“From Humus to Human: A Repository of Remembrance” explores the profound and intricate connection between humans and soil, delving into the fundamental aspects of human identity, belonging, and the cycle of life. It highlights the natural process through which we emerge from the earth, only to ultimately return to it, symbolizing the unity, continuity of life.

The project is situated in “La Friche Josaphat,” a former marshalling yard in Brussels that, over time, has been gradually reclaimed by nature. Inspired by this unique and evolving setting, the design proposal emphasizes the preservation of a patch of tall spruce trees, which stand as a powerful symbol of growth, resilience, and the enduring flow of life. These trees are surrounded by the ‘repository,’ a gallery of niches where visitors can retreat in solitude, reflect, and engage in personal acts of remembrance. These niches offer a view leading toward a memorial garden, creating a tranquil and serene atmosphere for honoring memories, fostering reflection, and experiencing quiet contemplation.

The ‘Repository of Remembrance’ is embraced and protected by a ring of dwellings. These clusters of housing units serve as both a physical and symbolic mediator, between the rhythms of everyday urban life and the sacred, reflective realm of remembrance.

Germany has a rich history in classical music. Berlin, in this regard, has been key in the development of concert hall architecture, most notably through the Berlin Philharmonic. With an increasing decline in visitors and structural financial support of concerts, together with developments in music culture, the building type once more is challenged to reinvent itself, leading to the following question: What spatial qualities could invite the broader audience to concert halls? Within the specificity of concert hall architecture, the project explores the potential of the foyer as a space to be utilized beyond classical music concerts.

In an era when rising threats put increasing pressure on security demands in state office buildings, the public trust in these same governmental institutions is on the decline, owing to a sense of detachment and lack of transparency.
This detachment partially stems from the functional and physical separation of people’s civic and political lives, leaving public officials as uncountable, a separated class unresponsive to the everyday people, who in turn can glance little of the everyday working of their government.
In other words: it is easier to pass unfavourable legislation when you never interact with the common people and sit in your fortress hidden from protests. For these reasons, the future must see the creation of new governmental spaces that are public in nature, but also safeguarded from new dynamic threads. New design approaches in established typologies need to be sought to answer these relationship questions that stem from new state, societal, and technological developments.
The Graduation Project ‘Fortress Without Barriers‘ seek to explore these issues of security and accessibility by using a scenario involving the design of a new Federal Ministry of Defence headquarters in Berlin. At first glance this typology might be perceived as ill suited to the integration of public life, even agitative. But rather the project places it as the ultimate test for whether these values can be effectively expressed in an urban context. Defence Ministry being the most prime domain of security, on the scale of city within a city, and placing the most private and secured programme imaginable alongside the proposed public functions.

In the summer of 2021, an exceptional number of 270 wildfires took place among the entire Turkish coast. Multiple villages have been destroyed. Villagers lost their loved ones, houses and income sources. According to climate scientists, the wildfires will occur more often due to hotter summers. This emerges the question on how destroyed villages in wildfire risk areas will be rebuilt in a new wildfire resilient way, involving local building skills and knowledge in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. Kalemler village is chosen as the research and design area, because it is one of the most damaged villages and representative for other burned villages in the Mediterranean region.

The current rebuilding plans do not involve wildfire resiliency and there is no worldwide research on how to rebuild villages in a wildfire resilient way. Looking at Turkish villages on the national scale, Turks always historically provided themselves with self-built dwellings made of earth, stone or wood. This shows the opportunity to reintroduce earth as a building material in an innovative way, since earth is a directly available and non-combustible building material. Also, it is free when excavated on site, endlessly recyclable and has many other building benefits. Rammed earth is implemented as the new earth construction method for the village. It contributes on the scales of community and building construction as the research outcome on how innovation of vernacular façade earth construction methods could contribute to a wildfire resilient rebuilding strategy for burned down villages in the Mediterranean region of Turkey.

This project results in Kalemler as the wildfire resilient village of the future, tackled on five scales from the wildfire resilient rebuilding strategy: community, village, building typology, construction and landscape. This translates into a wildfire resilient village rebuilding plan, including a community centre, an independently working water and energy collection and distribution system. This system consist of a water tower, infrastructure points and walkable village walls. Furthermore, it translates into a growing wildfire resilient village house design and building guidelines for local self-builders. The growing village house typologies take the regional earthquake risk into account as well. All in all, this project involves the locals, respects local culture, harvests local materials, innovates local skills and knowledge on self-building with earth, and combines earth construction with innovative wildfire resilient solutions. Kalemler becomes a fusion village, where tradition meets innovation.

