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...

How can we create more human-centered, resilient, and sustainable cities in the tech age? Can we make use of technology and the opportunities presented rather than resisting its fast-paced evolution? What are the biggest and most likely spatial changes that autonomous vehicles will bring in cities? How can this change in mobility contribute to a better urban environment? To what extent do the spatial opportunities created by automated mobility respond to current urban issues and what is the r...

In deze ‘Gereedschapskist van Bach’ is de methodiek van ‘Omgekeerd ontwerpen’ vanuit ruimtelijke gebruikspatronen (in plaats van mono-disciplinair vanuit de ontwerper) toegankelijk voor studenten en voor burgerinitiatieven die zich inzetten voor het verbeteren van de (leef)omgeving. Gelijktijdig wordt opnieuw de samenhang tussen het vakgebied ‘Stedenbouw’ en ‘Verkeerskunde’ gevisualiseerd en worden ideeën aangedragen voor een vakgebied ‘Verblijfskunde’. Want de toekomst v...

The inquiry that has culminated in this thesis was inspired by the challenges that many young Chinese people were facing when trying to gain access to affordable housing at the time of study, the early 2010s. By then, more than thirty years of housing reforms had completely changed how housing was being provided in China. The resulting structure had led young people to access housing in ways that were very different from those of their parents’ generation (Deng, Hoekstra & Elsinga, 2017). T...

The thesis develops an empirically tested analytical framework which links value theory with planning and design practices to investigate context-specific spatial transformations as a result of individual and collective value judgements. Four key aspects of water values including flood safety, as well as economic, social and environmental values, are studied, and their interrelationships are discussed. Morphological analyses and value assessments are conducted to explore in what sense spatial...

This study is based on the fact that all people have a basic need for protection from other people (and animals) as well as from the elements (the exterior climate). People need a space in which they can withdraw from the rest of the world. The two states, inside and outside, public and private, contact with, or isolation from, the outside world, are relevant in fulfilling this basic need. People also want their home to have a certain appearance or status which they can identify with and whic...

In 2016, the Government of Suriname, financed by a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), launched the Paramaribo Urban Rehabilitation Program (PURP), which contributes to the socio-economic revitalisation of Paramaribo’s historic inner city. It aims to attract new residents and commercial activities to the centre of Paramaribo, to restore value to its cultural heritage, to reduce traffic congestion and to strengthen the institutional framework for managing its sustainable dev...