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...

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...

The springing up of freeform architecture and structures introduces many challenges to structural engineers. The main challenge is to generate structural forms with high structural efficiency subject to the architectural space constraints during the conceptual structural design process.

Structural Morphology is the study of the relation between form and force, which can be considered the guiding theory for this challenge. The relation between form and force is important for all types of struc...

This pioneering research focuses on Biomimetic Interactive Architecture using "Computation", "Embodiment", and "Biology" to generate an intimate embodied convergence to propose a novel rule-based design framework for creating organic architectures composed of swarm-based intelligent components. Furthermore, the research boldly claims that Interactive Architecture should emerge as the next truly Organic Architecture. As the world and society are dynamically changing, especially in this digital...

Sustainability and resilience have become indispensable parts of the contemporary debate over the built environment. Although recognised as imperatives, the complexity and the variety of interpretations of sustainability and resilience have raised the necessity to again rethink their notion in the context of the built environment and to reframe the state-of-the-art body of knowledge.

The purpose of this book is to present ongoing research from the universities involved in the project Creating...

This issue of the Journal of Façade Design and Engineering is a result of the second façade conference, PowerSkin, held on January 17th 2019, in the context of the building trade fair ‘BAU’ in Munich. The conference was organized collaboratively by TU Munich, TU Darmstadt, and TU Delft. All three universities conduct high-impact research and education in the field of building envelopes. The conference featured a mix of practice and education experiences, as well as scientific contributi...

While agglomerations along the Rhine are confronted with the uncertainties of an increasing flood risk due to climate change, different programs are claiming urban river front sites. Simultaneously, urban development, flood management, as well as navigation and environmental protection are negotiating the border between the river and the urban realm. This produces complex spatial constellations between the river system and the urban realm with a diverse set of interdependencies, where program...