Sustainable development faces substantial challenges, with the built environment emerging as a major contributor to resource consumption. Office retrofitting, commonly known as changing the office fit out, is a common process in corporate real estate and accentuates these challenges due to its linear model of extraction, production, consumption, and disposal of building materials. This model leads to considerable waste and greenhouse gas emissions. This research examines the inefficiencies of the current linear model and explores transitioning to a circular office fit-out, which aims to minimise resource use and waste. The study focuses on the tenant-landlord relationship in corporate real estate, as these stakeholders are crucial for enabling circular fit-outs. The research question addressed is: “How can the tenant-landlord relationship facilitate the process from a traditional to a circular fit-out in office buildings?” Mixed methods, including literature review, case study documentation, and interviews, were used. What was found was that the relationship can enable circular practices if the stakeholders show positive behaviour, expertise, commitment, share information and communicate well, have a promoting business strategy around the fit-out product, and are pushed by society. Furthermore, the lease agreement showed to be crucial, and could enable circular practices even more than the actual fit-out design. Although these mentioned relationship determinants and arrangements are important, the research showed it is important to recognise the stakeholders individual responsibility towards circular practices. The research concludes with recommendations towards each stakeholder.

This research investigates the financial feasibility of the design of new office buildings for future residential conversion in response to rising office vacancy rates (8%) and a housing shortage of approximately 400,500 homes in the Netherlands. Conversion is understood as the transformation of a building's function while preserving its structure, offering potential cost, time, and environmental benefits. However, the technical, functional, and legal challenges of converting existing buildings complicate their conversion. Although most buildings will require adaptation in the future, designing specifically for conversion remains uncommon due to financial uncertainties.
Existing research has explored the technical and functional aspects of convertible buildings, but little attention has been given to the financial feasibility of the design of buildings with future conversion potential. This gap limits investors' ability to assess whether convertible building designs offer financial advantages. This research aims to bridge that gap by evaluating the associated costs and benefits of the design of convertible buildings and their impact on financial feasibility.
The findings suggest that while convertible buildings require higher initial investments – due to enhanced structural features and design costs – they significantly lower long-term vacancy risks, improving rental income potential and allowing for favourable financing conditions. Sustainability benefits may also yield premiums that enhance property values and reduce tax liabilities, though their realisation is debated. The convertible design approach permits a lower discount rate, mitigating the time value of money effects on future cash flows. Financial feasibility does not solely depend on whether a building is converted; most factors remain relevant regardless of if the conversion actually takes place. The research concludes that designing for convertibility reduces long-term risks and enhances flexibility in adapting to market changes, though its financial feasibility varies based on market conditions and investor profiles.
This exploratory qualitative research contributes to filling a knowledge gap in the financial aspects of convertible building design, offering insights for investors, developers, and owners of office properties. It makes use of literature review, interviews with different stakeholders and a sensitivity analysis in form of a DCF model. The generalisability and validity of the findings may be limited because of its geographic focus on the Dutch market, the qualitative nature of data collection, and reliance on assumptions in the sensitivity analysis.

