News

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.

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.