The project discusses the topic on how to design within inner cities where there is an enormous lack of building ground. Cities must densify throughout the years. To successfully achieve this, architects could expand on top of existing buildings. By building stories on top of existing buildings architects could extend the lifespan of buildings with a non-destructive approach. Due to reconstruction over time spaces in cities have become harsh, neglected and unused public spaces. For this project, the used method was to preserve the original historic pattern while using a new modern architectural language. The ambition, to ultimately design a building by reconstructing from the past while using knowledge from the present. In brief, to engineer a building with a sustainable impact on the environment.

A design proposal for urban densification in an area with a suburban setup, where social structures, ecological structures and architectural structures are equally important. Inspired by the characteristics of heterotopian places.

The growing need for housing in the Netherlands comes with a new set of challenges for planners and designers on how to design new buildings in a country that already has every square inch planned out and dedicated. This lack of building land naturally leaves us with the question on how to increase the density in the city without overburden its citizens and infrastructures. In this regard the town and city-centers should be given especially careful attention in seeking out potential spaces that plug into the existing infrastructures and building cultures. Filling up vacant lots and adding top stories to existing buildings is a particularly sustainable and non-destructive way of increasing the density in the city. Another way is the refitting or removal of existing building blocks and structures in order to enhance them with structures that offer more space and opportunities for the citizens of the city in question.

An architectural design for a silver- and goldsmithing craft school in Rotterdam Delfshaven. The design will consist of different scales, from the large stone architectural design to exact details. Building technology will be involved in the design.

The Ikebana gallery school positions itself in a dense urban context with a secure connection to its didactic elements and the reappreciation of the chosen craft. It is a multi-faced project which sheds light on education, residents and parties to re-direct the urban context. My interventions for the Gasthuisplaats allow me the opportunity to communicate my view for a contemporary school building in the historic city centre of Delft while improving the public realm.

Our hospitals will start to get larger and larger as the number of people on this earth will rise. Due to medical solutions our stays in these hospitals will get shorter as we can cure ourselves from diseases. But as we are getting older, we will spend more time in the hospital. The paradox of healing from diseases and becoming more and more dependent on the medical environment in order to heal causes the need of the hospital as a welcoming and comforting place to becomes more and more meaningful. Experiences of patients and their relatives showed that dealing with disease can be all consuming, while at the same time ‘normal’ life goes on. “I am in the hospital even when I’m not in the hospital” said Clara (Mukherjee. The Emperor of All Maladies, 398). Living in these two worlds at the same time can be hard to bear and I think we can have an influence on that as an architect. It is up to the architect to bring these worlds together. Daily life should not stop the moment you end up in the medical environment. As I just stated, the medical environment will increasingly become part of our lives. It is therefore essential that we design the medical environment to our wishes of “normal” life and not to create a second world in which medical knowledge is placed first and us as humans second.

The Netherlands is building to little in wood and relies way too much on high-emission materials, such as concrete. The building culture is changing, but way to gradual. In response to the scarcity of resources, nitrogen crisis, climate change and the housing crisis, the Netherlands has to turn more to biobased materials, foremost wood, as a resource, in particularly for construction.
There are to many outdated prejudices, to name one fire safety issues, which technology solves. In order to achieve the required change, the knowledge of wood and the crafts related to woodworking should be given more awareness and education has to be improved and intensified. In response, a centre for woodworking is proposed, where education and practice takes place on a daily basis and visitors are welcome to explore the world of wood and woodworking.

Craftsmanship used to be the origin of the production of goods ever since the existence of human life. Any natural material used to be manipulated manually and made into an object of use, be it adobe for house building, timber beams for furniture making or linen yarn for cloth fabrication. The type of material remained the same, however the way of manipulation has changed strongly over the centuries. Mechanisation and industrialization have moved manual production away from the hands, towards machines. In Europe, craftsmanship played a major role in the economy until the industrialisation. Dating back to medieval times, the acquisition of a certain craft used to be taught in craft schools in which apprentices gained knowledge of the manipulation of different materials. Masons, carpenters, sculptures, weavers etc. were each consolidated in guilds that promoted the respective craft. Today, craftsmanship has almost been fully replaced by industrial mass production. Also, the education of traditional craftsmanship has almost completely disappeared from European culture. Mechanisation, however, has led to mass production of goods which in turn has become the cause of environmental damage, both on nature and on humans. Considering the effects of the industry on the wellbeing of the planet, craftsmanship has started to be reconsidered in many different fields of production. The statement “less is more” has become much more than the modernist desire for minimalism in architecture * - it has become a statement against mass production and a plea for a sustainable fabrication of goods. Today’s handmade production has the potential to bring about a smaller quantity with a better quality and strongly reduce the negative impact on the environment. Craftsmanship therefore needs to be given a new platform in the European culture, a platform that promotes the education and exertion of the traditional practice in a modern society. This research deals with the re-introduction and re-interpretation of crafts in the 21rst century in the Dutch context. Focussing on the crafts of textile it explores the specifics of textile production and proposes the conceptual framework of a school for textile craftsmanship in the city of Delft.

