Architecture

Due to the growing demand for mobility (as a primary need for people to get to work, to obtain personal care or to go travelling), cities continue to be faced with new urban challenges. Stations represent, along mobility networks, not only transportation nodes (transfer points) but also architectural objects which connect an area to the city’s territorial plane and which have the potential to generate new urban dynamics. In the ‘compact city’ the station is simply no longer the space to...

Conflict, when dislodged from its conventional understanding as a process and system of war and destruction exclusively, may be apprehended as an experimental method for analysis and synthesis, as a potent resource for pedagogy, for disruptive design and for the production of theory. In this sense, conflict produces more than the eradication of (the possibility of) life and its supporting structures: conflict produces transitional spaces at different scales, of differentiated material...

The research of TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (Faculteit Bouwkunde) covers the full spectrum of design, engineering, planning, and management of the built environment. Its research portfolio comprises the research that is conducted by four departments:

• Architecture
• Architectural Engineering + Technology (AE+T)
• Management in the Built Environment (MBE)
• Urbanism

The faculty’s research focusses...

Nanolimes, i.e. dispersions of lime (Ca(OH)2)nanoparticles in alcohol, have been extensively investigated over the last two decades as consolidation products for calcareous substrates. 

The use of nanolimes for consolidation of mural paintings arises from the lack of effective and compatible consolidants for this type of substrates; the use of nanolimes was later extended also to limestone and lime-based mortars, as an alternative for...

Architectural firms can be regarded as creative professional service firms. As such, architects need to navigate creative, professional and commercial goals, while simultaneously attempting to fulfil client, user and societal needs. This complex process is becoming increasingly difficult, as the historically established role of architects has become more blurred, contested and heterogeneous. While attempting to reclaim their role or to take on new roles in collaborations with other actors,...

OverHolland — Architectural studies for Dutch cities is a series published by the Department of Architecture at the Delft University of Technology. The editors plan to publish two issues a year. The field of architectural research covered by the series includes both typological and morphological urban studies and the question of architectural interventions in the context of Dutch cities.The first issue explores the problems, and reports on the ‘Transformers of the...

This edition of OverHolland is a good deal thicker than usual, as befits a celebratory issue. The editors have decided to make it a double issue, which at the same time makes clear that the OverHolland series will not end with No. 10. When the series began seven years ago, a contract was signed for the publication of ten issues. The achievement of that goal certainly warrants a celebration — but that is no reason to bring the series to an end. The editors and publishers will...

OverHolland 12/13 opens with an article by the Spanish architect Gabriel Carrascal Aguirre on ‘The space of cartography’ — the subject of his dissertation for the Villard d’Honnecourt International Doctorate in Architecture Ph. D. programme in Venice in 2011. He defends the view that cartography should never be treated as a neutral research instrument, for every map is a well-defined reading of reality and as such can form a link between research and design.

This latest issue of OverHolland takes a closer look at architectural designs, to mark two events in autumn 2013: the publication of the research results of the Renewing city renewal project, an initiative by the architecture firm De Nijl in partner­ship with Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Architecture and the KEI knowledge centre for urban renewal (now part of Platform 31); and the DOGMA 11 Projects + 1 exhibition in a temporary pavilion in the grounds of the...

This edition of OverHolland pays detailed attention to the province of Noord-Holland to the north of the River IJ and to railways. The focus is on the relationship between spatial arrangements, research and design. Reinout Rutte analyses the development of the Zaanstreek region from the fifteenth to the twenty-first centuries. He reveals the unique morphological features of the first industrial town in the Netherlands. The lack of planning and regulations led to a ‘town of...

OverHolland presents a wealth of architectonic research regarding the typo-morphological study of the city as well as the issue of architectonic interventions in Randstad cities. The first part of this series published in October 2004 explored this issue. The second part, which lies before you, begins with ‘Mapping Randstad Holland’, a study that has literally ‘mapped’ the urbanisation of the Randstad area since 1850. It is the first step in a study that provides insight into the...

OverHolland addresses the relationship and interaction between the building and the city in the context of the Dutch urban landscape. To this end, the city is understood in its material manifestation, as an artefact constructed of tangible elements such as buildings and infrastructure. In this approach it is especially the architectural conception of the city as it emerges in various designs for the city, whether implemented or not, that is the empirical object of study and...

In the fourth edition of OverHolland, the research into the architectonic makeup of the capital is extended to infrastructural projects. Just like other buildings, infrastructural works also manifest themselves expressly in the city as artefacts with an unmistakable physical and material presence. Bridges, dikes, overpasses and tunnels for cars, trains or subways contribute to the built-up identity of the city just as much as public buildings and residential areas. The projects analysed in...

