This socio-architectural research is a critical reflection upon post-war rehabilitation methodologies and outcomes. The paper observes the current national and international aid response, and other involved actors to the war in Ukraine. Concepts such as “taking responsibility” and the “ability to respond” serve as guidelines for assessing and critiquing different stakeholders and actors. It also looks at what influences the outcomes of post-war recovery, as well as the importance of citizens involvement in the different stages of planning and project developments. It is through the identification of different means of communication and the reach of emergency responses that we can explore and analyze the needs of the citizens, their resilience and hopes for the future of Ukraine. Moreover, the study aims to break down the ambiguous relationships between response-ability, becoming and com-munity resilience to create a clearer connection between the three. This would allow the architectural research to narrow down on post-war resilient design, going beyond the traditional route of emergency/temporary housing or shelter provision, and valuing community resilience, as well as flourishing local economies and public participation.

Soil extraction results in different material qualities. Some products, like coal, are affiliated with industry and pollution. Others, such as marble, equal to perpetual wealth and aesthetic. In the region of West Macedonia, in the North of Greece, those qualities coexist in the form of mines and quarries, creating a material network. With starting point the difference between marble and coal, the research investigates extraction practices as a multilevel topic, an ever-growing field where artificial and natural landscape blends. In the possibility of extraction sites closure, questions emerges in regards for the impact in city, environment and humanity sites towards a future transition. Those sites wound create a new archaeology, signs of an era of Anthropocene and a wounded nature.

Hence research circulates around three themes. First it examines the Hinterlands as a system of operations carrying industrial production, following by the sites of extraction and the narratives around them, in pursuit of the spirit of place. The third aspect is a cognitive examination of the human position into those practices. A placement of human through craft proposes a rethinking of materiality and nature as active agents. This affiliation with non-human entities underlines a transition of culture into a caring state, creating an ecosystem sympathy. Goal is to find answers about the recovery of post-mining territories, the revival of this inert anthropogenic environment.

Linking Worlds – Rewilding the Netherlands represents an ecological approach towards the architectural design practice. By utilizing interdisciplinary methods, the project proposes an architecture that is concerned with the relation of all living organisms to one another and their environment. Therefore, the focus shifts away from a mainly human benefit to an inclusive life-promoting purpose at its core.

Building upon conservation biology theory of rewilding it addresses urgent matters such as population management issues and species extinction to accomplish a resilient and self-sustaining ecology within the Netherlands. Proposing habitat expansion and connection spanning from the Oostvaardersplassen, over the Horsterwold up to the Veluwe the goal is to create a diverse range of unmanaged land that facilitates natural migratory flows and behavior. The wolf as keystone umbrella species is granted access to new territories, where the carnivore can serve as natural manager through predation on large grazers.

The central architectural structure is an ecoduct or wildlife crossing bridging the A28 highway located between Ermelo and Putten, where the travelling human becomes a witness of architectures agency serving non-human needs. For a moment animal mobility becomes the main actor and therefore center of attention in a place that was claimed for exclusively human activity. A place of danger and potential death for all species is transformed into a place and symbol for concession that connects worlds. The project reveals that coexistence can be solved in a way of overlapping worlds for different species designing a path of less resistance. Beneficiaries are all the participating parties. The architectural result of this project can be seen as a metaphor. A human-made structure to facilitate animal movement. An inanimate object facilitating life on it and across it. A living bridge that promotes life.

The basis and underlaying motivation for this project was the quest for a newly gained attitude towards design, through an exploration of personal spirituality. Linking Worlds advocates for a new worldview. A worldview that demands a shift in perspective, lifts the value of life above all, is inclusive rather than exclusive, fosters a feeling of kinship amongst all species, welcomes diversity and facilitates coexistence.

Extractive and productive landscapes are the backbone to contemporary
urban life. However, they are commonly overlooked by the fields of spatial
studies and practices. One amongst many, Cubatão’s petrochemical hub
reveals the systematic ecological degradation resulting from resourceintensive
commodified politics, couched in the widely diffused rhetoric
of development and progress and distinctly linked to events of the Global
North. Impending global shifts, such as the retreat of fossil fuels and the
increase in renewable energy sources, raise questions on the vulnerability of
these places and on their abilities to evolve spatially, ecologically and socially.
Through a critical review of what has been conducted so far in terms of
design, planning and policies and a reflection on the agency of Architecture,
the research speculates over new forms of space production that engages
with the complex spatial conditions and the diversity of agents on site.

This research and drawings focus on the recent post-Soviet history of Tbilisi, Georgia and the production of architectural and urban interventions as they coincide with larger political processes (i.e. the collapse of the Soviet Union, the shift to neoliberal economic policies, etc.) and social phenomena (i.e. production of ethno-nationalist narratives) as they affect the production of the city. The elaboration of an architectural process which is a result of an expansive investigation of the contemporary issues facing Georgia, can provide an approach to cultural conservation in contexts that confront the problem of subverted narratives. The historical section will in-part be informed by data collected over a period of five years through anecdotes, and conversations with local researchers, activists, and political actors. The technical procedure which is a result emphasizes the value of local intuition and the production of space which occurs in the years post-Soviet collapse to arrive at a solution for conservation which attempts to overcome nationalist narratives which can be exploited by power structures.

