Campus Utopias: A visual re-reading

“Campus Utopias: A Visual Re-reading” describes a multidisciplinary graduate course conducted collaboratively by TU Delft and METU Ankara’s Architecture Departments in 2022. The research course focused on the key urban and architectural features of selected campus projects, examining how the modernist architects engaged in these designs were able to use them as a basis for the experimentation of new educational-residential models for living.This research paper explores the formal aspects of these campuses and their architectural significance. It recognizes the diverse geographies where the modern architectural movement took root and the active role played by political, economic, and cultural agents in shaping these projects. Working with local agents and situating modern architecture within its surrounding infrastructure and landscape helped master architects to integrate local architectural values and new building technologies.The article presents three case studies: Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, the University of Baghdad in Iraq, and the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. These campuses were designed and built after World War II, representing the aspirations of newly installed governments. The article highlights the architectural approaches that incorporated environmental considerations and cultural inspirations and the socio-economic considerations in each project.The research methodology involves a comparative analysis of the campuses, focusing on their formal qualities and in-between spaces. The students involved in the graduate research course utilized various media and techniques of representation, including 3D digital drawings, models, collages, and physical reliefs. The work results were presented in the form of an exhibition titled “Campus Utopias” at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment in April 2022. The student projects in this photo essay show the diversity of scale and make visible the similarities and differences in the overall campus design approaches of the three projects. The major focus is on the in-between spaces and the outcomes of the multidisciplinary work of architects, engineers, landscape architects, and artists

Transit Stations: Sub-centers in Rotterdam Zuid

The City of Innovations Project ‘Walk-IN Stations’ is organized around speculating and projecting on future scenarios for the South of Rotterdam. Students are invited to reflect on the importance of transport networks within and extending from the city. In considering the way these networks have shaped the city through weaving the urbanities of the city center(s) and suburban areas and how they will further shape the future urban territories, this elective positions itself as a negotiation between architecture, network infrastructure, public realm, policy & governance and the territory. Stations are architectural objects which connect an area to the city’s territorial plane and have the potential to generate new urban dynamics. In the compact city the station no longer is simply the space to access mobility networks, in this informed by their dry pragmatism, but becomes an urban place of sociality and encounter - an extended public space beyond mobility itself. Furthermore, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management has developed a vision on the future of Public Transport (towards 2040)1 based on new mobilities and Door-to-Door solutions. The vision was followed by the “Handelingsperspectief”, intended as an instrument to jointly map the current and future needs of PT nodes and their surroundings2. The stations of the future become hubs3, where you can transfer from one mode of transport to another. Hubs are also destinations in themselves, places to meet up, to work, to exercise, to eat. How are new mobility solutions integrated in the current system and take shape at public transport nodes, in the context of low car inner-cities (Autoluw) like in Rotterdam? Which relationships and cross-fertilizations can be significant for the design of the future urban stations in Rotterdam? How should these stations be developed in order to act as public places for collective action? How could one create an optimal mobility chain by decreasing transition friction, increasing quality of the space at station locations? This elective will attempt to answer those questions through research-by-design process, conducted by the students and tutors of Complex Projects in close collaboration with the City of Rotterdam, and enjoys the contribution of the University of Gustave Eiffel, Delta Metropool Association, De Zwarte Hond and PosadMaxwan experts on station developments. The elective course City of Innovations is scheduled in Q3, between MSc1 design studio and MSc2 research and design studio. It attracts students from different tracks, from architecture and landscape architecture to urban planning, urbanism and management. City of Innovations guides research-by-design projects focusing on mobility and public space challenges. Teachers and students work together exploring the increasingly complex world that demands increasingly complex projects, in design and also in the way of designing. The studio is organized with the method of charrette (period of intense design activity and short-term design project, usually developed in teams), focusing on 3 stations with different characters in Rotterdam Zuid. Research is done per station, in groups of 12 students; followed by a “stakeholder workshop”, students conclude the research result into spatial criteria and quality requirements. Departing from different priorities, the students split into smaller groups to develop different approaches for a more sustainable and inclusive station developed within the implementation of the new mobility method

Unfolding Quebradas: Informality as a Method

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Methods and Analysis | Positions in Practic

Living Stations: The Design of Metro Stations in the (east flank) metropolitan areas of Rotterdam

Due to the growing demand for mobility (as a primary need for people to get to work, to obtain personal care or to go travelling), cities continue to be faced with new urban challenges. Stations represent, along mobility networks, not only transportation nodes (transfer points) but also architectural objects which connect an area to the city’s territorial plane and which have the potential to generate new urban dynamics. In the ‘compact city’ the station is simply no longer the space to access mobility networks, as informed by their dry pragmatism, but becomes an urban place of sociality and encounter - an extended public space beyond mobility itself. Which relationships and cross-fertilizations can be significant for the design of the future living stations in the Municipality of Rotterdam? How ought these stations to be conceived in order to act as public places for collective action? Which (archetypical) devices can be designed to give a shape to the ambitions for these stations? The station as a public space and catalyzer for urban interventions in the metropolitan area of Rotterdam is the focus of the research initiative presented in this publication. City of Innovations Project – Living Stations is organized around speculating and forecasting on future scenarios for the city of Rotterdam. ‘What is the future of Rotterdam with the arrival of a new metro circle line system?’ In the past fifty years, every decade of Rotterdam urban planning has seen its complementary metro strategy, with profound connections with the spatial planning and architectural themes. Considering the urban trends of densification and the new move to the city, a new complementary strategy is required. The plans to realize 50.000 new homes between the city center and the suburban residential districts in the next 20 years go together with the development of a new metro circle line consisting of 16 new stations; 6 of which will connect the new metro line to the existing network. Students of the elective City of Innovations Project (AR0109) have been asked to develop ambitious but plausible urban and architectural proposals for selected locations under the guidance of tutors from the Municipality of Rotterdam and Complex Projects. The Grand Paris Express metro project in France has inspired the course’s approach. Following the critical essays on the strategic role of the infrastructural project for city development interventions, the ‘10 Visions X 5 Locations’ chapter is a systematization of the work of 35 master’s students with input from designers of the City of Rotterdam and experts and academic from the University of Gustave Eiffel in Paris. The research-through-design process conducted in the City of Innovations project - Living Stations consists of documenting and analyzing the present urban conditions of selected station locations in the City of Rotterdam and proposing design solutions and visualizations of the predicted development of these locations

The Commons of Valparaíso: Constructing the Commons in the Latin American Metropolis

Positions in Practice : Constructing the Commons in the Latin American Metropolis, Graduation Studio (Msc 3 | Msc 4), Valparaíso, Chile, Fall 2017 - Spring 2018.The MSc3/MSc4 Graduation Studio “Positions in Practice” of the Department of Architecture TU Delft (fall, 2017) focused on the urban and architectural context of Valparaíso, as a laboratory for the definition of disciplinary positions and the performance of these positions in practice.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Methods and Analysis | Positions in Practic