This presentation delves into the comprehensive redevelopment of ‘De Centrale,’ a heritage building in Amsterdam-New West. The project aims to balance the preservation of historical value with sustainable redevelopment strategies. The research phase employed a case study analysis, literature review, and material comparison, focusing on minimizing embodied and operational energy while maintaining the building’s heritage.

Heritage buildings face challenges such as vacancy and demolition amidst urban development. This project addresses the question of sustainable redevelopment by examining energy implications. Embodied energy pertains to the total energy required to produce a product, while operational energy concerns the energy needed to operate a building throughout its lifetime. The project’s methodology centered on these two energy types and the building's heritage value.

The site analysis revealed a lack of green structures and significant influence from nearby high-rise developments. The building's context and heritage elements, such as concrete façade elements and a prominent chimney, guided the design approach. Despite the building's outdated function, its unique architectural features and recent use as a boxing school provide significant heritage value.

The final design transforms the building into a community center with multifunctional spaces, including sports facilities, a lounge area, a restaurant, and flexible workspaces. The design preserves the building's heritage while introducing modern elements for sustainability and community engagement. Detailed considerations for water treatment, structural integrity, and climatic design further support the building's sustainable redevelopment, ensuring a harmonious blend of historical preservation and modern functionality.

The project ‘Preserving Tangible and Intangible Values and Attributes in Heritage Housing’ is about exploring a process in which both tangible and intangible values and attributes within an existing housing structure are preserved and strengthened. This research aims to contribute to the field of adaptive reuse and cultural heritage by exploring a practical strategy which could guide future sustainable and culturally sensitive urban development in future projects. By discovering what and why values and attributes are valued by inhabitants, the current living situation will be strengthened and improved. At the same time, the project is a continuous research and development on how an existing housing structure with its embedded values and attributes can become future-proof in terms of sustainability, diversity and integrity. The fascination that buildings do not have to be newly constructed to accommodate a modern day lifestyle, but the idea that existing structures can adopt and act as a core for communities, diverse social groups and as hubs for social interaction without losing its core values was a core motivator for the redesign project of the ‘Knijtijzerpanden’ in Amsterdam.

The research dives into Amsterdam Nieuw-West, exploring the principles of Western Garden Cities and the use of adaptability in the construction process. The Western Garden Cities are an elaboration of Cornelis van Eesteren's Algemeen Uitbreidingsplan (General Expansion Plan) from 1935. This city district is part of the Western Garden Cities and has recently been listed by the National Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands to have national importance. This area is listed because of the meaningful urban plan and the execution of it after World War II. However, in the 1980s, the Western Garden Cities even became synonymous with squalor, crime and social problems. The current housing stock is considered obsolete, both architecturally and physically. The area faces many problems and threats, making it an ideal location for transformation and renewal. Recognizing the pressing housing crisis and the urgent need to transform existing buildings in a circular way, the research looks into innovative approaches of building with adaptability, to efficiently revitalize this city district. The research proposes design guidelines for the transformation of porch flats, the most common building typology, in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. It is the repetition and the recognisability of these residential buildings that allows for improvements. The guidelines are a list of intervention strategies that can be implemented in the transformation of the post-war porch flats in Nieuw-West, they respect the heritage status of the neighbourhood and are complemented by a set of adaptability strategies. These guidelines are a helpful tool for transforming porch flats in the area with a diverse range of small interventions. However, the guidelines don't form definitive answers, but are rather a flexible framework which is useful as a starting point in the design process.
The design case is located at the Johan Jongkindstraat, close to Lelylaan station.The plot has 6 porch flats with a residential function and 5 smaller buildings with both a residential and public function. The design project forms the location in order to implement the design guidelines provided by the research and forms an example of how to transform in Amsterdam Nieuw-West. The design carefully looked at the design guidelines and implemented them. It also looked at site-specific interventions that were needed to increase living comfort. With the right design interventions, connections were made, repetition was broken, heritage was preserved with new improvements related to current wishes and the entire plan was future-proofed. This project goes beyond monotony and shows that with these interventions, the satisfactory scores in the Western Garden Cities can improve.

