Archive

In developing countries, aid organisations have a preference for building houses that meet Western standards. This is a mistake, claims doctoral candidate Michiel Smits in his dissertation, because residents struggle to maintain them. However, his call for ‘self-reliant', circular housing faces opposition from local residents, who prefer their houses to be made using bricks and cement.

Dr. Amy Thomas was awarded a Veni for her research Her Office. Amy's research includes a historical analysis of the role of gender in the design of corporate buildings and interiors. Historically offices have been designed for men, often by men, yet little research exists on how workplace design affects workplace inequality. This architectural history research will show how women’s wellbeing, health, status and career progression have been disproportionately disadvantaged through space management and design, furniture/product design, and the client-designer relationship.

During the Evening of the Assignment Film on 28 October, the film Energieslaven was awarded as the winner in the category Creativity/Innovation. The film shows in an insistent way how much energy is used in our household that has to be generated by rowers in the basement.

Every year, the best gradation projects of the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment are selected and exhibited at the online VR exhibition. The jury selected the nine best projects to compete in the Dutch Archiprix, the leading annual competition for upcoming design talent. The nine projects were selected from a total of 47 preselected projects, showing the diversity of the different specialisations of architecture and the built environment.

Today, 29 October 2021, Delft University Fund announced the eight TU Delft Best Graduates 2021. Each year, TU Delft’s eight faculties nominate their Best Graduate. On 11 November, during the TU Delft Best Graduate Award Ceremony 2021, one of these eight nominees will receive the prestigious title TU Delft Best Graduate 2021.

Seasoned lecturer Elise van Dooren has taught hundreds of engineering students the tricks of the trade. The educational aspects of her work have always fascinated her. So much so that ten years ago she decided to delve more deeply into a topic that had been occupying her thoughts for a long time: how can aspiring designers gain a better understanding of what designing in itself entails?

Together! is an itinerant exhibition of the German Vitra Design museum. The exhibition responds to challenges in contemporary architecture by focussing on collectivity and demand-oriented development, and shows examples of various new urban living forms from all over the world.

Many Dutch construction companies and clients have started working with circular construction. But what exactly this form of building means is not yet clear. That is why the ‘Cirkelstad’ (Circle City) platform is working on a covenant, a clear agreement on how circular construction projects should be achieved.

The large-scale urban renewal that China has been undergoing in recent decades is accompanied by the wholesale demolition of old buildings. According to PhD researcher Taozhi Zhuang, this is not always necessary. It is high time for clearer guidelines and a more efficient decision-making process.

On 1 October the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment welcomes Georg Vrachliotis as a new professor of the new Chair Theory of Architecture and Digital Culture.

The BK MOOC Zero-Energy Design: an approach to make your building sustainable, led by Professor. Andy van de Dobbelsteen, has been selected from all the TU Delft MOOCs and is nominated for the yearly edX prize for ‘Exceptional Contributions in Online Teaching and Learning’.

Congratulations to Benoît Marcou (MSc Architecture, BK) who received an honourable mention for his thought-provoking entry into the international competition, Dining in the Urban. Benoît’s proposed design questions the ephemerality of the urban picnic, through a fragile intervention made of wooden planks woven into the complex stone patterns of Skopje’s public ground.

Universities of Technology are good at science subjects, but often fail to address the area of imagination. Professor Klaske Havik thinks it is high time for this to change. “Without imagination there is no innovation”, she says.

The Dutch market for owner-occupied houses and the mortgages revolved at full speed in the first half of 2020. Thanks to the enormous package of support measures taken by central government and local authorities in the context of the corona crisis in the Netherlands, relatively few housing consumers seem to have really been affected in economic terms so far.

Urban design in complex urban projects is all about moving beyond surface needs and wishes, and uncovering common values. Designers can facilitate the creation of a shared vision among stakeholders by showing the implications and potential of these values.

RE-DWELL will train a new generation of academics and professionals to address the urgent need of affordable and sustainable housing, a major challenge for European societies. The large research project involves ten different universities and an innovative education programme across Europe.

The treatment of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and Ebola is challenging, especially on location under extreme conditions. How can you use architectural design to make such clinics both technically possible and approachable? In collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières, students of the master track Building Technology set to work on that question.

Greenhouses use large amounts of natural gas for maintaining ideal crop growth conditions. BK Alumna Liesanne Wieleman and Jildou de Jong from the start-up Thermeleon, and researcher Martin Tenpierik received a Take-Off grant from NWO to conduct a study into the technical and financial feasibility of a new screening system, functioning as a passive heat battery. First results have shown a good potential for reducing the annual gas demand of the horticultural sector in the Netherlands.

Would spatially concentrating refugees on the micro-level help stimulate their integration? Carla Huisman has been awarded an NWA Idea Generator grant of € 50.000 to study this. Over the course of a year, she will compare the networks of Eritrean refugees living in mixed projects in Amsterdam with the networks of those living more isolated in Utrecht.