From Mine to Mine is a research and design project that confronts the concept of the house and the domestic with its emerging context of data transmission and resource extraction. In the middle of the Atacama desert in Chile, the house of the miner is confronted with the physical outgrowth of our global data industry: Copper, the material underlying any kind of digital connection, is extracted in the world‘s biggest open-pit mine, while the mining industry is destructing and contaminating a whole territory.

Thinking towards a time of copper depletion, From Mine to Mine, envisions in three chapters transitions for these copper landscapes - turning them from destructive into productive ones while giving agency to the house of the miner itself. From there, the miner of the future enters remotely through screens the three chapters - “The Toxic Forest“, “The Baquedano Oasis“ and “The London Mine“ - all mines in their on right, that materially and programmatically feed into the house. This way, the house becomes both consumer and constructor of a context in trans-ition, a context that is being “mined“ trans-territorially, trans-temporally and trans-disciplinarily.

Among many other aspects, digitalisation and an increasingly globalised collaborative society are challenging the outdated premise of the solitary architect as an authoritarian genius and thus the author of his work. Several theorists and architectural scholars have consistently discussed the issue of authorship (in architecture), as this question addresses a fundamental question to the essence of and engagement in the discipline. As both the artistic and the scientific inherent notions of the profession attribute different functions to the user, architecture appears as a hybrid, mediating intellectual property of the thought, ownership of the product and collective property through engagement. The interpretative dependency of each component’s implication on the notion of authorship is sequentially explored in its linear allocation. Essentially, the whole discourse pivots on the chicken-and-egg argument, for the existence of an author implies per se the emergence of a previously non-existent idea. Establishing a collaborative essence of thinking and a separation of the profession's scope from the entitlement to the built product can result in both the service group’s economic stability and the preservation of cultural production.

Locating many of the contemporary architect’s flaws and shortcomings in its own process of becoming-subject, the Manual of the Anthropotekton aims at activating and situating the architectural student, practitioner, and educator in the position to launch an affirmative deconstruction of their own individuating Ego. This is accomplished through an exercise of semi-biographical introspection carried out by the author in which the ego’s structure along with its detrimental implications and inherent fragility is examined. A special emphasis is placed on the role that the ego plays in producing, via the consecration of authorship, the figure of the contemporary architect as a major obstacle for the productive and democratic proliferation of spatial knowledge, as well as one that perpetuates the extractivist and exploitative systems of economic and social production. This will lead to the proposal of an alternative construction of human subjectivity and, by extent, of the architect, that rejects the omnipotence of the architectural hero and embraces the notions of serendipity and the accident as the most important methodological drivers of sensible, suitable, and successful architectural interventions. By virtue of placing the accident in the foreground of architectural praxis, both the architect and its knowledge are liberated from the authorial chains of the ego, maximizing the proliferation of spatial strategies and the activation of local agents and communities, allowing for a collaborative, collective, inclusive and structural approach to any spatial conflict, which is much harder to provoke through traditional praxis. Lastly, a new partial axiomatic system based on a triple embodiment of presence is developed from within the subjectivity of the accident.

This paper is part of a master’s degree in Architecture at Delft University of Technology. It is addressing single-person households as they are found to be the most affected group from the current state of the Dutch housing market. This forms the relevance of this study and formulates the research objective.
The theoretical part describes the background of the problem from a market and a historical perspective. It further examines the needs, preferences and lifestyle patterns of this household composition and investigates ‘compact’ and ‘live-work’ as architectural notions. The design case analyses precedential building’s circulation schemes, shared facilities and public/private threshold. The suitable living environment is defined as a live-work building with compact dwellings and shared facilities. The aim of the paper is to provide a design hypothesis for Building 7 for this target group located in the M4H area in Rotterdam. A conceptual design is proposed, but this section is still to be elaborated into a detailed design.

As of today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, we might feel ever more dependent on technologies to keep the world connected. Nonetheless the term technology includes more than our boundary blurring gadgets and prosthetics. With architecture as one of the first technologies (among language and writing) they shape us mutualistically as we have shaped them. The role of architecture is being revised in this research by means of how we style life and the way we style death, reflected on a projective digital future existence. The definition of ‘what is means to be human’ is one of many centuries whereby theories of the Posthumanities enrich the 21st century discussion through its inclusion of technology. This research assists the trajectory of the architectural design for the purpose of exteriorization and materialisation of abstract terms such as experience, consciousness, memories, empathy, grief, embeddedness and so on. While trying to map human characteristics informed by Posthuman theory, the process of becoming digitally embodied investigates the effects and affects on future human life and human death.