Sufficient housing supply is one of the most significant issues in the Dutch housing market. The Dutch government aims to realise 15.000 dwellings a year by transforming vacant commercial real estate. However, a discrepancy can be noted between the number of buildings that developers have been willing to transform in the past decade and what the Dutch government deems feasible regarding the transformation of commercial real estate going into the future - a transformation dip. Next to that, office buildings with an energy label worse than C are not allowed to be used as office buildings anymore in 2023 unless they are renovated. This forms an interesting starting point as building owners are required to reassess the potential of the building and choose between different strategies, such as transformation, to prolong the lifespan. Thus, the goal of this thesis is to explore possibilities for bridging the gap between the number of buildings transformed annually on a national scale and the public transformation goals by applying a tool-the Conversion Meter- which aims to locate potential buildings in a city and asses their conversion potential. The Dutch city of The Hague is chosen as a case to apply this method, and the office stock with an energy label worse than C is chosen for the population. The following research question is answered during this thesis: To what extent can the number of office-to-housing conversions in the Netherlands be increased to meet the public goal of realising 15.000 dwellings through transformation a year? Buildings were selected out of an online real estate database using a set of preselected filters- office building in The Hague, with a minimum size of 3000m², not a listed monument and an energy label worse than C. 26 buildings were analysed, and it was determined that approximately 43% of the buildings analysed have a transformation potential based on the results of the Conversion Meter (9 out of 21 buildings-5 buildings discounted) and approximately 29% was deemed to have transformation potential based on the results of the Conversion Meter and the discussions with the expert panel (6 out of 21 buildings). In The Hague, more buildings could be found if smaller buildings are assessed too, as most of the buildings predicted to become economically obsolete (buildings energy label G) are smaller than 500m². Next to that, the normative approach of the Conversion Meter now discriminates against buildings in business parks due to a lack of facilities and location. However, as cities expand, some business parks have become engulfed by the city. The Binckhorst in The Hague is an example of a business park that will be transformed into a mixed-use area where buildings are found. Areas like these in cities provide great opportunities for adding more dwellings through transformation.

We have to change. We have to take a second look at our daily patterns. The construction sector is responsible for 36% of the world’s final energy use and 39% of energy and process-related carbon dioxide emission (IEA, 2019). 30% of this emission is due to building construction. Therefore, it is important to start to limit the carbon emission from construction processes. An efficient and sustainable way to limit the emissions is to develop buildings that are adaptable to any function or user, with the least effort and minor transformations to the building. Additionally, according to Manewa et al. (2016) buildings are continuously confronted with internal and external environmental changes to which they must respond. Those changes happen unpredictably and with many uncertainties. Buildings that are not able to react to those changes will be prematurely obsoleted, require extensive transformations, or need to be demolished, neither of which will result in a built environment that is sustainable (Manewa et al., 2016). Therefore, by not being able to adapt to the changing society and future demands, we are not building to last.

Even though several strategies have been developed and research has been conducted on the concept of adaptability, the transition from knowledge to implementation seems out of reach. Those studies mainly focus on the implementation of adaptability on the building level and not on the building as a “life cycle process”. Only a number of books and studies also examine the cooperation of the various parties in developing the proposed strategies. From this problem statement, the following research question is formulated: “What are the criteria for developing an adaptable building, and how can clients influence the implementation of these criteria in development projects?”. To answer this question, a literature review is conducted from which a list of adaptability criteria is developed. Additionally, the criteria are compared to existing Dutch cases through a case study with a cross-case analysis, and the roles and influences of parties involved in the development of adaptable buildings are established through interviews. The findings from the empirical research are used to develop an action plan which is validated by an expert panel. The action plan can be used by clients or other stakeholders as a guideline for developing adaptable buildings in the Netherlands. It can also be used to motivate and inspire other stakeholders or to start the discussion about the concept, and develop a more sustainable built environment.

For many years, the concept of adaptive reuse of buildings has been researched. A focus on heritage and specifically the implementation of circular economy frameworks is however relatively new. Adaptive reuse of heritage is often concerned a circular strategy for its material reuse. However, there are many more dimensions to circularity in adaptive reuse, ranging from socio-economic values in urban environments to buildings facilitating and stimulating the circular economy by their new functions. Urban manufacturing is one of the functions that can benefit of the added values of industrial heritage. In return, urban manufacturing can provide several values to its urban context and contribute to development of the circular city due to ongoing developments in this sector. The next generation of manufacturers can be well integrated in urban areas contribute to realising circular ambitions, but several principles should be applied to realise this and create balanced urban development. To date, integration of circular economy and adaptive reuse of heritage frameworks is limited and fragmented. An overarching conceptual framework for adaptive reuse in a multidimensional way is missing, and current research often avoids practical solutions and guidelines that can be used by developers and planners. This research aims to provide these frameworks to combine the potentials and values of both heritage and the urban manufacturing industry through adaptive reuse. The main research question: ‘How can industrial heritage facilitate the developing urban manufacturing industry?’ is answered by executing a literature review, interviews, a questionnaire, studying different cases of heritage adaptive reuse, and providing a new framework for assessment and development of industrial heritage for facilitating the urban manufacturing industry.

