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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.

Today, 29 October 2021, Delft University Fund announced the eight TU Delft Best Graduates 2021. Each year, TU Delft’s eight faculties nominate their Best Graduate. On 11 November, during the TU Delft Best Graduate Award Ceremony 2021, one of these eight nominees will receive the prestigious title TU Delft Best Graduate 2021.

Seasoned lecturer Elise van Dooren has taught hundreds of engineering students the tricks of the trade. The educational aspects of her work have always fascinated her. So much so that ten years ago she decided to delve more deeply into a topic that had been occupying her thoughts for a long time: how can aspiring designers gain a better understanding of what designing in itself entails?

Together! is an itinerant exhibition of the German Vitra Design museum. The exhibition responds to challenges in contemporary architecture by focussing on collectivity and demand-oriented development, and shows examples of various new urban living forms from all over the world.

Many Dutch construction companies and clients have started working with circular construction. But what exactly this form of building means is not yet clear. That is why the ‘Cirkelstad’ (Circle City) platform is working on a covenant, a clear agreement on how circular construction projects should be achieved.

The large-scale urban renewal that China has been undergoing in recent decades is accompanied by the wholesale demolition of old buildings. According to PhD researcher Taozhi Zhuang, this is not always necessary. It is high time for clearer guidelines and a more efficient decision-making process.

On 1 October the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment welcomes Georg Vrachliotis as a new professor of the new Chair Theory of Architecture and Digital Culture.

The BK MOOC Zero-Energy Design: an approach to make your building sustainable, led by Professor. Andy van de Dobbelsteen, has been selected from all the TU Delft MOOCs and is nominated for the yearly edX prize for ‘Exceptional Contributions in Online Teaching and Learning’.

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.