This project is an attempt to bring back play, from the mere simulation it is now, to a creative force that it once was. It questions whether the entertainment park is still relevant in contemporary society and whether it can be reimagined and transformed from a scripted to a more unscripted arena of action. The aim of this project is to create an environment that is not just consumable but also productive and transformative, transforming life rather than an individual. A life that is valuable and made out of zest, beauty, wonder, and adventure; life as something that is lived for its own sake; something that is a value in and of itself, in the unexchangeable currency of experience. This project is not a ‘thing’ (an object, space, a building, or a site) but an assemblage of different components, scales, actions, potentials and practices working together to produce play. More than anything, it is a method, a principle that can be transferred and applied elsewhere.

There are more diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and the world is more and more demanding of our directed attention. This can lead to Directed Attention Fatigue which leads to heightened arousal. Per the Yerkes-Dodson Law, heightened arousal lowers performance in simple and especially in complex tasks. People who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder might view a social task (often needed in a semi-public space) as a complex one which a neuro-typical person would view as simple. The objective is therefore to lower arousal. The environment also has a very large impact on a person. It is therefore wise to see how that could be used in lowering arousal. The main question in this thesis is therefore: what design elements could be improved with help from autism spectrum disorder to improve the experience and perception of semi-public spaces? The difference between people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and neuro-typical people lies in individual differences, situational factors, social conditions, cultural factors and how they are able to cope. The design elements that therefore be valued more are privacy, spatial crowding, illumination, general stimuli and nature.

Athens is a city that has grown immensely after its establishment as a capital, from around 7.000 inhabitants in 1834 to around 3,1 million in 2019. After 2006, due to various economic and political reasons, mainly through the implementation of additional taxation in the building sector and in property ownership, building activities have declined and the discussion concerning the bio-political dimension and the capacities of the current urban environment of Athens have become more intense. Focusing in the neighbourhood of Sepolia, this research seeks to offer an understanding of productivity beyond the binary of built/ unbuilt space and instead, see productive processes as offering the ground for individuation in the urban environment. Since the production of the city and its capacities affect each other in a reciprocal way, architectural processes can offer a problematised thinking on how the built environment can generate conditions for the development of individuation. Towards a new urban subject, desire is perceived as a force that enables a shift in the understanding of the production of space in Athens: from the desire for private space to the desire for new urban actions.

The phenomenon of migration is a fundamental concept to evolutionary biology, population studies, and life sciences. It is almost uncontestable common knowledge that migration is an indispensable factor to propel difference and change, thus ensuring genetic variation, and ultimately evolution for all life forms. For most species migration is the rule, not the exception. Yet, when referring to human migration, the discussions suddenly turn highly controversial. Underpinning the expected arguments that tie these discussions to human exceptionalism and speciesism, one encounters the deeply rooted links of sedentarism to diverse projects of State formation, the construction of society and its cultural and territorial arrangements into bounded, legible schemes and models.
Arguably, a narrowing vision, which simultaneously claims to capture and organize an otherwise complex and messy reality, is a necessary and effective frame to focus on particular forms of knowledge over and against others. Nevertheless, as is increasingly evident, such narrow frames not only simplify, but also reduce reality, offering static, fixed and schematic falsifications of it, removed as it were, from the actual phenomena to which they allude. Human migration is especially prone to the effects of such simplification, leading to a reduced understanding of the migration phenomenon itself, the multiple agents which emerge from it and that shape it, and their relationality as constitutive of a milieu, or metabolism. For migration, this has a paralyzing effect, as it limits and compartamentalizes the capacity to act in relation to it.
Other discursive schemes (of subject formation) that allow us to think and act differently, creatively and critically in relation to migration are paramount, especially if the intentionality is to physically intervene within it. In other words, migration and migrant agents, when liberated from the grasp of conventionally reductive and simplifying frames, reveal their intricate participation in an ecology that not only engenders the becoming of form, space, matter and subjectivity, but which also shapes specifically human practices and relations. In short, understanding migration as a complex assemblage driven by desire and other, previously unseen forces is to regard it as a process of becoming. Seen from this angle, concepts conventionally associated to human migration –from migrating subjects, territories, borders, to structures and systems-, become fields of latent potentiality and productive possibilities. It is at this juncture when –perhaps appropriately so- we may begin exercising different forms of nomadic thought when dealing with migration.
The proposal departs from the premise that different theoretical and discursive frameworks are necessary to rethink and act upon the very urgent problem of human migration from a metabolic, relational and systemic point of view. It will do so by introducing and explaining an unconventional approach in which three different ‘logics’ will encounter each other in an attempt to recalibrate the reach of the spatial disciplines and material practices, in particular architecture, within the phenomenon of contemporary human migration: population thinking, intensive thinking and topological thinking.