The project 'House of Textiles' investigates the extent to which an architectural intervention is capable of giving hope, inspiration and encouraging innovation to a challenged place like Beirut. The project explores different ways of representing these assets through its architectural language and expression. Its significance for Lebanon’s textile production, the country’s waste crisis, as well as social and economic prospects is asking for an iconic landmark, which represents the building’s identity.
The formulation of these aspects in an architectural way is explored through spatial concepts that support their requirements. Strong visibility, accessibility, representation and adaptability are being tested in different layers. These aspects form the most important ingredients of the project. The question of how a building can represent the same level of innovation and development, as the proposed change in Lebanon’s textile industry has been guiding the design process.

The massive blast of August 2020 severely damaged Beirut’s architectural heritage. It is in the very city centre that most of this asset is concentrated, but since the end of the 1975-1990 Civil War citizens have been denied access to this area. Here stands the former Grand Theatre, which will be the epicentre of a new artistic quarter that will allow all Beirutis to re-establish a cultural presence in their city centre. Two layers are analysed during this process. First, the Lebanese theatrical scene, which must rely on the flourishing film industry and tourism to recover. Second, the globalised mainstream of Culture 3.0, that has broadened the basin of culture producers and made casual public space act as a proper theatrical stage.

Complex Projects Studio Beirut - Graduation Design of an urban sports centre in the dense area of Solidere (Downtown Beirut)

Public transportation is on the rise due to increasing ecological concerns, a more efficient use of space and an improved city-planning featuring transport oriented development (TOD). As a result, new modalities emerge and stations are getting busier which can lead to a narrow design focus on the nodal function of the station, neglecting other aspects of the station. "
Due to the fact that many stations are located at central locations within cities, they have a strong influence on the quality of city life around them. Traditionally, the station has been seen solely as a node (connecting all the different modalities efficiently; moving people). Nowadays paradoxically, the station is seen increasingly as a place in its own right as well (by being an active part of the city; inviting people to stay). By diminishing the station’s barrier-effect and by implementing public functions within the station’s realm, the station can be integrated better within its surrounding city, creating an urban station that enhances city life.
The evolving role of the station has been the subject of many recent studies. However, the research mostly remains to be theoretical. More practical design principles and requirements may help in achieving the ambitions regarding creating an integrated urban station. Literary research was performed into the multiple facets of station design, which led to the formulation of six design principles for contemporary urban station design. The main research question is as follows:

“Are the six design principles: multimodality, functional mix, connectivity, spatial quality, visibility & flexibility apt contributors to the integration of an urban multimodal station within its surrounding cityscape?”

In recent years, many stations have been redesigned with special attention to this node-versus-place-paradox, focusing more on the station as a place. This research aims to analyse seven important international multimodal railway stations in The Netherlands and Belgium to see how these stations handle their complexity and aim to integrate within their surrounding city.
The aim is to test the proposed design principles via the analyses of these seven chosen stations: Amsterdam Centraal, Schiphol Airport, Rotterdam Centraal, Antwerpen Centraal, Utrecht Centraal, Arnhem Centraal and Amsterdam Zuid. The analyses are drawn on Nolli maps, in order to gain insight into the public realm surrounding the station and the connections between the two.
As the results point out, the chosen design principles appear to be fitting for creating a well-integrated urban station. However, six design spaces have been formulated in addition to the design principles, each accompanying respectively one principle. The spaces act as an addition to the programme of requirement as provided by the commissioner, embodying the different design principles into explicitly formulated spaces. Further research is advisable. Especially multimodal station from France, Germany or England can give crucial new insights as the stations are generally larger and their urban surroundings are often more densely populated.

Further research into the airport city concept can also prove worthy, as the development in airports is a few years ahead on the developments around urban stations, airports can provide valuable examples and case studies.

People make mistakes. But how does society treat them when they do? For archi- tecture to be involved in this process, is to be at least called arbitrary, as it frames the spaces in which we punish and reform. For architects to design prisons is a paradoxical task because of the conflicting interest and changing goals of its design. Spaces of imprisonment deprive people of freedom, whilst at the same try to create a healthy humane environment that is helpful for the detainee to rehabilitation. So how should architects intervene in such spaces? In what way should view spaces of punishment? How could we approach prison design in such a way, that it creates humane spaces of confinement? This project tries to answer this question in the form of a humane prison design that focusses on interaction. Framing the everyday within in a confined space, the prison forms a the platform in which prisoners can act and display they action. Giving them a place in society where they ability able to show their ability to be good.

