Architecture has always been found in a space between its economic and cultural values. As distinct from the intrinsic values attributed to the visual and performing arts, literature and music, architecture's values are often seen to be compromised by, or contingent upon, forces outside of the discipline—on property prices, real estate markets and the vicissitudes of local and global economies. Such intersections of cultural and economic values are especially conspicuous in architectural he...

For both Jo Kruger (1914–1983) and Rob Hootsmans (1962) the architecture of the Courthouse in Zwolle, the Netherlands, was a long time in the making. Kruger began in 1963 with his project for a combined district and subdistrict court, which took fourteen years to be completed. In 2004, while still working for the Government Building Agency, Hootsmans began exploring how Kruger’s building could be expanded. He finished a new extension in 2013, and completed the renovation of Kruger’s ori...

As Found Houses is a guide to the surprising design decisions found in the domestic architecture of rural China and a resource for thinking about contemporary design.

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With (w)EGO: Tailor-Made Housing, The Why Factory investigates participatory processes applied to housing design. These processes establish a negotiation among the desires of each of the residents of a housing slab and help determine the design of their apartments. To achieve this, Wegocity manifests a particular interest in the development of a gaming process. This game leverages the specificities of each resident and transforms them into spatial needs. This way, unexpected hous...

Japan: Nation Building Nature is the first book to map out the views of nature that have shaped the widely acclaimed but often misunderstood modern architecture of Japan.

By connecting the dots between philosophy, design, geopolitics, and an earnest quest for a greener tomorrow, this book explains how Japanese culture can shed new light on our understanding of ecology, and vice-versa.

Using a distinctive blend of academic research and personal experience, Joachim Nijs draws on architectural h...

Research and development in building envelope design have promoted the convergence of two system types, Thermo-Active Building Systems and Adaptive Building Envelopes, that re-conceptualize the envelope as a distributed energy transfer function that captures, transforms, stores, and even re-distributes energy resources.

The widespread deployment of Thermo-Active Building Systems as a building envelope will depend on several factors. These factors include the value of the design attributes tha...

This dissertation focuses on Industrial Heritage Reuse practice in Europe, with special emphasis on the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain and Greece. This vastly complex yet fascinating topic has not been studied holistically under the circumstances of the contemporary era. In the 21st century, Industrial Heritage Reuse is required to be more responsive, more sustainable, more inclusive and more value-driven than before. An enhanced approach for the transformation of industrial relics is...

Despite the odds, manufacturing is not in terminal decay in western cities. On the contrary, it is at the opening of a new chapter. Urban manufacturing can help cities to be more innovative, circular, inclusive and resilient.

Since the 1970s, cities world-wide have been witness to radical de-industrialisation. Manufacturing was considered incompatible with urban life and was actively pushed out. As economies have grown, public officials and developers have instinctively shifted their priori...