Public Building and Housing Design

Public Building and Housing Design investigates the multiple forms through which inhabitation takes place, by focusing attention on the spatial continuum that stretches from the scale of the domestic to that of public building. Public Building and Housing Design approaches research both as a process, in which problems are simultaneously dissected, analyzed and confronted from different perspectives, and as a tool to promote inclusive, sustainable, and resilient communities.

In an era of rapid planetary urbanization and urgent societal issues – see climate change, access to resources and spatial apartheid – Public Building and Housing Design advocates for a multi-scale and cross-disciplinary approach, which includes both theoretical and operative methodologies. The research conducted by Public Building and Housing Design combines the emphasis on contextual specificity with a global perspective; its projects span different continents – from Europe to Africa, to Latin America and Southeast Asia. More specifically, research on housing focuses on dwelling practices and protocols, and design and research methods that investigate the relation between spatial design, technology, policy, livelihoods, and patterns of inhabitation. Research on public building delves into future models for urban configurations through the categories of hybridity and multiplicity – by emphasizing the role that data-driven processes can play in those – and, also, through sustainability, conceived as a design vector shaping aesthetic and programmatic decisions. In their divergent trajectories, both directions aim to develop research that can critically question the role of architecture in the intertwined relationship among space, data, policy, and urban processes.

Public Building and Housing Design includes the Groups of Public Building, Architecture & Dwelling, and Global Housing. It incorporates both conventional architectural research and research-by-design initiatives which focus on design work as a special form of research, considering theory and praxis, analysis and imagination as inseparable, and as a medium to conceive and develop architectural ideation. Projects are typically carried out with PhD students, public and private institutions, domestic and international partners.

Recent projects include the collaboration with Atelier Rijksbouwmeester on the future of office spaces and vacant buildings; the edX MOOC Global Housing Design, which investigates those social, economic and environmental factors influencing the design of housing settlements; or the Addis Ababa Living Lab, a project aimed to improve the livelihood of Addis Ababa’s urban dwellers using transdisciplinary approaches.

The outcome of the research conducted within Public Building and Housing Design takes the shape of thematic journals – see DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing) – as well as of books, exhibitions, online and printed dissemination, EU-funded proposals and grants.