News

Spatial quality is still too often neglected in interventions to keep the water out. That is unnecessary, concludes PhD candidate Anne Loes Nillesen. First list the technical possibilities, then develop an integrated solution in consultation with all relevant parties.

During the last week of the Venice Biennale, BK Bouwkunde organised a closing ceremony of research exhibition BK Booths. Content makers, current students and colleagues, alumni, and professionals gathered at Palazzo Mora to discover the BK Booths.

The Resilient Island Foundation was founded by five students of BK Bouwkunde. Their goal is to implement a circular economy of food and waste in the world’s most isolated communities. Their first project ‘Maldives Matter’ was selected as one of the five finalists at the TEDx Award in Amsterdam, out of 200 applications.

In the eyes of many practitioners, the architectural profession is undergoing a process of devaluation. To shed light on long-term trends within the profession, BK Bouwkunde starts a sociologic study on professionalisation of practitioners in architecture in collaboration with the ArchiScienza Foundation. This foundation stimulates activities on the intersection of architecture and science in the widest sense.

Together with the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency (CHA), BK Bouwkunde TU Delft developed a digital natural stone library. The considerable collections of natural stone of both the RCE and the TU Delft are now easily accessible. Thus, identification and application of natural stone becomes more effortless for architects, conservators, and researchers.

Every year, the Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs awards the best master thesis on the housing market. Janneke Michielsen, alumna of the faculty of TBM, was awarded the first prize. The second prize was awarded to alumnus Martijn Nawroth, who graduated with a thesis on future proofing the housing stock of the municipality of Zoetermeer.

The proposal ‘Writing Urban Places. New narratives of the European city’ has been accepted as COST Action proposal. Klaske Havik (Architecture) leads the consortium, aiming to collect current initiatives of scholars addressing urban change from the crossing point of literary studies, urban studies and architecture. The goal is to offer a conceptual framework and operative tools to analyse urban narratives and to share knowledge with city makers.

Geodata open up opportunities for countless new applications, but the true potential remains untapped. Open datasets from the geo-world are not sufficiently compatible with standard search engines or access to them is restricted. According to PhD candidate Linda van den Brink, there are both technological and social obstacles that need to be overcome.

Martijn Stellingwerff has been awarded a Delft Education Fellowship to showcase and test different augmented education settings. His project ‘DelftXRealities’ will explore education settings that range from a digitally augmented TU Delft campus to full-immersive VR settings that allow collaborations between participants from all over the world.

Critical materials are materials which we need for current and future product technologies, but which are now or soon difficult to acquire. BK Bouwkunde is part of the consortium SusCritMat, which aims to educate people from industry and academia about important aspects on critical materials.