This research explores methods to revitalise deteriorating Dutch mass housing neighbourhoods, with a primary focus on Amsterdam Nieuw-West. Despite the Netherlands’ rich public housing tradition, the country is now experiencing a major housing shortage, while at the same time post-war public housing flats are being demolished at an alarming rate. Even though the social, cultural and material values of this heritage are widely recognised, demolition and new construction remains the de facto method for urban renewal in this context.
This thesis takes the position that to preserve the postwar heritage of the western garden cities, it is necessary to go beyond the legislative protection of cityscapes or the conservation of individual buildings. Instead, the garden city project must be continued, and its founding ideals of light, space and air adapted to the needs of today. Interventions should aim beyond sufficiency and take advantage of the potential of the existing structures to be transformed into generous and high-quality dwellings. To prevent further privatisation and demolition of the social housing stock, this project aims to turn the porch flat into a desirable alternative to the single-family home. By reconnecting the buildings to their surroundings and supporting community development, the negative stigma surrounding collective housing can be overcome to position it as a viable alternative to the prevailing ideology of homeownership. To show that by re-using the existing, and doing more with less, we can meet today’s housing needs while remaining within our planetary boundaries.

The construction sector is responsible as one of the largest emitters of carbon and nitrogen, and as a user of water. In addition, it is a linear construction process that creates new materials from non-renewable resources. Furthermore, the built environment in the Netherlands is becoming overcrowded and there are insufficient regulations for the preservation of historical buildings. The aim of this research is to apply bio-based materials in the conservation of historical buildings for a circular and sustainable renovation. For this purpose, the following main question has been formulated: “How can bio-based materials enhance sustainability and circularity in architectural renovation while prioritizing the conservation & preservation of architectural heritage?”. Foundation of the research are the 10 R’s of circularity, BREAAM and LEED. In addition, software was used to select materials and properties based on sustainability parameters. Combined with a heritage assessment, it indicates which materials can be used in the conservation and renovation of heritage buildings. This research has yielded a practical tool designed to enhance the sustainability and circularity of architectural renovations with a focus on bio-based materials. This framework also addresses the preservation of heritage qualities of buildings. Moreover, the outcome of the introduced tool contributes to the reduction of carbon and nitrogen emissions, as well as water consumption. It also actively supports the transition towards a cir

The project addresses the mass demolition and reconstruction of post-war housing complexes in the Netherlands. It’s relevance is based on the negative ecological impact embedded within the production of building material, the waste production of demolition and the neglect of architectural heritage in common renewal practice.

It proposes an alternative method of solving the need for renewal in most post-war housing complexes through a radically circular transformation strategy. This strategy is based on three steps: preserve, reuse, reclaim. A porch flat ensemble in the area of Geuzenveld, Amsterdam Nieuw-West, is used as the design case.

A research was conducted in preparation of the design. It’s main research question: “how can renovation with reclaimed materials become a feasible alternative to reconstruction of the current housing stock?”. From this research, the application of reclaimed insulation and finishing material, was indicated to be highly effective strategies of mitigating the ecological impact of a renovation task. These findings have been incorporated into the design.

The project resulted in a transformation design of the porch flat ensemble that saves 1.808.751 kg CO2-eq and 26.122.919 MJ of energy in terms of material use, relative to a conventional reconstruction design.

This doctoral thesis critically examines green space characteristics and their proximity to residents in their ability to help reduce the global disease burden of non-communicable diseases. By dissecting three pivotal pathways of theorized green space health effects through increased physical activity, increased social cohesion, and reduced air pollution, the thesis aims to provide new insights into which green space characteristics drive these relationships and in which distance they occur. To achieve these aims, this thesis develops reporting guidelines for the research field, a QGIS script for automatization of green space indicator development and uses two complementary sources for data collection. It builds on the self-reported data on physical activity, social cohesion, air pollution, health and mental health from the URBiNAT project and its case studies in the four European satellite neighbourhoods Nantes-Nord (France), Porto-Campanhã (Portugal), Sofia-Nadezhda (Bulgaria), and Høje-Taastrup (Denmark) and complements it with a rigorous spatial analysis. This enabled a rigorous sensitivity analysis based on up to 135 structural equation models per pathway. The results of this doctoral research revealed distinct green space characteristics and proximities that drive each pathway, including thresholds where these associations disappear or even change direction. It concludes that interconnected, multi-use green corridors are more beneficial than isolated patches for all analysed health pathways, challenging current municipal green space strategies to shift focus from mere ratios to green mobility infrastructures. Although rooted primarily in European contexts and of a cross-sectional nature, the doctoral research provides new evidence for urban planning and public health. It emphasizes the practical implications of how to design green spaces to address health concerns. The results not only resonate with the WHO's Urban Health Research Agenda but also provide tangible recommendations for a healthier human habitat.@en

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.