In the Netherlands the Craftsmanship of glass is disappearing and the school focuses on passing on the knowledge of the craftsmanship of glass. The techniques of working with the material like glass blowing and working with stained glass are the are at the foundations of this design.

In the last decades, vocational education is having difficulties due to automation and robotisation. Which results in less vocational jobs and disappearing knowledge in most craftsmanship. One of the problems is the positioning of the ROC (the current vocational schools) in the Netherlands, fenced off buildings which are not connecting to their communities or their students. To create a new vocational school I will analyse different workshop through our history. To see which elements are interesting for the new craft school. At this new craft school the craft of ceramics will be learned. Because, in my opinion, this craftmanship is disappearing in the new buildings that are been build. Nowadays distinctive bonds are rare to be found, and most often simple bonds made from the most basic and cheapest bricks are been used in order to save money. At the new craft school the students learn specific skills but in order to learn these skills, the student should learn first the basics of producing and implementing bricks, to become valuable craftsman. in this booklet the different researches will be clarified in which the system for the new craft school will be explained, the production and implementation of ceramic bricks will be highlighted, the location will be unravelled and the users will analysed.

This project is about the revitalization of the cultural center: “the Zuiderpershuis”. The complex of buildings is marked as a heritage site and represents an important part of the city of Antwerp and its history as an industrial harbor city. The current lack of used space on the site and its seclusion from the city fabric prevent the place from presenting itself as relevant place to the public of the city. By attaching a new build volume which is beneficial programmatically as well as economically and by altering the urban fabric this place could be the cultural center that it deserves. This is all done while honoring the idea and history of this building complex. Only then it can once again aspire to be a place that brings together people interested in the arts and crafts, but also many more.

This is the graduation project, in which illustrate the research and design results of the graduation year as a whole

The project deal with the urban variation of Borghehout in the city of Antwerp. It is the project of an archive with a sequence public functions

The Productive City in Antwerp, a material research and textile production with integrated residence: The notion of working and living in the same place has been a particular aspect of every city in the past. With industrialization, especially production and crafts have been driven out of the inner city. With the emergence of the idea of the ‘Productive City’ many cities aim to reintegrate small scale production within the urban fabric to reactivate manufacturing and local production. This contributes to the development of an active community within a neighborhood. The design of a textile manufacturing workspace with integrated residence addresses the question of intimacy within work environments and how this can be translated into an architectural project.

Interiors, Buildings, Cities project on the intimate city; Het Water Ensemble is a series of wunderkammer exploring the journey towards disassociation from the bombastic city around.

Under the year theme, “Intimate City”, the task was to create “City Rooms” for the city of Antwerp. The method for developing this notion served as a common ground for the whole graduation process. Each of us in the chair chose one specific site to insert our idea of an urban constitution. My site is a private garden located on the street corner in the rural Oud-Berchem district, which consists of a villa and its back yard. The function is an elderly social house with community center.

While appropriating the walled garden as the city room, the project also constantly engaged with the studio theme, the intimate city. The evaluation of designing an intimate space becomes an essential struggle throughout every stage and scales of studies. For example, how the massing is related to its urban context in an intimate way, is resolved in a way that the building volumes offset from one another to form smaller courtyards. The sequences of courtyards mediate between the spatial discrepancy between nature and the urban, creating an intimate meeting point at their border.

Recent international events, such as the 2018 Women’s March and the MeToo movement, show an increasing awareness for gender biases present in society and governments. One of the consequences of a disempowered female position is the ‘feminization of poverty’, which is an phenomenon referring to the widening gap between women and men caught in a sequence of economic deprivation and scarcity. One particular group of women effected by this phenomenon are single mothers. These women often get caught in a downward spiral of social isolation and poverty. In worst cases, ending up homeless and unable to take care of their children. Seeing the seriousness of this problem, in 2015 project MIRIAM was initiated by the city of Antwerp for these women to aid and support in getting their lives on track. However, social housing and daycare remains an issue for the mother’s in urgent situations. As such, if we understand The Intimate City as a place which makes space for shifting social and political conditions, the manner in which architecture can carve out city rooms within a dense urban fabric in order to facilitate these new societal needs and norms becomes essential.

on the threshold of the space