At the main point of intersection between the railway and the city, stations are key elements in the organization of the intermodal transport as well as catalysts of urban developments in metropolises, medium and small cities. The focus of this publication is to explore the enrichment of a renewed approach of railway stations as intermodal nodes, therefore acting as breeding grounds for both urban and social developments.

In this publication, invited experts from practice and knowledge instit...

Public libraries want to contribute to an inclusive and innovative society and aim to enable their patrons to acquire the necessary 21st century skills. Dutch public libraries are therefore gradually adding more and more activities to their curriculum, teaching these different types of skills, such as ‘invention literacy’.

They also often provide a ‘performative space’ (i.e. a makerspace) for their patrons. This means library spaces are no longer dominated by books, but rather reflect...

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 ...

Anchored by Hüppauf and Umbach’s notion of Vernacular Modernism and focusing on architecture and urbanism during Franco’s dictatorship from 1939 to 1975, this thesis challenges the hegemonic and Northern-oriented narrative of urban modernity. It develops arguments about the reciprocal influences between the urban and the rural that characterize Spanish modernity, and analyzes the intense architectural and urban debates that resulted from the crisis of 1898, as they focused on the importa...

In June 2018, professionals and scholars, from various fields dealing with public open spaces, put politics up for discussion. In the conference series x–LArch at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, BOKU/Vienna, issues are raised that are relevant for the profession of landscape architecture and have a direct impact on our environment, be it urban or rural. In the 2018 conference entitled ‘Park Politics’, practitioners and academics were invited to present findings an...

This new book on the Rietveld Schröder House (by Gerrit Th. Rietveld, 1924) sheds light on the thorough restorations of its exterior (1970s) and interior (1980s), and the principles for the furnishing when it opened as a museum house for the public, in 1987.

Since the restorations, carried out by architect Bertus Mulder (b. 1929), the house is once more a shining manifesto of De Stijl and modernist living. Few realize that this is one of the first examples of a restored modern heritage build...

Apparatus and apparatisation, the focus of the Cyber-Physical Architecture (CpA) issue #2 of SPOOL, refer to an assemblage of various components, tools, and instruments that in combination produce an exponential surplus beyond the linear sum of parts.

The CpA #2 samples various interests afforded by the apparatus and apparatisation in and of architecture and how they open up new potentials and opportunities. The first article, Building as Apparatus? (by Leach) addresses the theme of “buildi...

Over the last decades, the perception of glass in the engineering world has changed from that of a brittle, fragile material to a reliable structural component of high compressive load-bearing capacity. Although the structural applications of glass in architecture are continuously increasing, they are dominated by a considerable geometrical limitation: the 2-dimensionality imposed by the prevailing float glass industry. Cast glass can overcome this limitation: solid 3-dimensional glass compon...