The increasing significance of the circular economy in the real estate construction industry is driven by evolving environmental, social, political, and economic factors. While there is increasing pressure for a national transition to a circular building economy, the sector continues to confront numerous challenges, risks, and uncertainties. To promote pro-circular decision-making among project management stakeholders, this research investigates how incentives need to be implemented in order to be an effective strategy to encourage project management stakeholders in making pro circular project decisions.

During the research an overall research strategy, the systemic design toolkit, has been used. This method integrates systems thinking with a human-centered, multi-stakeholder focus, by addressing the intricate social, economic, and environmental aspects of the issue at hand. The study comprises two sections: a theoretical segment employing quantitative research and an empirical segment employing qualitative research.

The theoretical phase explores the interorganizational dynamics that influence circular decision-making, delves into the roles and perspectives of project management stakeholders, and examines the concept of incentives. The empirical phase starts with semi-structured interviews to gain insights into the behavior, intentions, interrelationships, interests, and influence of relevant actors involved in decision-making processes. Subsequently, unstructured brainstorming and validation interviews are conducted to identify and develop effective incentives within the financial, social, and moral clusters.

The research findings provide empirical evidence that incentives can serve as a viable strategy for motivating project management stakeholders to make pro-circular strategic project decisions. These incentives are integrated into a comprehensive incentive scheme, outlined in the concluding section of the findings. Through the adoption of these incentives, stakeholders can be effectively motivated to embrace circular principles and actively contribute to the establishment of a circular building economy. Additionally, some key variables have been identified as influential factors in the success of the incentives: the involvement of supplying stakeholders and the targeted audience, as well as a thorough understanding of the rationale behind circular project rejection, the prevailing power dynamics, and the degree of stakeholder involvement throughout the various design phases.

The construction industry imposes significant pressure on the natural environment, making it essential to transition to the circular economy. A step towards this goal is the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, more specifically, heritage buildings. Adaptive reuse of heritage is a difficult procedure that seeks to maintain the qualities of historic structures while modifying them for usage in the present and the future.
The aim of this research is to identify what circular economy strategies are implemented in de adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, find out what barriers still exist, and how these can potentially be mitigated. This in order to help the transition towards the circular economy.
To achieve this, literature review will provide a better understanding of the terms circularity and adaptive reuse within the context of the built environment and heritage, the literature study will also offer the potential barriers for circular heritage renovation. Case studies will explore what strategies are already implemented in adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, and barriers are experienced in the process. Finally a focus group discussion will be conducted in order to find out how these practical barriers can be mitigated in order to move towards the circular economy.
The findings reveal that there is a gap between the strategies implemented in projects and the comprehensive understanding of circular economy . The majority of implemented strategies are related to sustainability, such as reusing and using circular building materials. Barriers to implementation include ambiguities, financial constraints, lack of experience, routine practices, rules and certification, as well as a lack of urgency and social acceptance. To address these challenges, the Circular Economy Strategies for Adaptive Reuse (CESAR) model is developed as a planning and assessment tool.
Furthermore, the study provides advice for stakeholders involved in adaptive reuse projects, emphasizing the importance of collaboration, early involvement of the contractor, and integration of circular economy requirements.