This issue of OverHolland presents the results of the first part of the research project 5x5 — Projects for the Dutch City, which is being carried out at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology. With ‘Research by Design’, 5x5 intends to research the cohesion between architectonic interventions and urban transformations of the station areas in the five smaller historical cities of Randstad Holland: Delft, Dordrecht, Gouda, Haar-lem, and Leiden....

In OverHolland 6, much attention is paid to 17th-century Dutch architecture. Although this is a historical subject, the period remains crucial in order to gain a good understanding of the development of the Dutch city and its architectural structure. It is not so much the historical respect of the cultural inheritance of the Golden Age that plays a role here, but more the inevitable physical presence of the design and building production from this phase of development in the...

Before you lies the 5x5 Projects for the Dutch City publication, the result of the eponymous research project conducted at the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology. The 5x5 project aims at investigating the relationship between architectonic interventions and urban transformations in the station areas of five smaller historical cities in the Randstad, the urban agglomeration of Western Holland: Haarlem, Leiden, Gouda, Delft and Dordrecht. The starting point...

Volume 8 opens with the first section of a study of the organization of design and building practice in the cities of Holland. In this article, the second section of which will appear in the next volume of OverHolland, Gea van Essen and Merlijn Hurx identify a few basic tendencies in the development of design and building practice in the cities of Holland from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Their work fills a gap in contemporary architectural and building history;...

OverHolland 9 opens with a promising graduation project by Ilmar Hurkxkens, entitled ‘Paradise Regained. The watchman, the sleeper, the dreamer and the city’. Hurkxkens presents his project as ‘a narrative inquiry into the history and future of the dyke as architecture’. As Dutch as you can get — and yet his approach is unusual by Dutch standards. The project took shape at the graduation workshop Territory in Transit, run by two postgraduate students, Filip Geerts and Stefano...

Paper is a fascinating material that we encounter every day in different variants: tissues, paper towels, packaging material, wall paper or even fillers of doors. Despite radical changes in production technology, the material, which has been known to mankind for almost two thousand years, still has a natural composition, being made up of fibres of plant origin (particularly wood fibres). Thanks to its unique properties, relatively high compression strength and bending stiffness, low...

Nowadays, organisations must cope with the pressure of cost reduction and efficiency in order to succeed in a highly competitive business environment. However, drivers to improve social interaction and employee’s performance and as such to contribute to organisational goals and objectives make it necessary to be concerned with other performance criteria as well, such as effectiveness, flexibility, employee satisfaction, productivity and creativity. There is a growing need for performance...

The design of office buildings can substantially improve the building, social, and ecological performance of office building projects. However, existing research on improving the performance of work environments has primarily focused on identifying and evaluating methods to make work environments less bad, rather than focusing on how to develop work environments that are positively performing. Moreover, the potential of building projects to perform positively, in terms of economic, social,...

After 10 years of exploring the possibilities and ways to integrate Research-by-Design into Architecture Design Studio Teaching and PhD Theses in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urbanism at various universities in Europe and around the world, the time has come to investigate these matured/maturing research approaches in relation to existing paradigms of...

Between 1970 and 1990 the prewar districts of Dutch cities underwent an unparalleled process of renewal. What began as ‘building for the neighbourhood’ in protest against extensive demolition has now come to be known as ‘city renewal’. Large numbers of affordable dwellings and social facilities were created. However, businesses often disappeared, the quality of public space did not always improve and districts sometimes became isolated from the rest of the city. Since 1990 some of the old...

'Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Restauratie en transformatie van een nationaal monument' is het ultieme naslagwerk over de geschiedenis, restauratie en vernieuwing van het beroemdste museum van Nederland. De hele geschiedenis van Cuypers tot Cruz y Ortiz. 

Geen gebouw in Nederland heeft een zo onstuimige relatie met de Nederlandse identiteit als het Rijksmuseum. Dit boek volgt de geschiedenis van het ‘Nationale Project Rijksmuseum’. Van de totstandkoming van het gebouw onder Cuypers,...

This monumental monograph is the ultimate reference work on the history, restoration and renovation of the most famous museum in the Netherlands. Extensive research and detailed documentation show how the restoration of architect Pierre Cuypers’ nineteenth-century masterpiece was reconciled with the requirements of a leading twenty-first-century museum.

