The ne-xt facades conference is the official International Mid-term Conference of the European COST Action TU1403 ‘Adaptive Facades Network’, an international scientific cooperation with the aim to harmonise, share and disseminate technological knowledge on adaptive facades on the European level. During the mid-term conference first results are presented to stakeholders from industry and design and to the public. The goal is to share knowledge and discuss novel facade concepts, effective ...

Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) are seen as innovations that can manage complexities in construction by focusing on integrating processes and products respectively. Whereas these two innovations have been considered compatible, their practical combination has been mainly anecdotal. The Netherlands was the locale of this study, where both SCM and BIM have been popular approaches. The research objective is to explore their real-world combination and propos...

While the consideration of functional and technical criteria, as well as a sense of coherence are basic requirements for solving a design problem; it is the ability to induce an intended quality of aesthetic experience that is the hallmark of design expertise. Expert designers possess a highly developed sense of design, or what in this research is called aesthesis. Reflection on 25 years teaching design in the USA, Hungary, and China led to the observation that most successful design students...

This dissertation reports a PhD research on mathematical-computational models, methods, and techniques for analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of spatial configurations in architecture and urban design. Spatial configuration is a technical term that refers to the particular way in which a set of spaces are connected to one another as a network. Spatial configuration affects safety, security, and efficiency of functioning of complex buildings by facilitating certain patterns of movement and/or...

Het doel van het Haagse Hitte-project is het beter begrijpen van stedelijke warmte in Den Haag om vandaaruit een verband te leggen met de kenmerken van de fysieke ruimte van de stad en de gezondheid van de Haagse bevolking, met als resultaat aanbevelingen voor acties. Die inzichten moeten de stad Den Haag en haar inwoners bewuster én weerbaarder maken ten aanzien van het Haagse warmte-eiland effect, hier ook wel Haagse hitte genoemd.

The traditional thematic realms of urban design, such as liveability, social interaction, and quality of urban life, considered to be closely related to urban form and specifically to public space, have long since been recognised as important, and have given the discipline a certain identity. The book Realms of Urban Design: Mapping Sustainability is certainly rooted in this fundamental urban design thinking, but its main contribution belongs to the second part of the book’s title – disco...

The purpose of this book is to present ongoing research from the universities involved in the project Creating the Network of Knowledge Labs for Sustainable and Resilient Environments (KLABS). The papers published in this book show that the recent and current research in those institutions focuses on the directions of development of IUP, the processes that support sustainable use of natural resources and their application in the Western Balkan and some other European countries. Each essay aim...

The Parana River is the third largest river in the American continent, after the Mississippi and the Amazon. Instead of flowing directly to the sea, it flows to the Rio de la Plata (located between Argentina and Uruguay) through a complex delta system.

Although this delta can be considered an extreme and particular case, many of the conflicts that can be found in this area replicate in other deltas around the world. Urbanizing deltas are subjected to pressures related to urban growth and clim...

The Dutch lowlands is an artificial landscape, created as a result of the wish to regulate the water that dominated the topography in the Delta. This ‘confined’ lowland water, the polder-boezem system12, features an enormously diverse range of water structures and forms, which largely dictates the spatial planning of the lower Netherlands.

This dissertation concerns the polder-boezem system, a water system that was created by trial-anderror, has been adapted continually and now needs to b...

The aim of this thesis is to add knowledge to the role and impact of policy instruments in meeting energy performance ambition in the existing owner occupied housing stock. The focus was instruments available in the Netherlands in 2011 and 2012. These instruments represented the ‘on the ground’ efforts to meet climate change targets and many continue to do so today in the same or slightly altered forms. At international level there is a recognized need to keep global temperatures within t...