News

Two Urbanism graduates have been selected to display their documentary ‘Northbound’ at the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam 2019. The documentary about Europe’s most northern province Finnmark in Norway focusses on the pressure of incoming extractive industries in the Arctic on the landscape and local cultures.

The research project ‘Open-up interstices’ investigates the post-war neighbourhood Den Haag Zuidwest and has been granted funding by NWO Creative Industry KIEM. The project explores the value of existing open spaces of the neighbourhood and brings new perspectives for the undergoing urban regeneration plan.

The Double Face 2.0 research project has been selected as one of the best tech ideas of the Netherlands in 2019. The trombe wall with phase changing materials can ensure a much lower energy consumption of buildings. Science magazine KIJK organises the public contest, voting is possible until 1 October 2019.

Mortars are recurrently damaged and in need of frequent replacement due to salt crystallization. Mortars with mixed-in inhibitors can help mitigate salt damage. The new research project MORISAL investigates how these inhibitors can create a sustainable and cost-effective answer to a recurrent and severe problem met in practice.

This summer, a summer school on sustainable housing renovation was organised in collaboration with Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Queena Qian, Erwin Mlecnik, and Henk Visscher (MBE) introduced 32 Chinese students to a Dutch approach on a more sustainable development of new housing estates.

The project has been granted a € 500.000,- NWO Smart Culture Grant and seeks to develop an intersectional methodology to achieve more diverse and inclusive practices.

The layout of slums often appears to be chaotic, but there is usually one factor that brings an element of order: work. Architectural intervention is rarely successful if designers fail to take this into account, as PhD researcher Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti discovered in the Brazilian favelas.

The second Jorma Vitkala Award of Merit was awarded to the professor of Architectural Glass for his contributions to the development of glass applications within the field of architecture.

Six articles on architecture and built environment design education have been published in the latest open access issue. Twenty staff members from all over the faculty contributed to broad range of topics.

The decreasing trend in the new-build supply of owner-occupied homes puts a continuously growing stamp on the dynamics and purchase price development of the existing housing stock. This hinders the possibilities of moving on from an existing owner-occupied home, which means that the supply of existing owner-occupied homes is also stagnating.