“It was generally believed that losing one’s life to a hurricane is… something that happens in far-away places,” the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh wrote in his 2017 book ‘The Great Derangement’ (p. 26). The current climate and environmental crises are in the very first place crises of culture, crises of imagination. [...] An idea in close correspondence with what Joan Didion famously mentioned when contemplating the American countercultural phenomena of the late nineteen sixties and early seventies: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live” (The White Album, 1979). To be at home in modernity is a constant struggle between space and place. The essay considers in a narrative way the longing for places which are stable and deep-rooted, which might be point of reference, of departure, of origin, in times which have declared change to be the purpose of life. It contemplates on matter inventively moulded into the reassuring concealment of ‘a world as we know it’. But also on ‘characters of the road,’ the mad ones, “the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…” (Kerouac, J. On The Road, 1957). [...] The writings of the Beat Movement among others, unintentionally initiated the downfall of the American dream from moral clarity, pioneers and heroism to vague, meaningless freedom and decades of turmoil, violence, apathy, and a shaky morality. “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold” (Yeats, W.B. The Second Coming, 1920), but in order to make life possible on earth, we, as human beings, construct the world, the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote. We, as human beings, are in need of a stage for what Arendt defines as ‘action’. A durable situation upon which we can speak, communicate, share and discuss. The shift of modernity from place to space and from durable to more and more temporal artefacts, of which architecture is a very important part while action takes place in the public sphere, renders the homeless mind of modern man. One who becomes hardly able to turn feelings of melancholia, insecurity and imperfection into creativity and reflection. But instead focusses on power, matter and scattering. Imperialistic concealments which narrow his frame of reference and increasingly shorten the range of the probable. A man-centered world that cannot cope with the questions the Anthropocene era poses. Questions of climate crises, hyper-objects and environmental instability, confronting a people who seem to have forgotten that “recognition famously is a passage from ignorance to knowledge” (Ghosh, A. The Great Derangement, 2017 p. 4). [...] A more suitable balance between the human and non-human is being advocated to widen the range of the probable and expand the understanding of modern man. By acknowledging instead of rejecting that technological and natural incomprehensibilities are not something outside of the human, but being human precisely exists out of the continuous scanning and incorporation of it, it becomes possible to confront oneself with the non-human actors and their effects on being human. By considering the human mind as ‘artefactual,’ an object made by human beings, it can be levelled with non-human actors and be recognized as a part of this. As long as architecture, a physical translation of the relationship between man and his surroundings in search of a place to call home, is understood and developed as an ‘attempt to bridge the gap’, it can be a vital practice in questioning what it means to be human, at home in longing.

By translating the Maghreb mosque type to the Dutch urban context the design provides an appropriate and recognisable building for the Moroccan community in Bloemhof, a neighbourhood in the south of Rotterdam.

This project adds back quality to the living conditions of the most dense district of Casablanca. By providing the district Maârif with a common center, I consolidate the currently disconnected neighborhoods. The main program on this site is focused around education. Education here is being used as a social equalizer and to communize the district. Because this shared resource can quickly adapt to the ever-changing needs, I hope the users will feel strongly connected to this shared facility and strengthen the identity of the district.

This book is the result of the research conducted in the P1 phase of the graduation studio ‘Positions in Practice’ of the chair Methods and Analysis in the department for architecture and the built environment, TU Delft.

In this project, the design of a contemporary version of the historic khan for new arrivals in present-day Istanbul is explored through architectural research. The research for this project focused on three aspects: (1) Istanbul, a tumultuous city between the east and west as the context. (2) The migrant trying to make his way in the city as the user. (3) The Khan, or han in Turkish, an architectural legacy specific to old Istanbul as the building type.

The khan is the urban variant of the caravanserai: a roadside-inn for merchants and travellers along long-distance trade routes in the Middle East and Asia. As khans are no longer in use for lodging of merchants, these mystique historical buildings are in threat of deterioration.

The project explores how the khans concepts can be transformed to a contemporary reinterpretation. In this reinterpretation, the khan is a place for arrivals: migrants who recently came to Istanbul in search of work, drawing parallels with the past use of khans. The contemporary khan offers temporary housing and a base for finding work in order for migrants to build up a future in Istanbul. The architectural design does not only play with the architectural legacy of the khan typology, but also with the existing urban fabric of Istanbul as well of the ruins of a former flour factory.

METRO POLIS refers to the reciprocal relation between the urban environment and the metro system in Tokyo, Japan. In November 2016, its largest fish market was planned to relocate, leaving behind a vast territory in one of the central wards. As a strategy to connect this post-industrial territory to the everyday of the Tokyoites, a metro station is proposed in a former market hall of the Tsukiji Shijio in Chuo-ku, Tokyo. The design aims to release the potential of the transport hub as an urban centre, by redefining the metro station as a generous, inclusive place for the Tokyoites. Also, an urban plan is proposed which combines housing, commercial functions and offices.