The traditional thematic realms of urban design, such as liveability, social interaction, and quality of urban life, considered to be closely related to urban form and specifically to public space, have long since been recognised as important, and have given the discipline a certain identity. The book Realms of Urban Design: Mapping Sustainability is certainly rooted in this fundamental urban design thinking, but its main contribution belongs to the second part of the book’s title – disco...

The purpose of this book is to present ongoing research from the universities involved in the project Creating the Network of Knowledge Labs for Sustainable and Resilient Environments (KLABS). The papers published in this book show that the recent and current research in those institutions focuses on the directions of development of IUP, the processes that support sustainable use of natural resources and their application in the Western Balkan and some other European countries. Each essay aim...

The Parana River is the third largest river in the American continent, after the Mississippi and the Amazon. Instead of flowing directly to the sea, it flows to the Rio de la Plata (located between Argentina and Uruguay) through a complex delta system.

Although this delta can be considered an extreme and particular case, many of the conflicts that can be found in this area replicate in other deltas around the world. Urbanizing deltas are subjected to pressures related to urban growth and clim...

Adaptive façades are designed to actively regulate the exchange of material and energy flows and thus improve the balance between comfort and energy consumption. However, their technical complexity leads to higher development efforts, maintenance and costs, and ultimately fewer implementations.

Embedded adaptive functions could be an opportunity to reduce these drawbacks. If embedded adaptivity is to work within a design, the particularities of geometry and material arrangements must be co...

The Dutch lowlands is an artificial landscape, created as a result of the wish to regulate the water that dominated the topography in the Delta. This ‘confined’ lowland water, the polder-boezem system12, features an enormously diverse range of water structures and forms, which largely dictates the spatial planning of the lower Netherlands.

This dissertation concerns the polder-boezem system, a water system that was created by trial-anderror, has been adapted continually and now needs to b...

The aim of this thesis is to add knowledge to the role and impact of policy instruments in meeting energy performance ambition in the existing owner occupied housing stock. The focus was instruments available in the Netherlands in 2011 and 2012. These instruments represented the ‘on the ground’ efforts to meet climate change targets and many continue to do so today in the same or slightly altered forms. At international level there is a recognized need to keep global temperatures within t...

The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft houses a unique teaching collection of over 300 chairs. Unlike any other collection in the university, and because a collection’s purpose and needs deviate somewhat from the more common features of a given university department, its position can be challenging in terms of management, funding, and goals.

This publication discusses projects around the Chair Collection because this collection served as a test case for possible n...

There are several dimensions of occupant behavior and energy consumption of dwellings: dwelling characteristics including the energy and indoor comfort management systems, building envelope, lighting and appliances; occupant characteristics including the social, educational and economical; and actual behavior, including the control of heating, ventilation and lighting of spaces, and appliance use, hot water use, washing, bathing, and cleaning. Attempting to understand this complexity asks for...

The building skin has evolved enormously over the past decades. Energy performance and environmental quality of buildings are significantly determined by the building envelope. The façade has experienced a change in its role as an adaptive climate control system that leverages the synergies between form, material, mechanical and energy systems in an integrated design.

The PowerSkin Conference aims to address the role of building skins to accomplish a carbon neutral building stock. Topics suc...

We currently live in a carbon intensive linear economy. On the basis of burning fossil fuels, we take, make and waste an increasing amount of materials. This has pushed us against serious planetary boundaries. Radical reductions in environmental impact are needed over the coming decades. Entire economies and societies will have to reorganize. A promising candidate to support this reorganizing is a circular economy. It cuts waste, emissions and pollution, and it keeps the value of products, co...