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Wind turbulence in an office district, noise nuisance from an industrial park, horizon-polluting windmills near a residential area, blinding light in classrooms. Often unexpected, such things can range from being a nuisance to highly annoying after a construction has been completed. We can now more easily simulate these effects on the living environment before construction, as detailed 3D data is now available for all 10 million buildings in the Netherlands.

Worldwide, levels of socio-economic segregation in cities are increasing and as a result the rich and the poor are increasingly living in different parts of urban regions. In a new book researchers Maarten van Ham and colleagues explain the relationship between increasing levels of inequality and segregation.

The Jaap Bakema Study Centre was established as a research collaboration between our faculty and Het Nieuwe Instituut in 2013 and has developed from an experiment into a solid multi-year alliance between a cultural organisation and a knowledge institution. The activities have been broadened and deepened with the international PhD programme Architecture and Democracy, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) project The Critical Visitor and with leading annual conferences such as last year’s Repositioning Architecture in the Digital.

The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology will accept ‘Expressions of Interest’ to host Postdoctoral Fellows.

Given that building services can cost you as much as €1,000 per square metre, having a proper plan beforehand is hardly a luxury. But installation plans are rarely seen as a top priority during design projects. The fact that most of the heating, ventilation and airconditioning systems will ultimately be hidden above the ceiling or concealed in the walls simply compounds the problem. ‘Yet they remain of essential importance long after a building is commissioned. The installations are actually what will determine the building’s indoor climate and overall energy performance,’ says Atze Boerstra. Since last year, the tide appears to be turning for installations in buildings: ‘There is an awful lot happening in the building services world at the moment.’

The Netherlands has been world-renowned for decades as one of the leading countries when it comes to knowledge of flood risk management and spatial planning. “Our strategy of connecting both themes and adopting a cohesive view of them has received widespread praise. But in recent years, we appear to have lost that connection in the Netherlands; our tradition of managing spatial planning at the state level has been abandoned,” says Chris Zevenbergen who has been part-time professor of Delta Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment since February.

Each year the Berlage awards a scholarship to an outstanding Dutch graduate from one of the universities or academies in the Netherlands. The scholarship is established to support Dutch students who demonstrate academic excellence and wish to join the Berlage's international, one-and-a-half-year English-language Post-Master of Science-degree program in architecture and urban design.

More than thirty per cent of the Dutch housing stock was built between 1965 and 1985. These homes are due for renovation in the next few years in order for them to meet current demands and requirements in terms of energy consumption, aesthetics, comfort and liveability. How can we ensure a sustainable future for this large, diverse and complex housing stock while respecting the current values of these homes and the living environment?

Roberto Rocco has been appointed Diversity and Inclusion Officer for Bouwkunde with the goal to advise the dean and help shape faculty policy and propose action on inclusion and diversity. “As an outsider, I have experienced issues of inclusion and diversity very personally in my life at TU Delft, not always positively. This has given me the tools, the curiosity and the ideas to see diversity and inclusion as highly positive assets and opportunities rather than “problems”, says Roberto.

Central and local governments have maintained the huge support package from the corona crisis until the end of 2020. As a result, relatively few housing consumers have actually been affected by the corona crisis in an economic sense. Combined with a prospect of vaccination, confidence in the owner-occupied housing market is fully restored in the third and fourth quarter of 2020. Residential consumers are daring to buy a (different) house in 2020, at substantial prices.