News

Congratulations to Benoît Marcou (MSc Architecture, BK) who received an honourable mention for his thought-provoking entry into the international competition, Dining in the Urban. Benoît’s proposed design questions the ephemerality of the urban picnic, through a fragile intervention made of wooden planks woven into the complex stone patterns of Skopje’s public ground.

Universities of Technology are good at science subjects, but often fail to address the area of imagination. Professor Klaske Havik thinks it is high time for this to change. “Without imagination there is no innovation”, she says.

The Dutch market for owner-occupied houses and the mortgages revolved at full speed in the first half of 2020. Thanks to the enormous package of support measures taken by central government and local authorities in the context of the corona crisis in the Netherlands, relatively few housing consumers seem to have really been affected in economic terms so far.

Urban design in complex urban projects is all about moving beyond surface needs and wishes, and uncovering common values. Designers can facilitate the creation of a shared vision among stakeholders by showing the implications and potential of these values.

RE-DWELL will train a new generation of academics and professionals to address the urgent need of affordable and sustainable housing, a major challenge for European societies. The large research project involves ten different universities and an innovative education programme across Europe.

The treatment of infectious diseases such as COVID-19 and Ebola is challenging, especially on location under extreme conditions. How can you use architectural design to make such clinics both technically possible and approachable? In collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières, students of the master track Building Technology set to work on that question.

Greenhouses use large amounts of natural gas for maintaining ideal crop growth conditions. BK Alumna Liesanne Wieleman and Jildou de Jong from the start-up Thermeleon, and researcher Martin Tenpierik received a Take-Off grant from NWO to conduct a study into the technical and financial feasibility of a new screening system, functioning as a passive heat battery. First results have shown a good potential for reducing the annual gas demand of the horticultural sector in the Netherlands.

Would spatially concentrating refugees on the micro-level help stimulate their integration? Carla Huisman has been awarded an NWA Idea Generator grant of € 50.000 to study this. Over the course of a year, she will compare the networks of Eritrean refugees living in mixed projects in Amsterdam with the networks of those living more isolated in Utrecht.

After the summer, the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment welcomes Evelien Bruggeman as the new professor of Building Law. In her view, construction is above all an interaction between public and private, management and technology. "Building law brings together different legal doctrines in a practical context, that's what makes it so interesting".

Klaske Havik has been appointed as professor of Methods of Analysis & Imagination at the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. Methods of Analysis & Imagination holds a plea to pair in-depth analysis of diverse cultural, spatial and social situations with imaginative thinking about new spatial realities.