Can the organisation of public space be handed over to private parties? Yes, according to Els Leclercq's conclusion in her doctoral research, but it has serious consequences in terms of what is and is not permitted in streets, squares, and parks. She calls for clear government regulation.In the United States, it is commonplace for commercial parties to take over public space, but, in Europe, the idea is met with a feeling of distrust. Great Britain is somewhere in between. "Private parties he...

The aim of the research presented in this thesis is to design the characteristics of an Adaptive Thermal Comfort System for Dwellings to achieve a significantly better energy performance whilst not compromising the thermal comfort perception of the occupants. An Adaptive Thermal Comfort System is defined as the whole of passive and active comfort components of the dwelling that dynamically adapts its settings to varying user comfort demands and weather conditions (seasonal, diurnal and hourly...

Central to this dissertation are client driven housing management from housing associations in The Netherlands and the empowerment effects this management has on its tenants. The central issue includes what client driven housing management is (definition), in which ways this can be devised, what the envisioned effects are and which effects this management successfully accomplishes. These are answered using seven sub-questions. The focal point of this research shifts from an exploration of all...

There is a growing public expectation that universities should start focusing on delivering sustainability. The topic of sustainability in higher education has gathered a significant amount of interest from students, academics, governments and international organizations.

With a plethora of declarations, initiatives, marketing and assessments, there is a need to assess what the stakeholders want in order to make decisions regarding an institutions sustainability. Ultimately, students are the ...

The challenges to which contemporary building design needs to respond grow steadily. They originate from the influence of changing environmental conditions on buildings, as well as from the need to reduce the impact of buildings on the environment. The increasing complexity requires the continual revision of design principles and their harmonisation with current scientific findings, technological development, and environmental, social, and economic factors. It is precisely these issues that f...

Leftover spaces are neglected and obsolete spaces within the city. As they are temporarily unoccupied by defined urban functions, leftover spaces provide unique “interstitial conditions” that open for wild species as well as different informal social activities, offering crucial complements to the formal and defined urban spaces. In this context, the design of leftover spaces poses a paradox between the practice of design that projects a set of definitions onto the site, and the indeter...

Shell structures carry loads with their thin yet curved shapes. Being thin means shells require little material, which is desirable for minimizing embodied carbon footprints. However, the feature of being curved implies shells require immense effort to design and fabricate. To address the challenges, this dissertation consists of three parts: developing a design algorithm based on radial basis functions (RBFs), inventing a fabrication technique based on reconfigurable mechanisms, and producin...

Indoor navigation applications are actively investigated and developed due to their capacity to provide users with essential information in the modern extensive building complexes. Therefore, many researchers have developed a range of indoor navigation applications, which have focused on aspects such as localization, indoor route computation, and human spatial cognition. Unfortunately, current indoor navigation systems do not consider the user's access rights when it comes to navigating safel...

In climate-responsive design the building becomes an intermediary in its own energy housekeeping, forming a link between the harvest of climate resources and low energy provision of comfort. Essential here is the employment of climate-responsive building elements, defined as structural and architectural elements in which the energy infrastructure is far-reaching integrated. This thesis presents the results of research conducted on what knowledge is needed in the early stages of the design pro...