Many species that are dependent on buildings are beginning to appear as more and more species of nature learn to adapt to city life. In the same vein, the concurrent loss of biodiversity presents a problem for the planning of vertical greening. This article attempts to explore the combination of animal nesting and vertical greening to develop a more species-friendly environment. The end goal is to create a flexible, easy-to-maintain, demountable, modular vertical greening system that can respond to changes in the ecosystem.

Campuses have recently drawn attention from governing organisations in the Netherlands and are identified as promising types of office- and university development on national, regional and company levels (Wiebes, 2019). Millions of dollars are invested in campuses by local and regional governments in order to attract businesses and jobs towards the respective regions and to stimulate innovation and Research & Design (Baggerman, 2020; Gruijthuijsen, 2020; Knop, 2020; Wiebes, 2019). However, the title ‘campus’ is not protected nor has an undisputed definition and therefore is subject to inflation (Magdaniel, De Jonge, & Den Heijer, 2018). This leads to the contradiction that public money is invested in initiatives that can differ in various ways and therefore remain unclear in how they should be managed successfully and what they deliver for their users. Researches state that clustering people and businesses leads to more innovation (Belso-Martínez, Mas-Verdu, & Chinchilla-Mira, 2020; Bolter & Robey, 2020; Glaeser, 2010; Guzman, 2019). Campus developments rest on the same principles. However, when approaching a campus from the demand side a campus should deliver the user preferences demanded by real estate users. This in order to attract them to the physical location and play a positive role in incubating and facilitating the respective real estate users (Ng, Junker, Appel-Meulenbroek, Cloodt, & Arentze, 2020; Remøy & van der Voordt, 2014). In order to reduce uncertainty surrounding campuses for policy makers, managers and users, these developments have to be redefined on what they are, what they intend to deliver and if that what is supplied matches the demand. Therefore the following main question will be answered; What are the perceived benefits campuses deliver for its real estate users? This will be answered by making use of literature study covering the definition and theoretical benefits. Secondly a case study towards four different campuses will be executed. This case study will consist of semi-structured interviews with both start-up and scale-up companies and the respective campus management teams in order to establish what benefits are delivered by locating on a campus. Followingly these results will be analysed and compared in order to build conclusions.

Inspired by the Existenzminimum movement of the early 20th century, the feasibility of historic efficient housing concepts is studied. The canvas for this is the renovation design of a post-65 housing complex in Amsterdam. Three concepts reinterpreted into a modern context and applied in the design. The first is a sharing concept with smaller individual homes and shared amenities and functions. The second is a flexible plan concept in which the home itself is made as efficient as possible. The final implemented concept is a institutionalized squatting concept with lowest rent possible. The feasibility is assessed through judging the design in 18 categories before and after the renovation.

With the introduction of High-Speed Rail, many transportation hubs have been redeveloped to include this transport. However, these stations are often neglecting important aspects related to the quality of the public space and the connection with the surrounding. To improve the quality of the space, the station needs to be adapted in several days. To start, the areas are to monotone and need to be more diverse. Furthermore, the stations are currently not integrated with the surrounded context. Integration can be split up into functional, spatial, visual, and mental integration. However, each of these aspects is currently lacking. All these aspects need to be addressed to prepare the stations for future expansion and transformation. These aspects and other lessons learned are then applied during a redesign of the most problematic areas of Brussels-South Railway Station

Suitable housing and its availability: it seems to be a problem within almost every phase of the housing career in the Netherlands, as the housing market is stagnating. Our older generation is held responsible for this national problem, but why? Deliberate occupation of the ‘oversized’ family home would be the easiest conclusion, but puts a heavy weight on this part of society. If these empty-nesters are not relocating, as is apparently expected of them for having an abundance of living space, what does this say about their preferences of the living environment? Listening to this generation for the sake of letting this operation of flow in the housing market succeed, is of utmost importance and priority. Instead of creating living environments focused on one generation or target group, the task within this research is to find a way to design inclusive and accessible living environments. Thereby, stagnation could be avoided in the future by this particular cause. After all, a mixture of different generations in the living environment is preferred both by older residents as by the general population. Within this task for diversification of the living environment for the sake of inclusivity, lies a hidden gem: a catalyst for the renovation task. By 2030, insulation of existing dwellings becomes mandatory in Europe for the sake of a climate-neutral society by 2050. When revitalizing existing living environments by means of inclusivity and quality, the climate task could fit perfectly within this picture. Especially these existing living environments are a very important subject, as with this renovation task the Dutch built environment could and probably will visually change tremendously in the upcoming decades. Therefore, the valuation by stakeholders of the current appearance and functioning of living environments up for renovation, are important in the face of physical and emotional heritage. As a large percentage of the Dutch housing stock will be insulated in the upcoming 30 years, these values are of great importance to prevent any loss of potential heritage. Enlarging the lifespan of these living environments by diversification, inclusivity and a high quality of living can therefore be achieved, as is the case for the renovation design of Bijlmerplein, an urban, residential center in Amsterdam. It turns out that it does pay off to take into account stakeholder valuations instead of wrapping the building in a blanket, because renovation can be revitalization rather than insulation.

The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic is profound and enduring to the entire world. A ‘recovery’ to go back in time is unlikely to happen due to the lack of uncertainty in the future. The darkest time will eventually pass, whereas post-pandemic, the era in which the pandemic is perceived to have subsided, can still accelerate existing trends and bring up new uncertainties, such as hybrid working, activity-based working and smart building, to the office real estate sector. Corporate Real Estate (CRE), as real property, is owned and/or leased by organisations for their business activities. While office real estate is facing profound structural changes, the CRE department of organisations needs to evaluate their office status quo and reimagine their office of the future.

