News

TU Delft has been selected as a partner of the New European Bauhaus, a think-do tank initiated by the President of the European Commission.

The air in an operating theatre is continuously refreshed with HEPA filtered air. The idea is that this prevents infections. For many years, air treatment systems have been used to purify the air in almost every operating theatre in the same way for every type of procedure. Scientists from various scientific disciplines, including Peter Luscuere of Architecture and the Built Environment, investigate in the Medical Delta Living Lab Research OR whether this can be done differently, better and more efficiently.

This summer, all BK-students are invited to join the design & built competition for ‘Europe Readr’ pavillion. The challenge is to design and produce a small ‘pavilion’ that will, enable exchange, debate, and reflection on the future of living Europe, in new and innovative ways. The winning design will be built and travel to several locations in the Netherlands.

Complex Projects students have submitted 11 different designs for sustainable, circular and modular pavilions to the design contest set out by Soestdijk Palace. The winning design will be developed, built and installed at the estate when Soestdijk Palace | Made by Holland opens.

Dora Chatzi Rodopoulou has won the Europa Nostra Award in the category Research with her research project: Control Shift: European Industrial Heritage Reuse in review. The Europa Nostra Awards is the EU prize for cultural heritage funded by the Creative Europe programme.

An international group of 39 scientists have published an article in Science arguing for more use of ventilation to combat COVID-19. However, they want to use their argument far more broadly than just the current pandemic, and to combat the spread of all respiratory infections by changing building designs. Philomena Bluyssen from TU Delft and Marcel Loomans from TU Eindhoven are two of the authors. The article was published on Thursday 13 May.

Cities must adapt to cope with climate change impacts such as higher temperatures and periods of heat stress. Trees are widely accepted as natural 'aircon' for our cities, but precise data on how much they cool - and in particular over their life cycle - is lacking. In the project i-Tree 2.0-NL, accurate metrics for urban trees in Dutch cities will be developed and translated into databases, application software and 'orgware'.

The heat from the Amsterdam canal water could be collected in the summer, stored in the subsurface, to use it in the winter. Aquathermal energy from surface water could be a feasible alternative to natural gas, since this city counts a large number of canals and open water. AMS Institute, with research fellow Maéva Dang of the faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, focuses on solving Amsterdam’s energy challenges.

The BK faculty will be represented at the 17th Venice International Architecture Exhibition with “Housing the Urban Invisibles”. A show that displays student work and educational material that critically explores alternative approaches for the design of mass housing as a key component of sustainable development.

With her thesis on investments in rental housing for middle-income households Ana Luiza Barros has won the BZK thesis prize of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK). Her thesis is about the possibilities of institutional investors, such as pension funds and insurance companies, to invest more in rental housing for the middle class in the Netherlands.