After the summer, the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment welcomes Evelien Bruggeman as the new professor of Building Law. In her view, construction is above all an interaction between public and private, management and technology. "Building law brings together different legal doctrines in a practical context, that's what makes it so interesting".

Klaske Havik has been appointed as professor of Methods of Analysis & Imagination at the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. Methods of Analysis & Imagination holds a plea to pair in-depth analysis of diverse cultural, spatial and social situations with imaginative thinking about new spatial realities.

Primary school classrooms can be noisy places, making it hard for some children to concentrate and feel at ease. PhD researcher Dadi Zhang spent recent years finding out to what extent sound is experienced as noise and how it affects the well-being and performance of pupils. She’s also thought out a potential solution and decided to design a device aimed at noise reduction.

With pride we announce that BK alumnus Felipe Chaves Gonzalez was awarded the shared first prize at the Dutch Archiprix 2020 for his project ‘Permeable borders - Addressing multidimensional conflicts between polarized communities in Rio de Janeiro’.

Students Aleksandra Wróbel and Agnieszka Witaszek (Msc AUBS) and Kamil Owczarek (exchange students) designed the shelter, which can be folded and transported to the designated location on just one truck.

Francine Houben, founder and Creative Director of Mecanoo Architects, has been elected TU Delft Alumnus of the Year 2020.

Francine Houben, founder and Creative Director of Mecanoo Architects, has been elected TU Delft Alumnus of the Year 2020.

Students Aleksandra Wróbel and Agnieszka Witaszek (Msc AUBS) and Kamil Owczarek (exchange students) designed the shelter, which can be folded and transported to the designated location on just one truck.

New online platform Bouwflix will bring the building site to the lecture hall, clearly linking theory and practice. In this way, the new generation of architects and structural engineers starts with the right knowledge to hold their own on the building site. Petra van Diesfeldt (AE+T) has received a research grant of € 50.000,- as Comenius Teaching Fellow to further develop this initiative.

How can specific building components contribute to healthy circular material flows? PhD researcher Bob Geldermans took the case of non-bearing partitioning walls to explore how material properties, material flows, product design, and user benefits can contribute to circularity and flexibility in the built environment.

How can artificial intelligence (AI) accelerate scientific progress? Delft scientists will investigate this question in eight new 'TU Delft AI Labs'.

The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology will accept ‘Expressions of Interest’ for hosting Marie Curie Individual Fellows. Excellent postdocs and recent PhD graduates who would like to apply 2020 programme are invited to join the excellent research environment at our faculty.

Students from Delft University of Technology, Erasmus University and Leiden University went into the Delft Kuyperwijk in March 2020 to research challenges and opportunities for the neighbourhood. With interviews, observations, and data analysis, they found that the district is very diverse in terms of design and population characteristics. The students then developed strategies for the challenges and development opportunities in the neighbourhood.

How have architecture and urban planning played a role in democracy over the course of the 20th century? PhD researchers Íñigo Cornago Bonal and Burcu Köken use the extensive archives of Het Nieuwe Instituut to answer this question. Their research is part of the ‘Architecture and Democracy’ programme, an initiative between the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, and Het Nieuwe Instituut.

The Dutch market for owner-occupied houses and mortgages is getting off to a good start in 2020. At the same time, it is clear that the owner-occupied market will be affected by the corona crisis during the year 2020. However, it remains to be seen how big the effect will be.

Growth, innovation, and liveability in Dutch cities is the goal of Agenda Stad. Three new research projects of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment are using education to accelerate the development of innovative solutions to these social issues. As part of the 'City Deals Knowledge Making' programme, the projects are working on heritage workshops, connections between universities and municipalities, and a management game.

To maintain and keep a building in use, interventions are required at certain moments in time. It is usually up to an architect to consider what interventions are to be made. But what purposes do they actually serve? How do actions work out? How satisfactory is the result? The forty Master’s students taking the new MASTERMIND CRASH course, made a game of finding out.

Imagine this: you can control the acoustics of your environment, no matter the size and shape of the space around you, your access to electricity, and the type of sound you’d like to control. That is what the ADAM project prototype offers. With the use of mathematical models and 3D printing, amongst others, ADAM allows the creation of tailor made sound absorbers.

Urban rivers are important elements for urban ecosystems and for the migiation of the effects of climate change. Regenerating urban rivers proves a challenge, especially in dense downtown areas where there is insufficient space to develop natural riverbanks. Research project GreenQuays proposes a set of innovative vertical ecosystems to renature such quays.

How can citizens be involved in urban data issues? Within the Data Empowerment Design Studio, researchers, local residents, designers, and neighbourhood initiatives discuss and develop new ideas.

With her graduation project ‘Space for the brain’, Lauren Broshuis is the first student to graduate online from the MSc Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences. Her project advocates the inclusion of varying environmental stimuli in the built environment to account for individual preferences, guaranteeing grounds for focus and creativity for every brain.