The construction industry has a significant environmental impact, consumes a large amount of scarce resources, generates a lot of waste, and causes a lot of emissions such as CO2 which contribute to global warming and are all reasons of great concern. A significant portion of these negative environmental impacts are caused by the building sector and attendant linear construction process. Developments with biobased materials as a circular strategy help encounter this. However, this implementation is still lacking in the building industry and the linear to a circular economy transition is still in the early stages. Moreover, real estate developers are struggling to make their business cases for circular projects financially feasible, as costs are a significant barrier. To research and understand how current circular biobased business cases are adapted and if they are future proof or use temporary measures, the following main research question is used: How are business cases adapted in order to create financially feasible and circular biobased housing developments? To answer this question, a literature study, case studies and interviews are done with the aim to gain insights into current complications and possible solutions in the business case of biobased housing developments. As well as gather perspectives from identified stakeholders & experts on these or alternative opportunities to help and speed up the transition to biobased houses. Results show that the business cases were not drastically adapted to fit the circular strategy, but temporary emergency measures were found to help realise the projects. These were: less profit for the parties involved, investors paying extra and for construction stored carbon credits, lower land price or more focus on sustainability and less on price by municipalities, subsidies, and building only partly with biobased materials and partly with e.g. concrete and bricks. It can be concluded that the traditional business case is not fitted for biobased construction as a circular economy strategy, which also contributes to why the wider necessary shift to such strategies stays out. But also that developers and other parties are willing and working on limiting the environmental impact of the building industry.

While urban development is essential to keep our cities alive, existing buildings and structures are essential for communities to thrive. Moreover, this development needs to minimise construction waste and pollution, which means that it is illogical to demolish existing buildings that contain valuable resources. However, transformation is often more expensive than new construction. Additionally, in academic literature a hiatus exists regarding the social side of
sustainable development. Therefore, this research sheds light on the effectivity and costs of social sustainable measures in architecture to facilitate their implementation by answering the following research question: “How is social sustainability included in the practice of adaptive reuse architecture and how does it impact the costs?“
The results show several social sustainability benefits regarding adaptive reuse. However, the results confirm a hesitance amongst practitioners regarding its execution as well, thanks to unpredictable costs and a lack of expertise. Therefore, evidence suggests reducing uncertainty, by means of minimising change in favour of social sustainability. In turn, social sustainability and adaptive reuse issue several economic benefits that promote their further integration in development of the built environment, but are in need of further research.

Campuses have recently drawn attention from governing organisations in the Netherlands and are identified as promising types of office- and university development on national, regional and company levels (Wiebes, 2019). Millions of dollars are invested in campuses by local and regional governments in order to attract businesses and jobs towards the respective regions and to stimulate innovation and Research & Design (Baggerman, 2020; Gruijthuijsen, 2020; Knop, 2020; Wiebes, 2019). However, the title ‘campus’ is not protected nor has an undisputed definition and therefore is subject to inflation (Magdaniel, De Jonge, & Den Heijer, 2018). This leads to the contradiction that public money is invested in initiatives that can differ in various ways and therefore remain unclear in how they should be managed successfully and what they deliver for their users. Researches state that clustering people and businesses leads to more innovation (Belso-Martínez, Mas-Verdu, & Chinchilla-Mira, 2020; Bolter & Robey, 2020; Glaeser, 2010; Guzman, 2019). Campus developments rest on the same principles. However, when approaching a campus from the demand side a campus should deliver the user preferences demanded by real estate users. This in order to attract them to the physical location and play a positive role in incubating and facilitating the respective real estate users (Ng, Junker, Appel-Meulenbroek, Cloodt, & Arentze, 2020; Remøy & van der Voordt, 2014). In order to reduce uncertainty surrounding campuses for policy makers, managers and users, these developments have to be redefined on what they are, what they intend to deliver and if that what is supplied matches the demand. Therefore the following main question will be answered; What are the perceived benefits campuses deliver for its real estate users? This will be answered by making use of literature study covering the definition and theoretical benefits. Secondly a case study towards four different campuses will be executed. This case study will consist of semi-structured interviews with both start-up and scale-up companies and the respective campus management teams in order to establish what benefits are delivered by locating on a campus. Followingly these results will be analysed and compared in order to build conclusions.