On 31 december 2015, the department store of Vroom & Dreesmann (V&D), which was founded in 1887, officially went bankrupt. This ended the rich history of a department store that had branches in many Dutch cities and towns.

This raises the question: what happens to the traditional twentieth century commercial areas in major Dutch cities in an era that everyone is shopping online? In the historic city centres of Haarlem, Leiden, Dordrecht and Amersfoort for example, many...

Building industry impacts natural cycles and has potential for optimization. While impairment on nature reached a new dimension already some three centuries ago the building industry started to realize the dependency in the second half of the 20th century. With LCA method all life cycle phases can be monitored and the environmental impact of each can be quantified. The energy consuming and emission generating components in the building context can be distinguished in the groups transport,...

With the aim to limit the number of ineffective designs, this dissertation has investigated the impact of architectural design strategies on improving the energy performance of and thermal comfort in high-rise office buildings in temperate, sub-tropical and tropical climates. As the starting-point of this research, a comparative study between twelve high-rise office buildings in three climate groups was conducted. For each climate group, three sustainable high-rises were...

This sector portrait of the design engineering sciences describes the common denominator of the various design disciplines in the Netherlands. In a future sector plan, the above investment areas will be further explored and purposefully developed.

The implementation of technological innovations aligned to societal issues encompasses a design challenge. This increasingly demands science-based design methodologies. The broad Dutch design landscape can fulfil the role of connector...

The parts of this book could be arranged with complete impunity around one of the brightest stars in the firmament of philosophy and aesthetic reflection. Moreover, that star does not merely suggest a hypothesis of thematic correlation between the individual parts, but raises the problem of their own tendency (as parts) to have always implied a recomposition. The reference is to Kant’s third Critique, where the overall view is a preliminary condition to...

How does the ecological thinking affect architects, designers and the design culture itself? The Anthropocene is a geological event, but also a political one that lies in overcoming the idea of crisis. Acknowledging this change means rethinking the very ecology of the project in environmental and atmospheric terms. The changes we face don’t depend on missing balances, but on compromises reached between conservation and exploitation. The Anthropocene...

The EAAE Annual Conference of 2019 is titled ‘The Hidden School’, aiming to discuss an architecture school’s true character, the substance and the quality of architectural education in the broadest sense, and that which is beyond the stated curricula, yet – whether concretely manifested or subliminally perceived – embodies the culture of the school.

The Hidden School can be observed through a range of tacit aspects or conspicuous specificities which make the educational path a...

Besides the efforts that are of descriptive and celebrative nature, studies related to Sri Lanka’s historical built heritage are largely to view material remains in historical, sociological, socio-historical and semiological perspectives. But there is hardly any serious attempt to view such material remains from a technical-analytical approach to understand the compositional aspects of their designs. The 5th century AC royal complex at Sigiriya is no exception in this regard.

The...

The book tells the story of the sea-land continuum based on the case of the North Sea – one of the world’s most industrialised seas, in which the Netherlands plays a central role. The space of the North Sea is almost fully planned and has been loaded with the task of increased economic production from new and traditional maritime sectors. At the same time, it has been emptied of cultural signi ficance.

Through diverse projects from academia, art, literature, and practice, from...

Preparation for fossil fuel substitution in the building sector persists as an essential subject in architectural engineering. Since the building sector still remains as one of the three major global end energy consumer — climate change is closely related to construction and design.

We have developed the archetype sun space to what it is today : a simple but effective predominant naturally ventilated sun trap and as well as living space enlargement. With the invention of industrial...

Homes are renovated a number of times during their lifespan. Although we can regard each of these renovations as new, it is more prudent to implement a future-proof solution to renovation. Current renovation practice focuses on renovating to meet current demand. Many of the renovations are still extremely labour intensive and occur on site. This results in solutions to ensure that the house once again meets the required standards in the short term. These standards will continue to change...

This study enlarges on the notion of composition in landscape architecture. It builds upon the ‘Delft method’, which elaborates composition as a methodological framework from its sister discipline architecture. At the same time takes a critical stance in respect to this framework, informed by recent epistemological developments in landscape architecture such as the site-specificity and process discourses. The notion of composition is examined from a historical and theoretical...

The City of Innovations Project ‘Walk-IN Stations’ is organized around speculating and projecting on future scenarios for the South of Rotterdam. Students are invited to reflect on the importance of transport networks within and extending from the city. In considering the way these networks have shaped the city through weaving the urbanities of the city center(s) and suburban areas and how they will further shape the future urban territories, this elective positions itself as a negotiation...