Since the economic shifts of the 1990s, New Towns have become an increasingly popular approach to urban development across the African continent. While New Towns are not a new development model, their contemporary materialisation often targets middle- and high-income buyers, leaving no space for low-income residents. Strict regulations in these exclusive developments often impede spatial appropriations by the informal sector such as fresh markets, unregulated housing, street kiosks and ‘pub...

Recently, Chinese Public Rental Housing (PRH) provision has witnessed a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’: policy making shifted from government steering to mixed forms involving government, market and civic actors to pursue effective and fair policies. In the meantime, this new-era PRH governance is credited with mixed results. However, the existing studies fail to describe the mechanisms underlying this new-era governance of PRH with the rising involvement of market actors and...

This dissertation focuses on architectural education and practice as a collective experience, examining the particular case of the PUCV School of Architecture and Design and Ciudad Abierta in Chile. The study asks whether the culture of collectivity that characterises the school has served as a supporting structure for its artistic and pedagogical project and if so, which elements configure the collective ways of studying and practising at this school. The dissertation delves into these quest...

"Nikos Salingaros is a mathematician who's also a brilliant thinker about architecture and urbanism. 'Solid' doesn't begin to hint at his virtues and talents, but isn't it nice when you encounter 'solid' in the world of the arts? Salingaros has worked closely with Christopher Alexander, and has become a major architecture theorist in his own right." -- Ray Sawhill.

"This is an interesting compilation of some of the important roots and evolutions of modernism and its latest development, the De...

Footprint #29 aims at exploring the architectural relations to populism intended as the political approach that strives to appeal to the “common” public. It examines architecture’s intersection with media, politics and aesthetics. From Nazi Germany to Trump’s presidency the use of architecture and its relationship with ideologies is reflected upon, as well as how architectural aspirations are reshaped in the light of different populist ramifications. This issue is an open inquiry into...

Difficult problems do not always require far-fetched solutions, but in order to arrive at the solution a change of perspective may be in order. The City as a System advocates such a change of perspective in the study of the urban environment. It posits that designers who wish to truly improve the functioning of the city and solve tricky urban problems cannot afford to only focus on the spatial manifestation of the city, but should also conduct thorough research into the underlying system, int...

The Thinking Foot is a study of history and associations. In method and form it claims to be no more (nor less) than an illustrated essay on the architectural expression of surface. It concentrates on the Earth on which we walk: not the Earth in depth (the underground world) nor the geological Earth, but simply the Earth as visible crust, as surface. The Thinking Foot is indeed about surface and in particular about how this surface was made into a ‘civilized’ theatre of communal existence...