The present graduation thesis “The shopping mall as an urban catalyst” explores the idea of an urban structure where working, crafting, living, meeting, and learning are entangled. The aim of this exploration mainly lies in the creation of a “skill city”, where groups that have not yet been fully integrated into the area under research can be the protagonists of a vibrant neighborhood, while the shopping mall from a place of consumption is transformed into a community core, a place of production and exchange. At the same time, this project is a continuous research on how an existing structure with its embedded values can become future-proof, ensuring it both remains a point of reference and accomodates change according to the shifting needs and demands. This aspect was examined under the scope of urban adaptability and its interplay with the notion of heritage; revealing design strategies that were implemented on the redesign of Leyweg Winkelcentrum. To conclude, the exploration of the new role that shopping malls, as urban centers, could adopt in an ever-changing context as condensers of public life, its diverse aspects, and social groups, as hubs for social interaction and as cores of community life can be regarded as the motivation for the development of this project.

The article discusses the challenges of revitalizing shopping malls as heritage sites in the 21st century, due to their vacancy and deterioration resulting from depersonalization. The proposed approach called "tabula scripta" embraces the existing layers and context, requiring a broadening and deepening of the profession of architecture to focus on sensory perception, particularly tactile experiences. The article highlights the homogenization of architecture due to a reduction in observation by designers and suggests the use of natural materials to convey age and multiple layers of development. The research project focused on the materiality and design of shopping malls, particularly the Lijnbaan ensemble in Rotterdam and the Leyweg shopping mall in The Hague. The results revealed the loss of coherence over time and the need for culturally sensitive interventions in the Leyweg mall. The discussion highlights the importance of site-specific design, particularly in the unique cultural context of the Morgenstond district in The Hague, emphasizing the need for interventions that account for specific materiality and reflect diverse community experiences.

The research hypothesis is that extensive layering and apparent modifications in the San Isidro area along Manzanares, dictated by the necessity of expansion, have changed the site’s everydayness. As a result, patterns of continuities and discontinuities began to take over the area, which needs to be addressed in the contemporary context and life of the city. This calls for an architectural intervention which aims, beyond the project itself, to the seamless transition of current and future everyday rituals. Due to urban stratification, there is an accumulation of multiple functions, atmospheres, daily rituals and routines over the greater area of San Isidro. In particular, the San Isidro, San Justo and Santa Maria cemeteries, alongside the park, festivities, and infrastructural networks, pose a convoluted environment where the different functions compete for prevalence. Simultaneously, their borders blur, putting the contemporary rituals in danger instead of promoting their evolution/development along the urban context. Furthermore, the city’s current and future development plans treat the areas mentioned above as sites of additions; it is not interested in preserving or developing existing characters; rather, it imposes new ones. Instead of trying to solve or alleviate the complex current state, it adds more layers to the existing ones. The graduation projects need to act as a reflection and critique This paper examines how changes in physical retail due to digital advances can inform a sustainable and adaptive design for Dutch post-war shopping malls. Malls have become outdated and don’t fit in the current society anymore. The malls that are still functioning are shifting to an entertainment experience. Research on a futureorientated design using developments in online retail can make malls adaptable for the future. A silver lining in this research is if the social, aesthetical, and economic values of the mall still are perceived by the public after these futureorientated developments.of the current situation...

By approaching the research from an user's perspective, De Bogaard in Rijswijk has been redesigned in order to attract pioneers that will aid in reigniting the attraction of the shopping mall. It has been partly refunctioned, in order to blow life into the area and stimulate the community. The new design focuses on the first phase of the redesign of De Bogaard and has 'community based design' as a base. It aims to attract artists and crafstmen, that are often pioneers in bringing areas back to life, e.g. M4H and Amsterdam Noord.