Scenario planning can act as a valuable tool to help decision-makers evaluate strategies, and office space demand forecast is one of the important indexes that CRE takes into account. Forecasting office space demand by using scenario planning techniques is recommended when the predictability of the external strategic environment is low and the reliability of the organisation’s internal data required for forecasting is high as is the case in this post-pandemic era. This research aims to propose a scenario planning methodology that can be applied to develop scenarios with quantitative office space demands at a corporate level. Such methodology and detailed scenarios are valuable for CRE decision-makers to evaluate their strategy regarding post-pandemic office real estate.

This study is developed by operations research. A proper methodology is proposed through the literature study. A pilot study is then taken to apply this methodology to a real-world example. The chosen pilot is the global headquarter of Philips: Philips Center in Amsterdam. In the pilot study, semi-structured interviews and data analytics of an existing survey are conducted, scenarios are developed by following the steps of the proposed methodology. An expert panel was held to help evaluate the replicability and validities of the findings.

Embedded mixed methods research is used for this thesis. Qualitative and quantitative data are both analysed through literature study, semi-structured interviews, and an expert panel. A large chunk of quantitative data analysis including using the programming language approach is conducted during survey data analysis.

The findings of this research provide CRE with a methodology to develop scenarios with quantitative office space demand. By applying this methodology, the output of post-pandemic office real estate scenarios with corresponding quantitative office space demand can be used by CRE decision-makers to evaluate their business strategies.

This graduation booklet shows the work that is done during the ‘Global Housing Graduation Studio: Addis Ababa Living Lab’. The goal of this project was to research and design housing solutions to improve the livelihood of Addis Ababa’s urban dwellers. Currently, Addis Ababa is facing the problems which are caused by the ongoing rapid urbanization. One of these problems, and the focus of my graduation project, is the degradation of the rivers and riverbanks. This project proposes a rehabilitation of the riverbank informal settlements of Addis Ababa, as well as implements a strategy to increase the density of the city which also takes into account the existing inhabitants of these riverbanks and offers them a dwelling type that fits their traditional way of life.

The world is urbanising rapidly, with the Global South as the part of the world with the most rapid urbanisation. The urban population of Ethiopia is predicted to nearly triple in 25 years. The swiftness of urbanisation is resulting in extreme challenges. It causes, reinforced by climate change, that Addis Ababa is increasingly affected by flooding. The urban poor are forced to settle in the least desirable areas, such as areas around rivers which are most vulnerable to flooding. The rivers of Addis Ababa are polluted with all kinds of waste because of inadequate services. Around half the population has no water supply, forcing people to purchase water in shops. The urban poor cannot afford this and use the unsafe water from the rivers as a consequent. The Ethiopian government launched in 2019 the Addis Ababa Riverside project, or the Sheger beautifying project. It follows a series of ongoing beautification projects in the Global South. The project aims to clean the rivers and create public spaces, bicycle paths and walkways along the rivers. The project is criticised because it is no certainty that the rivers will not continue flooding and there is no proposition for all the waste that is currently discharged into the rivers. Rapid urbanisation in combination with poverty and the inability of the state and the market to provide affordable housing, cause that over 1 billion people reside in informal settlements. Addis Ababa can be seen as an example of this inability. Historical grown, informal neighbourhoods called sefers are located in the city centre. Over the last decade, sefers are challenged by the swift urbanisation of Addis Ababa with a resettlement program aiming to replace these low-income neighbourhoods into denser urban schemes affecting the social, economic and political tissue. This program, the Integrated Housing Development Programme (IHDP), was introduced by the government in 2005. The inhabitants of former kebele houses claim their houses get demolished without any compensation or alternative accommodation. Piassa is chosen as a project site, being currently challenged by demolition of the existing kebele housing. Having researched the location and its inhabitants, a housing system is designed with a combination of tenure systems for different income groups. These groups will live together in an inclusive, mixed-income environment in the inner-city of Addis Ababa.

Cast glass is a promising structural material that has seen increasing use in the build environment over the last year. It offers a great freedom of shape for designers and engineers, beyond the two-dimensional float glass that is still primarily used. Despite this, cast glass in practice has only been used for solid bricks, mimicking traditional ceramic brickwork. Little exploration has been made on the complex shapes that can be achieved in cast glass. One of the largest challenges of cast glass is its slow and meticulous cooling process required after casting, to prevent the occurrence of internal stresses. This costly annealing process is the main limitations for producing large scale cast glass elements in an affordable way. Experience in large scale solid glass mirror castings performed for NASA show that annealing times can be reduced through smart design.
Structural topology optimisation is a design tool for creating light-weight, material efficient elements. Its application has mostly been limited to industrial and aerospace design, though it is slowly being introduced in the built environment as the additive manufacturing required for these geometries becomes more advanced, and affordable. So far, topology optimisation of cast glass design has remained unexplored. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the potential of using topology optimisation as a design tool for complex structural cast-glass elements with a reduced annealing time. For this, a complex-shaped grid shell has been redesigned in glass, using optimised cast glass nodes. The entire fabrication process, from digital design, to physical fabrication using additive manufacturing has been explored.

Simulation models are increasingly used to substantiate long-term planning policy decisions. The communication of model results from modellers to policy-makers has not received much attention by scholars. While, without correct interpretation and correct use of model results the quality of the model itself is irrelevant for the impact of the model on policy. This research analyses this gap in literature by looking at a system from model to policy, using the case of the 2017 office policy of Amsterdam.