In December 2017, the municipality of Amsterdam announced the development of a new city in its port: Haven-Stad. The plan comprises a redevelopment strategy to transform port lands towards a mixed use urban area with up to 70.000 dwellings. This announcement caused a conflict between port users and the city. This integration of various stakeholders and interests is key for successful urban area redevelopment, especially in the complex port-city interface. Goal of this thesis is to understand and learn from the presumed conflict between port and city in the case of Amsterdam. Therefore, an actor-centered institutional analysis was conducted of the strategic governance and planning around Haven-Stad. The level of integration between scales, sectors and agencies per outcome of each planning phase was measured and then set against the analysed institutional setting. This research identified various socio-cultural, legal-economic and governance factors in the institutional setting that affect plan making in the port-city interface. Various subjects, such as relaxed environmental regulations, decentralized urban planning and change of the political landscape have contributed to unintegrated planning and conflicts. The municipality has a culture of blueprint strategic urban planning and is focused on integrating different departments and solving an ongoing housing crisis. On the other hand, the fact that the port is fossil fuel based and corporatized -but municipally owned- limited its ability to prevent urban takeover. This thesis recommends the development of a true and joint port-urban vision, the enhancement of cooperation between local, regional and national stakeholders and the involvement of private parties and port users in plan making. In an outlook towards the introduction of the new Environment and Planning Act, this research indicates that decentralized and flexible planning instruments may increase the chance for potential conflicts in industrial and waterfront redevelopment areas.

After the global financial crisis in 2008, new developments in the Dutch housing market halted, causing a deficit of available dwellings in the owner-occupied housing market. This in turn has increased the demand for rental housing, resulting in shortages in both the regulated as well as the unregulated rental housing segments. These shortages are most noticeable for lower and middle income households. The lack of supply for low income households sparked societal debate concerning skewed tenants, resulting changes in national housing policy. However, these regulations caused a further decrease in housing options for the middle income households.
As a result, regional residential visions established by municipalities active in Dudok Wonen’s working area have since then had a strong focus on stimulating filtering processes: middle income households residing regulated rental dwellings should move, to make room for low-income households. To stimulate these filtering processes, housing association Dudok Wonen started to offer an intermediate rental segment (consisting out of ex-regulated rental dwellings) exclusively to middle income households, stating that the largest obstacle for the desired filtering processes is the lack of supply available to middle income households. Dudok Wonen assigned this intermediate rental segment ’50-50’ to starting and filtering middle income households. To examine the effect of this measure the following research question arose, to be answered in this thesis: ‘How do the intermediate rental segment and associated housing allocation procedures which Dudok Wonen offers contribute to the desired filtering processes in the municipalities Gooise Meren and Hilversum?’.
To answer this research question, the residential visions in Dudok Wonen’s working area have been reviewed, and literature concerning the topic of residential mobility has been consulted. The selected research methods can be described as a mixed methods research, and involved a quantitative analysis of the available rental segments Dudok Wonen’s working area, a structured web-survey distributed amongst and answered by 806 tenants in Dudok Wonen’s regulated rental segment dwellings and 9 semi-structured interviews conducted with tenants of dwellings offered in Dudok Wonen’s intermediate rental segment.
The quantitative analysis of rental segments was performed to examine whether the characteristics of intermediate rental segments intended for filtering households complied to the characteristics that Dudok Wonen had envisioned to trigger filtering. The intermediate rental segment dwellings were found to be larger than the regulated rental segment dwellings and to have a more beneficial price/quality ratio than unregulated rental segment dwellings, thereby complying to the goals set by Dudok Wonen. This research has also revealed that a majority of the middle income households residing in the regulated rental segment do desire to move, but that only a minority of these households is interested in the intermediate rental segment. The largest contributor to this lack of interest is the lack of knowledge concerning the segment, but the increase in price (compared to the regulated rental segment) and the lack of diversity in quality aspects in which the segment outranks the regulated rental segment are also culprits. The intermediate rental segment as offered by Dudok Wonen predominantly supplies moving triggers to households that are interested in larger dwellings. It is unlikely that households looking for other quality characteristics will be triggered to move by the addition of the intermediate rental segment.
Households that did move to the intermediate rental segment did so in order to have the option to realise (prospective) life-cycle related goals, like starting a family. Although these households were looking for rental dwellings, this preference is a substitute of their actual desire for owner-occupied housing. This substitution behaviour can be attributed to the contemporary housing market situation and regulations.
Despite this substitution behaviour, the intermediate rental segment, as it is currently being offered by Dudok Wonen, is contributing fairly well to stimulating the desired filtering processes in the municipalities Gooise Meren and Hilversum, as it supplies a portion of the middle income households residing in regulated rental dwellings with triggers to move. With the addition of the intermediate rental segment in the regional housing market, Dudok Wonen is stimulating the desired filtering processes not by pushing households to move, but by lowering the thresholds these households need to overcome in order to move. However, although the addition of the intermediate rental segment is beneficial for the desired filtering processes and the options middle income households have in the regional housing market, the associated housing allocation procedures negatively impact the supply available in the regulated rental segment. This report concludes by posing several recommendations for Dudok Wonen to consider, as well a point of critique towards contemporary Dutch housing policy.