The project aims to answer the following research question: How can the Dutch 80’s neighbourhood be densified in terms of housing and nature while enhancing and preserving in- and extrinsic values (if present) by taking the neighbourhood Hoptille as case study? Hoptille (1980) is a neighbourhood in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost and was a reaction against the Bijlmer high-rise flats. The area consists of a mid-rise, 300 meter long building, several low-rise row housing and two large parking garages. After 40 years is it well over due for a renovation/transformation. Hoptille was research through stakeholder research, risk assessments, and several analyses. This research was the base for the program and goals for the neighbourhood. The project itself takes the international and the national context to address the local situation. This is done through a threefold approach to explore the many opportunities within the area, low intensity renovation, high intensity transformation, and demolish-new build. During the design process, the emphasise was laid on sustainable development, particularly the enhancement of biodiversity.

This project explores a value based approach to dealing with supposed New Heritage. The value analysis serves a the basis for a redesign strategy in Heesterveld.

The city block of Bijlmerplein is a significant example of created identity through different notions. In the context 70s and 80s heritage, Bijlmerplein demonstrates ideological interplay between different ideas and ways of design of built environment in the one neighborhood. It was designed as a remediation and a response to failed modernist utopia - “City of the future” of Bijlmer together with other residential blocks such as Heesterveld, Hoptille and Haardstee. The final goal intended to create new identity for an area which would be relevant to Amsterdam city and could give sense of belonging to society in contrast of alienated and futuristic Bijlmer urban setting. Bijlmerplein boundaries had been shaped by the infrastructure (elevated streets, parking lots and separated traffic) which was the consequence of CIAM ideas. The area has also an anthroposophical concept which are embedded into NMB head office in by Alberts & Van Huut. Cluster 2, designed by Atelier Pro architects had nature inclusive notion. Cluster 4 was designed by BroekBakema architects who were searching for national Dutch identity in the architecture and developed the “total” space concept inspired by ideas of neo-plasticism The design by research the focus was given for cluster 4 within the Bijlmerplein, because of its complex spatial composition, relation with public squares, accentuated front façade, architectural language, and the postmodern archetypes. The main idea of the design was to open the cluster by introducing the “green alley” feature and by densifying the block by careful extensions. The green alley becomes the key element for circulation and the center of the new residential spaces. It helps to reactivate the plinth and introduce urban greenery. At the same time, the research explored different ways of purifying and revitalizing postmodern archetypes such as: “gate”, “bridge”, “tower”, “street”, “courtyard” and “colonnade”. These features were seen as an attribute regarding historical value of the block. Cluster 4 is primary a social housing residential block, which also causes many social issues such as: lack of ownership, segregation, poverty, exclusiveness, drug dealing, homelessness. These issues were tackled by introducing different types of housing which intend to attract people from different social layers and diversify the block. This was done by introducing penthouses for young families, lofty studios for young professionals and three residential blocks for residents with medium income.

After doing a collective research in Heesterveld, positive and negative aspects were mentioned by the government, residents, makers and owners. The goal of this design is to embrace the valuable aspects of Heesterveld and improve the problems. The problems in the neighbourhood mainly arose on the social level, more specifically in the public space. The unique identity of Heesterveld was also mentioned during the research, this will also be preserved and emphasized in the design. From literature research, two other challenges in Heesterveld came up, which were also mentioned by the residents. According to the municipality, there were also many socio-economic issues, which needed to be resolved. Lastly, the global problem of climate change also has a big impact on a small scale, so this issue was also addressed in the design. Heesterveld had to improve on social, economic and environmental aspects, which is done in the design. This is done by adding a blue green infrastructure, adding various new functions on the ground floor and by future-proofing the building. The blue green infrastructure tackles the social and environmental issues and by creating diversity on the ground floor, the social and economic problems will be solved. The existing building itself is also made future proof by adding insulation on the inside, solar panels and a thermal energy storage. So in conclusion, Heesterveld is ready for the future with this sustainable design, which solves the social, economic and environmental issues.