News

This year, three BK alumni, Aditya Parulekar (Building Technology) Iris Moons (MBE) and Ananta Vania Iswardhani (Heritage & Architecture) won the first, second and third NRP Master Prize 2020.

Philomena Bluyssen and Marco Ortiz are developing a method in the SenseLab to compare leakage rates in different non-medical face masks. Up to now the NEN standard does not contain such a test.

Machiel van Dorst has been working in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment for over twenty years. In his role as head of the Urbanism department, and more recently vice-dean, he has invested a lot of time in the faculty. But teaching and research remained his passion, and have once more become the main focus of his career. “The interaction between environment, behaviour, urban and landscape design is the main focus of my teaching and research remit.”

GeoFluxus, a spin-off from the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment wins the 1st price at the EU DATATHON Green Deal Challenge. This competition invites teams from all over the world to create applications for European open datasets to solve one of the four main challenges the continent is facing.

The Netherlands Police is one of the biggest owners of public real estate in the Netherlands. From police station to forensic laboratory, from listed buildings in the centre of The Hague to large-scale facilities on the motorway in Driebergen: the task of housing the Police is as diverse as it is challenging. This September saw Monique Arkesteijn and Alexandra den Heijer (Chair of Public Real Estate, MBE department) enter into a four-year cooperation contract with the Police.

The scarcity on the housing market continues unabated. Relatively few residential consumers have really been affected in economic sense by the Corona crisis. This is mainly due to the enormous package of support measures provided by central and local authorities as part of the Corona crisis. Confidence in the owner-occupier housing market will recover in the third quarter of 2020.

In developing countries, aid organisations have a preference for building houses that meet Western standards. This is a mistake, claims doctoral candidate Michiel Smits in his dissertation, because residents struggle to maintain them. However, his call for ‘self-reliant', circular housing faces opposition from local residents, who prefer their houses to be made using bricks and cement.

Dr. Amy Thomas was awarded a Veni for her research Her Office. Amy's research includes a historical analysis of the role of gender in the design of corporate buildings and interiors. Historically offices have been designed for men, often by men, yet little research exists on how workplace design affects workplace inequality. This architectural history research will show how women’s wellbeing, health, status and career progression have been disproportionately disadvantaged through space management and design, furniture/product design, and the client-designer relationship.

During the Evening of the Assignment Film on 28 October, the film Energieslaven was awarded as the winner in the category Creativity/Innovation. The film shows in an insistent way how much energy is used in our household that has to be generated by rowers in the basement.

Every year, the best gradation projects of the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment are selected and exhibited at the online VR exhibition. The jury selected the nine best projects to compete in the Dutch Archiprix, the leading annual competition for upcoming design talent. The nine projects were selected from a total of 47 preselected projects, showing the diversity of the different specialisations of architecture and the built environment.