Architecture

The department’s research focuses explicitly on architecture as a field of expertise, a field in which making and thinking are inextricably linked. The programme regards the ‘architectural project’ as the cornerstone of architectural practice and reflection, and cherishes the strong connection the Department of Architecture in Delft holds with architectural practice. Through a large number of high-profile practitioners in this group, relations with stakeholders in contemporary architectural practice (and the building industry) are continuously activated.

The research regards the architectural project as the junction where a complex combination of cultural, social, functional, economic and ecological factors is articulated as a concrete spatial proposal. This articulation requires a specific expertise that characterizes the discipline of architecture. Precisely this expertise is at the centre of the research programme. In this view, the structure of the research departs from this idea of expertise, acknowledging that architecture as a cultural field of action and reflection is multi-layered, entailing many connections to other fields.

Thus, from a reflection on the work of the past decade, and from a very positive evaluation of our work, the Department has set new steps to tried to consolidate that position and set a new agenda that could accommodate new research within a more flexible programme. Building upon the good work of the part years, following the recommendations of the assessment and providing new opportunities in line with the new researchers and research directions, the Department has taken the opportunity to rethink the organisational structure of the programme. The new structure might also help provide linkages to the valuable research of the Chair History of Architecture and Urban Planning who up till now had been working in the Design & History programme.

Dr.ir. Marc Schoonderbeek

Explore our research

Projects

Stories

To the research portal

Architecture and the City

Architecture and the City considers the notion of public realm as a lens to look at the (trans)formation of built forms and explicitly includes the changing socio-cultural dynamics of public institutions along with the development and transformation of physical public infrastructures over time.

Borders & Territories

Borders & Territories explores the concept of the border and the impact of cross-border exchange on architectural, urban and territorial entities; past, present and future, studying the role of infrastructure, networks and migratory movements on the transforming territory.

Situated Architecture

Situated Architecture takes the notion of situated experience as a common ground between academia and practice; as a topic to explore both conceptually and through material and building practice.

Architecture, Culture and Modernity

Architecture, Culture and Modernity focuses on the multiple ways architecture absorbs and reflects the conditions of modernity, including the rise of a mass society, new forms of (democratic) government systems, and concomitant issues of subject-formation, emancipation and citizens' empowerment.

Global Housing

The aim of Global Housing is to promote more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient urban communities through projects that analyse, evaluate, and develop knowledge on housing design combining situated approaches with a global perspective.

Digital Culture

Theory of Architecture and Digital Culture critically explores the technological conditions under which architecture in the age of global digital infrastructures emerges, from small to large scale, and from everyday practice to society as a whole.

Ecologies of Architecture

Ecologies of Architecture stems from the mutual determination of technicity (reciprocity of subjects and their built surroundings) and affect (response-ability) driven by a discerning attitude to hylomorphism.

History of Architecture and Urban Planning

History of Architecture and Urban Planning explores architectural and urban forms, functions and meanings from long-term, multi-scalar, and multidisciplinary perspectives combining diverse methods of historical and historiographical analysis to understand the construction of the past and its role in the formation of the present.

Architectural Pedagogies

Architectural Pedagogies collaborates with studio (research) mentors across the department, to reflect on the education, and to bring the results of the bachelor and master studios to the stage of critical discussion.