How can the public library fulfil its classic social mission in our individualized and sometimes fragmented society? And how does such a library fit into the urban public space, in which commerce and consumption seem to reign supreme? This requires innovative architecture, the strength of imagination and the willingness to think countercyclically.

In Imagination and Participation librarians Rob Bruijnzeels and Joyce Sternheim examine the most important transitions in public library work. They...

A map is a visual story of the world. It feeds our imagination and shapes our view of the world. A standard atlas, however, predominantly tells only one story, that of the nation-state. It depicts a world in which people are uniformly packed into national containers, enclosed by borders, and in which migration is often represented as threatening invasion arrows.

Free the Map goes beyond this narrow, state-centric cartography. The book argues for a new cartographic story: a Hermes – the gran...

Over the years, the consumption of materials for construction exceeded more than half of the total materials consumed in the Netherlands, and construction waste exceeded the volume of solid waste produced by households. Since the introduction of the "Ladder van Lansink" (in the 1970’s) and the further development of the European Waste Framework Directives followed by the Circular Economy concept, waste prevention has been considered a priority measure. Whereas the goals to improve waste man...

This research aimed at understanding how occupants use energy in their homes to make themselves feel more comfortable. This was done to propose customized environmental characteristics that could improve the occupants’ comfort while reducing energy consumption. To conceptualize such bespoke environmental features, occupant archetypes were produced based on the occupants’ intentions and motivations behind comfort behaviours.

A mixed-methods human-centered design approach was developed for ...

This research introduces the concept of visibility as a useful tool to assess the democratic features of public spaces. It understands democratic public spaces as open spaces, which are accessible to all and allow different cultural expressions for individuals and groups. The concept of visibility refers to the visual perception of the observable features of distinctive urban groups in public space, which give evidence of how these groups engage with, shape, and construct public space. The re...

This thesis proposes a framework to address the design process in design education. Building upon the assumption that teachers, being professional designers, do not discuss the design process in the architectural design studio and do not have a vocabulary to do so, five generic elements or anchor points are defined which represent the basic design skills. The validity of the framework and the assumption is tested respectively in interviews with a variety of designers and in observations of di...

The housing stock in Vietnam has boomed in the last few decades, especially in urbanised areas. However, the increasing number of housing units did not go along with housing quality, a healthy living environment or a sustainable building stock. Recent legislation only applies to public buildings but not the private housing sector, which accounts for the majority of the building stock. Therefore, this research aimed to contribute to a more sustainable building stock in Vietnam by improving the...

Numerous actors have been involved in the planning of the port and city of Naples. National and local authorities—namely central government, the Region, the Municipality of Naples, and the Port Authority—act upon the port at different scales, according to diverging interest and by using different planning tools. Each entity has different spatial claims and contrastive views on what port city integration can be. Their diverse goals have led port and city to develop into separate entities, ...