Sneak peek BK Bouwkunde

Virtual depot: behind the scenes of museums

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Exhibition Together! is coming to Delft

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Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment

‘Passive cooling is a matter of smart design’

Constructing energy neutral in warm areas is near impossible without the application of passive cooling. Use Chinese rural architecture as a best practice example, proposes PhD researcher Xiaoyu Du. This type of architecture does not need energy slurping airconditioning through the smart space lay-out.

Both a technological and a societal challenge

To create energy-neutral cities, we need to fundamentally change how we live in our cities. The City-zen Roadshow helps to understand that it is necessary to look at sustainability from both a technological and a societal perspective. The tenth Roadshow, organised in Amersfoort, once again shows how the project creates awareness by connecting citizens, legislators, and market players with students and experts.

‘Behavioural sciences key to energy savings and comfort at home’

Residential comfort tends to be associated with pleasant temperatures, but there’s much more to it than that. PhD researcher Marco Ortiz identified the living conditions we experience as pleasant and used this research to draw up psychological profiles that can be used to design comfortable, energy-efficient houses tailored to the users’ preferences.

“Glass bricks are monsters!”

We are quite good at recycling bottles, but other kinds of waste glass recycling have been less successful. Make cast glass out of it, says PhD researcher Faidra Oikonomopoulou. It is stronger than steel and concrete; plus, it is a great, transparent building material.

Common preference as a real estate strategy

What is the most effective way for an organisation to make decisions about real estate that best match the organisation’s needs? Monique Arkesteijn investigated existing methods and developed a model in which stakeholders’ preferences lead to the best option. Her research offers corporate real estate (CRE) managers a fresh approach to decision-making.

Research stories