The Dutch government implemented strict regulations to reduce the spreading of the virus and highly encouraged travel restrictions and to work from home if possible. As a result, organizations were forced to adapt and implement remote working. These implications became the norm for close to two years. Consequently, the needs and preferences of employees and employers have changed indefinitely. Employees displayed a positive experience with remote working, which has left organizations questioning whether their current real estate aligns with the desired workplace strategy. Many CEOs during the pandemic said they would cut down their office space by 69%. A year later, this has already changed to 21%. However, 51% of those CEOs also said they would invest in collaborative space. The majority of media and research directs its focus on large corporates and leading commercial landlords. Consequently, there is more uncertainty about the role of the future physical office for middle-smaller organizations (SMEs). SMEs make up 67% of the Dutch workforce and are essential for the Dutch economy. Despite their importance, SMEs have remained understudied in the ongoing experiences of the pandemic. Moreover, SME resource constraints likely limit the support for their future workplace transition. Creating a workplace that supports the organization thoroughly is a complex process. Therefore, this study aims to research how organizational components are used by Dutch SMEs transitioning to a hybrid workplace strategy.
Preliminary interviews and literature provided insight into the propositions in each organizational component on how Dutch SMEs are transitioning to form a proposition. This help structure the basis for which next, a holistic multi-case analysis was used to examine the SME in each organizational component in a hybrid workplace strategy. Lastly, a proposition performance analysis to understand how each component performed.
The research findings provided insight into SMEs' adoption of organization components in their hybrid strategy. The main motivator for SMEs to keep using a hybrid workplace strategy is to support the employee's desire. Employers are hesitant to provide complete flexibility and remain involved to ensure that their employees continue to use the office as their primary workstation. In addition, employers seem worried about losing their organizational sense of belonging and desire more collaboration. Furthermore, SMEs focus their resources in either their conventional office or in the home office. Very realized thoroughly included both locations.
To ensure SMEs implement a successful hybrid workplace strategy and utilize their input resources as much as possible, SMEs need to prioritize an employee-orientated approach in each organizational component. Furthermore, adequate physical resources are essential in both the conventional office and the home workplace. While the physical environment is critical, focusing on the behavioral environment will most impact people's productivity.

In a time of increasing awareness regarding environmental and social concerns, urban area developments have been framed within ambitious goals which require the collaboration of developers and other parties. The complexity behind pursuing sustainable goals brings several challenges to the feasibility and financing of projects since private actors are mostly profit-driven and therefore, their business rationale tends to collide when taking decisions that link private profit and public values. The existing criteria to assess sustainability, mostly at an urban level, and the difficult quantification of these criteria into potential benefits for developers have been traditionally determined as seeming incompatible. Therefore, a deeper understanding of how sustainability is impacting the decision-making of area developers is required to achieve the right balance between long-term sustainability and short-term profitability.

In that sense, there is an existing gap between sustainability assessment methods and decision-making processes that needs to be filled to ease the transition towards a broader definition of value into the business rationale of developers. In that line of reasoning, market-driven rating tools for sustainability assessment represent an opportunity to analyse how their use is impacting the urban redevelopment management, providing empirical examples of how the gap with decision-making processes can be minimized. These findings, aims to evaluate the implementation of BREEAM-NL Area in The Netherlands and add knowledge on how the use of it as a methodological framework can have an impact in the decision-making process. That could potentially stimulate developers to take a more holistic approach, enhance innovation within their decision logic and embed sustainability within their corporate strategies.

Due to the changing role of the private sector in the Dutch land development process, real estate developers are increasingly involved in realising the interests of the direct surroundings of their redevelopment projects. To incorporate the seemingly unprofitable space-use in their project, developers increasingly opt for mixed-use real estate. The chosen mix of space-uses directly impacts the business case and the area. However, the relationship between these two is unclear, leading to the formulation of the research question: How can mixed-use generate value for both the area and the redevelopment business case?

