In a time of increasing awareness for the environment and rising energy prices, an efficiency in our material use is of paramount importance. This research is built on the notion that the design of light structures has a positive effect on the energy use of the built environment. The tent has been chosen to examine this approach of lightness in the domain of architecture. In an attempt to make the tent more efficient, the parasitic properties of the tent system are utilized by attaching it to an infrastructural object that can be found everywhere in the world: The Flyover. In the paper, a framework is developed to classify boundary tensioned membrane tents (a branch of the tensile structure systems), combine twelve of those types with the flyover, and evaluate the combinations by measuring them against spatial and structural attributes. The design portion is focussed on a a metro flyover in Rootterdam South. Multiple small-scale intervention will be introduced to heal the urban fabric surrounding this flyover.

Villa Henny (1916), designed by Robert van’t Hoff, baptized as the concrete villa, defines a turning point in modernism in the Netherlands. The Villa has been extensively researched in relation to the De Stijl art movement and influence by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, yet less attention has been given to the fact that it is one of the first dwellings in the Netherlands with a construction of reinforced concrete. The aim of the thesis is to shed light on the role of the project in terms of technical advances of the early 1900’s. After a contextual outline of reinforced concrete and the architect responsible for the project, the paper will elaborate on the design and influence of Villa Henny, determine the relations between architectural and structural properties, evaluate the transition of reinforced concrete from a civil structure to private dwelling building material, and analyse the effects it had on the design of dwellings in the Netherlands.