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Research is increasingly based on data and how data can be used to achieve better designs, decisions or measurements. This sometimes requires enormous computing power to process all models and scenarios. Soon all researchers, students and education at TU Delft will be able to use the computational power of DelftBlue to solve complex problems. This high-performance computer has a speed of no less than 2 petaflops (one million times one billion calculations per second). The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment will also have access to use this supercomputer from the end of April.

Modern buildings that are threatened with demolition or disfigurement are regularly brought to the attention of DOCOMOMO International. In many cases the international DOCOMOMO community plays an important role in the preservation of these threatened buildings. To make the knowledge and information available for everyone, a lot of the material is made available online.

Clementine Cottineau (Urbanism) received an ERC grant for her research project SEGUE on economic segregation in cities. Ellen van Bueren (MBE) is the leader of a large consortium that received a NWA-ORC grant for RED&BLUE; a transdisciplinary study on climate-proof cities.

Port cities are where people, cargo, and ideas venture into the world, where economic development and liveability may clash or go hand in hand. This is the background against which the new LDE minor PortCityFutures offers third year bachelor students of all backgrounds an introduction in observing, design and multi-disciplinary collaboration.

Articles regularly appear in the media about citizens protesting against the felling of large numbers of trees along road sites. The reason for felling is often to make the road more safe for traffic, because they stand too close to the road. But that is not the entire story: trees and roads have been inseparably linked for centuries.

Many of the outdated typical Dutch tenement flats are large consumers of energy and therefore often end up on the demolition list. However, these typical flats do not have to disappear from the city scene. Symbiotic Urban Movement (SUM) - a team of students from Delft University of Technology - has developed a plan to sustainably transform all 847,000 tenement flats in the Netherlands and create more housing.

Master's student Joep Bastiaans made an inventory of recently developed collaborative housing concepts for seniors and investigated to what extent these meet their needs and wishes. His Master's thesis 'Professional collaborative housing concepts for seniors' won the Jeroen van der Veer Thesis Award 2021.

Two recent MSc graduated from our faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment became third in the finale of the DAIDA Foundation Global Thesis award 2021. The annual event, acknowledges master graduates who come up with ideas to improve the lives of vulnerable groups living in rapidly growing cities in the context of the Global South. Ramona Scheffer and Zhuo-ming Shia were shortlisted with their graduation work amongst 10 other nominees and ended up sharing third place.

According to researcher Willemijn Wilms Floet the concept Hofje (charity courtyard) is likely to succeed in cities that face renewal and densification challenges: they bring security, tranquillity and a nice green communal environment. Hofjes contribute to the urban variety that makes dwelling and living in cities attractive. In her book and open access publication ‘Urban Oases, Dutch Hofjes as Hidden Architectural Gems’ she explains the sustainable design principles, the development, the social impact and why architects, urbanists and real estate developers in the 21st century could benefit. Every era deserves a hofje of its own.

Landscape architecture is more than the designing of parks and squares. It is an engineering tradition, argues Adriaan Geuze, landscape architect and founder of West 8. As the new Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at the Delft University of Technology, he sees opportunities for using landscape architecture in a crossover with the other domains in Delft. That is how we could work on complex and urgent long-term tasks, such as climate adaptation, housing construction, energy transition, and agriculture realignment.