The aim of this research is to make explicit the mutual value generated by the mix of space-uses in redevelopment projects. It attempts to fill this knowledge gap through analysis of literature, exploratory interviews with field experts, and an embedded multiple case study. The non-holistic case study method consists of the individual descriptive analyses of three cases, among which two phenomena are studied as units of comparison: added value to the area; and added value to the business case. These phenomena are substantiated through literature and compared among the cases through a cross-case analysis. The exploratory interviews provide context for the interpretation of case results.

The study identifies several benefits of mixed-use and the incorporation of particular space-uses. However, many of the benefits for the area do not end up with their investor. Moreover, assessing the extent of the benefits is difficult as they cannot be measured quantitatively, and stakeholders interpret their value differently. Additionally, mixed-use real estate falls outside of the asset classes of investors, and investor attitude towards the product type varies due to identified risks, but benefits in return are not assessed appropriately.

By broadening the business case alternative value streams can be included using which the business case profits from the additional space-uses. Meaning qualitative benefits are also considered. The benefits from mixed-use can be categorised in primary, secondary and even tertiary value streams. The first of which is the direct impact of the additional urban function through compensation of the investment costs. The secondary value stream is based on the indirect value added through synergies between urban functions, increased marketability of the primary space-uses, and loosened project constraints. Furthermore, the study finds that some of the benefits for the developing party actually lie outside of the business case, thereby providing a tertiary value stream of positive exposure of the firm and strengthened relationships with public parties.

What results is a comprehensive understanding of the mutual character of benefits that result from incorporation of a mix of space-uses in real estate objects. Their opportunity to generate value is not mutually exclusive to either the area or the business case, as project value is based on the vibrancy of the area it is situated in.

Changing consumer shopping trends in the last two decades and the impact of COVID-19 in 2020-2021, has led to more structural vacancy in supportive monofunctional retail areas. Since supportive monofunctional retail areas are less resilient on the long term compared to retail areas in city centres, integrated redevelopment of such areas is required to prevent further decay and add new value. Dutch municipalities majorly rely on market forces to stimulate redevelopment. Nevertheless, this does not result in desired outcomes. Different researches conclude that the local municipality has to fulfil a leading role in this redevelopment in order to achieve the desired outcome. This research focusses on how this leading role is defined and how the corporation between the local municipality and private property owners can be improved. Therefore, the following research question is formulated; How can the municipal leading role be defined during the redevelopment initiating phase and what improvements can be made in the decision-making process between the municipality and private property owners of retail space for the redevelopment to mixed-use areas? This research consists of a literature research and an empirical research to answer this question. The literature research provides an investigation of the initiative phase of project development, possibilities in organisational structures and the definition of decision-making. The empirical research consist of a case study considering a decaying monofunctional retail area with redevelopment in prospect. Stakeholder interviews are used as the main data source to investigate the project approach, organisational structure and decision-making process between the municipality and private property owners. The most important finding is that a key element of the municipal leading role was the proactive approach to the development of a masterplan for the case area in order to stimulate private stakeholder involvement.

Our cities have to expand either horizontally or vertically to accommodate the growing population and urbanization trends. Meanwhile, our needs, demands and desires evolve over time. This makes sustainable development and adaptability more relevant than ever. However, a main problem with adaptability is the additional investment costs against the lack of additional revenues. This lowers the financial return and disincentivizes to invest in adaptable developments. This claim is based on linear financial models that calculate on a rather short-term basis and only take the first function into account. The added value of the possibility to adapt to another function is not included in these financial models yet.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate different approaches towards adaptability and business cases that are needed among long-term owners specifically to incorporate the added value of adaptable features. A hybrid research consisting of literature research combined with a case study on adaptable tall buildings will be executed, to identify important adaptability features, and how to better incorporate them in a business case. Interviews have been held with both stakeholders of the selected cases, as well as with different professionals in the built environment concerning a long-term business case.

The results have shown that a building should not be regarded as one object, but merely as an ensemble of different building elements, each with a different lifespan. In addition, demountability has shown to be inherently connected to adaptability, and as means to achieve a more circular economy. By delivering a set of conditions on a technical, financial, organisational and a broader field, it is strived to contribute to increased implementation of adaptability in practice. By elaborating a roadmap for a more long-term business case, it is hoped to contribute to a smooth transition towards a more circular economy. In addition, this research aims to raise awareness, understanding and create incentives for adaptability possibilities.

