesis, a geospatial model was constructed to analyse the energy demand of the city of Leiden and its energy infrastructure. By combining various governmental datasets in Python and GeoPandas an analysis on the city scale is possible. The main focus of the thesis is material demand for each heating alternative and the associated environmental impact of those materials. The current heating system of natural gas scores lowest on total material demand and embedded carbon. Of the investigated alternatives the district heating scenario has most materials embedded into the infrastructure and also the highest carbon footprint. The all-electric scenario completely replaces heating infrastructure by only utilising electricity for heating. This results in a significant system change with average material consumption. However, the all-electric scenario scores highest for demand in REE’s. A combination of heat pumps and biogas resulted in the lowest material consumption of the researched alternatives. This scenario combines the relatively simple conversion to biogas for older houses with the most efficient heating utilising heat pumps for new houses. The major drawback for this scenario would be the sourcing of biomass required for biogas production.
In terms of embedded CO2 the sustainable heating alternatives proposed in this thesis score higher than the current system. However, the embedded carbon of the building materials would be compensated for in the first year if use-phase emissions are taken into account. The emissions associated with the construction of the supporting energy infrastructure were found to be significantly smaller compared to the use-phase emissions. Together with factors such as heat source availability, investment costs and social acceptance of the heating alternatives municipalities have to decide which heating alternative has its preference.

Even after many developments in project management tools and techniques, there is still a loophole in the traditional approaches, due to which it is no longer effective for managing projects in a dynamic environment. As a result, there is a rising urge amongst the practitioners to implement flexible approaches in large complex projects for its successful completion. However, there is a lack of practical recommendations on how to add flexibility into practice in the construction industry. Thus, the objective of this research is to contribute to the knowledge of flexible project management in the construction industry by identifying the flexibility enablers that can be incorporated in practice, investigating the barriers in its incorporation and providing practical recommendations to overcome them.In this research, five flexibility enablers- iterative planning, iterative delivery, short feedback loops, late locking and continuous locking, have been analyzed and investigated for its application in the infrastructure and healthcare real-estate projects. A case study methodology was adopted to conduct this research. Further, this research has identified 30 barriers that occur in the identification and implementation of flexibility enablers. These barriers were mainly classified into five clusters- Lack of awareness/methodologies, Change resistance, Organizational behaviour, Management processes and Miscellaneous. The research findings suggest the five enablers are not well-established in the construction industry, and there are not many methods available to incorporate these enablers. As a result, it lacks recognition and incorporation in practice. One of the main findings of the research is: planning-based enablers (iterative planning & iterative delivery) are more preferred in the infrastructure sector, while decision-based enablers (late locking & continuous locking) are more preferred in healthcare real-estate sector. Most of the barriers in implementing the enablers occurred as a result of lack of awareness and methods to implement them as well as resistance to change to a new and flexible way of working from the traditional approaches.In order to stimulate the incorporation of flexibility enablers and make them explicit, it is necessary to overcome the barriers that occur in its implementation. This research has proposed a conceptual framework following a linear step-by-step approach of creating awareness, providing insights, encouraging teams and implement these enablers, and further proposed suggestions to overcome the most commonly identified barriers. As the main idea behind stimulating flexibility by incorporating flexibility enablers was to identify and overcome the barriers that occur in its incorporation, hence adopting the proposed framework helps in achieving flexibility in construction project management.

Hell’s Kitchen West is currently transforming from former manufacturing to residential district however at the moment the quality of the living environment is far from being sufficient. The transition is done in a very hasty way and rezoning has a fragmentary character, some blocks have been already rezoned into residential and new high-rise housing developments are rising surrounded by warehouses, car retail shops, parking, car wash and warehouses which don't reflect the changing character of the urban environment. Moreover, the NYC planning department considers this zone a 'food desert' which means that the area between 10th and 12th avenues lacks public amenities which can provide fresh food. Doubled with the high level of environmental pollution from the Westside highway, lack of green public spaces and issues of reachability by public transport it leads to a discussion of how to create a qualitative urban environment for residents. Thus the research question is: How can food infrastructure be integrated into the residential urban environment of Hell’s Kitchen and soften the transition from the industrial past? How can local food manufacturing and distribution create new values for the community as well as provide green public spaces? The project is a combination of housing and Food Hub. Project is implemented in the group strategy of densification the strip of blocks along the Hudson River and creating new links with the waterfront and piers and thus establishing a new relationship between Midtown and the Hudson River. Food hub components are market and restaurants, urban farm/park-supermarket, e-commerce fresh food distribution centre, space for educational programs. Food and waste flows are a closed cycle between food hub ingredients and housing and shape a harmonious and sustainable food system.

In recent years, the amount of resources consumed and the waste generated by the built environment has been growing at an alarming rate. The impacts of this are seen within our environment and felt by many. It can be said that the need to achieve circularity within the built environment is at its peak right now. Within the construction industry, the initiation and the pre-preparation phase for a circular building allow for greater flexibility for thinking and re-thinking the entire process of a circular building from the beginning to the end of life phase (re-use of components to identifying methods of disassembly). The addition of circular ambitions will escalate the trade-offs which have to be made between quality, price, sustainability and durability. Along with this the team is riled with a plethora of opportunities (re-use of components to methods of disassembly) to lead to different final outcomes, unlike a regular project where the project team can choose between well-understood options. In addition to the crucial trade-offs, the term circularity is perceived subjectively by stakeholders. Developing a consensus on the meaning of circularity and further operationalizing the ambitions can be remarked to be a daunting task. Further, the topic of circularity is still a novice in the construction industry and has the potential for high levels of innovation. To summarize, the addition of circular ambitions within the projects demands an environment of learning, exploration, ideation and experimentation. Implementation of a Stage gate or Waterfall approaches as a solution might not be an optimal solution. The lack of a commonly accepted strategy has resorted both clients and practitioners to try various methods thereby creating ambiguity regarding the process in the initiation. This could result in increasing the time spent upfront in trying to create a process for each project individually. Witnessing these problems, the research focuses on addressing the gap that there lacks a commonly accepted strategy to realize shared understanding and ambitions which are vital to incorporate circular principles within the built environment. The gap is explored within the solution space of design thinking. Within the scope of the research, a strategy is developed in which it becomes clear how the various design thinking methods available in theory can be implemented in the initiation phase. Through the developed strategy, a shared sense of understanding of the goals and ambitions will be created. Such an approach can be said to aid in realizing the circular ambitions of the commissioner. Using this strategy will also result in an exploration of other potential possibilities that are present within the project environment. Additionally, it serves as a structure that can be used by consultants for solving the client’s dilemma in the process of realizing circular ambitions. The strategy attempts at bringing order to the chaos by creating clarity within the initiation phase by prescribing design thinking attributes as a way to realize circular ambitions. The potential of this strategy lies within the initiation phase wherein extensive exploration and problem analysis through different perspectives or lenses are facilitated to achieve the highest level of circularity.

The projects aims at implementing the use of fabric formwork as an alternative method to renovate existing buildings. As a case study the technique proposed in the research was applied to the new design for the Hennebique silos building in Genoa (Italy).