Exhibition Together! is coming to Delft

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City-zen Roadshow Amersfoort

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Sneak peek BK Bouwkunde

Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

The lessons of Franco’s utopian villages

Following the Spanish civil war, Franco spearheaded sweeping rural modernisation and reconstruction. During this period, Franco had 300 ‘utopian villages’ built from scratch. Doctoral candidate Jean-François Lejeune places these villages in the wider context of a distinct South European modernism, and argues for a reassessment of this controversial heritage.

Theory and practice of ‘space formation’ in modern architecture

Architect Oliver Sack is fascinated by the question of how spatial design relates to the use of space as it is intended and experienced. “I went in search of the relationship between the purposiveness of architecture, its perception and the role that space formation plays in that.” For his PhD research, he explored the socio-spatial aesthetics of space formation in twentieth-century architecture.

Regular architectural solutions fall short in favelas

The layout of slums often appears to be chaotic, but there is usually one factor that brings an element of order: work. Architectural intervention is rarely successful if designers fail to take this into account, as PhD researcher Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti discovered in the Brazilian favelas.

Country estates landscapes: prominent in Dutch green structure

The leading role played by the wealthy citizens of the Dutch Republic is still visible to this day in the form of a green belt of country estates. They were developed alongside canals, strategic highways and trading routes by patrician families. This is the origin of the country estates landscapes that still exist in and around Dutch cities.

The impact of regional design on spatial planning

What influence does spatial design have on spatial planning at a regional scale level and on decision-making at all scale levels? Based on practical case studies from the Netherlands, PhD researcher Verena Balz explored the two-way traffic between regional design and the development of spatial policy.

Modern trombe wall saves loads of energy

A trombe wall with phase-changing materials can ensure a much lower energy consumption of buildings. That becomes evident in the DoubleFace 2.0 research project. State-of-the-art technologies breathe new life into this age-old heat control method.

Patterns & variations

New system for a deeper, more objective understanding of architecture. Designing a building or structure is like orchestrating a piece of music: all the components must be in balance in order to achieve perfection. In his thesis, PhD student Jack Breen explains this concept of layering in more detail and unravels its complexity by using a system he developed himself.

Research stories