The increase in economic, social, and environmental challenges leads to rethinking the long-term spatial vulnerabilities of small island developing states (SIDS). In addition, the lack of resources and low capacity available accentuates the necessity of considering urban resilience. By exploring the possible relationship between adaptive reuse and collaborative strategies to stimulate the redevelopment of urban environments. In many cases, urban renewal is achieved through current market trends and outdated planning policies. Thus, either neglecting or underusing the existing urban fabric and old building stock. The research focuses on complex urban redevelopment, investigating the adequate long-term policy instrument to revitalize historical port cities.

The research utilizes as a case study the historical port-city of Willemstad, Curaçao, located in the Dutch Caribbean. This case study helps to emphasize the importance of preserving the cultural-historical identity using adaptive reuse of existing buildings and monuments. These heritage buildings offer the experience value of cultural heritage, which can prosper to create an identity or new brand image to the surrounding area. Yet, the implementation of adaptive reuse requires extensive criteria of financial, social and environmental aspects. This research outlines a policy instrument to address these challenges, presenting a co-creation process among stakeholders, by investigating the process of shifting from preserving the heritage buildings through legal protection towards conserving through stimulating redevelopment. Thus, stimulating to serve diverse functions contributes towards urban resilience by adapting to future environmental and socio-economic challenges in the long term. Also, using collaborative strategies between stakeholders as a driving vehicle towards redeveloping into a city that respects the past and represents the needs of today's and future generations. Historical port-cities such as Willemstad showcased the need to be redeveloped sustainably by mitigating economic, environmental, and social tradeoffs. To mitigate future tradeoffs it is vital to enhance the identity of the city by aligning stakeholder goals. Policymakers must provide the basis for a comprehensive and action-oriented approach to stimulate market parties to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which could be linked to positive incentives such as subsidies or tax reductions. By linking the findings from the empirical research to specific SDGs, helped to propose a policy instrument that manages urban resilience and stimulates it throughout diverse built environment scales and projects within Willemstad, Curaçao.

The COVID-19 pandemic is posing an unprecedented global challenge to social and economic life. This resulted in many corporations struggling for survival and exploring alternative strategic paths (Seetharaman, 2020). Additionally, these remote-work experiences triggered the rethinking of their future office use and space (Cushman & Wakefield, 2020). The strategic execution of the real estate portfolio and the alignment with the business strategy is considered crucial for organizations in order to create maximum added value (Scheffer, Singer and Meerwijk , 2006). As the pandemic is expected to create a new normal and changed the demand for office space, this indicates that the current corporate office portfolio is expected to not be aligned to their future demand. Therefore, the aim of this research is to provide large corporations within different sectors within the Netherlands with a strategy to realign their real estate portfolio to their future post-pandemic priorities. This in order to maintain competitiveness and create a sustainable built environment by addressing the mismatch that could develop overtime. An empirical research is conducted, in which the changes in demand of nine large Dutch corporates with multiple locations in the Netherlands is explored. From this the most relevant priorities are selected to develop a realignment strategy for. The selected priorities of these case studies are: ‘support culture’, ‘increase flexibility’, ‘increase productivity’, ‘increase sustainability’ and ‘increase technology’. As the need for a post pandemic flexible solution has been expressed extensively, flexibility is considered the starting point for this realignment strategy. From this perspective, three different integrated flexibility solutions are developed that reduce core space of the office portfolio. These are ‘working from anywhere’, ‘external co-working’ and ‘internal co-working. Additionally, an assessment framework has been developed to define what combination of solutions contributes most to these selected priorities. Furthermore, the applicability of these solutions have been defined based on portfolio and company characteristics. At last, this strategy is applied on a case portfolio, thereby implementing the two solutions ‘working from anywhere’ and ‘internal co-working’. For this case is concluded that in the short term post pandemic, the amount of core office space will likely not be down- or upsized due to existing leases, but instead a repurposing towards collaboration space within existing offices is proposed. Thereby emphasizing the importance of proactive realignment even more.

While the benefits of adaptive reusing heritage are widely acknowledged by academic and practice, the process's complexity increases. Stakeholders are not willing to consider reuse as a strategy to deal with heritage vacancy. Studies have tried to grasp this complexity by identifying success factors, but till this point, practitioners have not been able to put this to work to improve the process. This research proposes to find out what the success factors are, and when, how, and why they are present, and give them a place and time within the adaptive reuse process. That way, it becomes easier to align resources and attention in future adaptive reuse projects, leading to process improvement. Doing so facilitates the elements to deliver a project successfully. This research will answer the following question: How can success factors improve the process of adaptive reuse of heritage? This research aims to provide insight and recommendations into the complex issue of adaptive reuse projects. Through the literature review and three case study projects, all the key aspects of the main research question were covered on the subjects: adaptive reuse of heritage, the reuse process, success and success factors, process improvements and the actual improvement of the reuse process. This has led to a general adaptive reuse process and a list of the twelve success factors that were perceived as being most important in the case study projects, combined into a process map. The process map describes the adaptive reuse process from idea until delivery where the main activities, complexity, degree of freedom, and success factors indicate how stakeholders can manage the process. This research showed the value and reuse potential of heritage buildings by providing the right tools to increase the chance for successfully delivering a reused building. This research shows that the complex adaptive reuse process can be made simple and insightful by bundling knowledge and experience from practice to ignite the drive to reuse out cultural and historical past. For the process model to impact future adaptive reuse processes, stakeholders have to actively embed the model into their work to learn from it. Next to that, the attractiveness of adaptive reuse projects depends on the collaboration between public and private parties.

The Tesselschade 4 (T4) building in Leeuwarden is a 80 meter tall former tax office building from 1970. The modernistic ‘slab’ is raised from the ground level by the characteristic pilotis. Situated in an office park on the edge of the historical city centre the building offers the opportunity to influence its surroundings positively via conversion to mainly housing. The municipality of Leeuwarden has the opportunity use the Tesselschade 4 building as a showcase when it comes to bottom-up transformation of monofunctional office parks.
Roughly 80 future residents will have the option to realise their preferred housing type in one of the seven upper floors. A second façade, hanging from an added roof structure serves as a thermal and acoustic buffer for the housing units, which can be reached via galleries and corridors in the north façade and the centre of the building. Additional functions such as a playground, coffee-bar, several work-areas and a roof garden can be found throughout the building. The users are the drivers behind not only the use, but also the development of the project.

The Circular Economy (CE) in the built environment has gained ever more attention as discussions around the threats of global warming, resource scarcity, environmental impacts, and energy emissions intensify. The building industry accounts for approximately 40% of carbon emissions and reusing vacant buildings – thus slowing resource loops – is one of the strategies on offer to address this. However, research shows that the adaptive reuse of vacant buildings also contributes to their embodied emissions if the process is not fully aligned with CE principles. In addition, the CE is often conceived of as a binary outcome: either projects are fully circular or not circular at all. Identifying how far a project still has to go to become fully circular is an essential step in closing this gap, but how can this be done? This research contains an examination of the processes which are considered to be of importance at the inception of a project. In it, the results of two case studies, exploratory interviews with experts, and a literature review are used to design a decision support framework (DSF) to support decision-makers in housing associations in pursuing greater self-sustainability in their assets. This research also includes an exploration of existing, complementary CE methodologies, and an illustration of how they can be applied to adaptive reuse projects. This involves an examination of the complexity of these CE methodologies, and the delivery of a series of practical steps to achieving a low, medium or high degree of circularity. Using the DSF, an evaluation of a circular project in the Netherlands is then carried out, and recommendations and a step-by-step plan for achieving a completely circular project are set out.