Symbiotic Thames: Rethinking the urban riparian condition and meaning through architecture towards a more symbiotic relationship between the urban river and the city

Water is the elixir of life for London, the river Thames is the heart powering its growth. Although it has created the existence of London, it has mainly been the city that influenced the river in route, form and function aligning with their needs. There always has been a changing tension between city and river, a battle between the forces of nature and the power of the anthropogenic. The combined impact of rapid urbanization and climate change has resulted in numerous shortcomings in the control-focused approach to urban river engineering and planning. Repeated flooding, environmental deterioration, biodiversity loss, declining livability, and increased environmental stress are all indicators of the diminished harmony between rivers and cities. These unintended side effects are a product of neglect, denial, and arrogance of not recognizing the river and its ecology. Therefore, there is an urgent need to rethink the Thames waterfront towards a justification for its existence and help regenerate both the river and the urban collective towards a coexisting future. This thesis explores the changing meaning of water and the riverfront in London today, accompanied by an overview and understanding of the various waterfront conditions along the Thames. Based upon that knowledge a strategy was made to (re-) connect humans and rivers through the use of architecture as a riparian mediator. The combination of the “third generation city” theory by Marco Casagrande and the “oligopticon” theory by Bruno Latour provided a powerful framework for developing an architectural typology that focuses on connecting humans and the non-human, while simultaneously regenerating the ecosystem. As the architecture had to be further defined the strategy continued upon the idea of negotiating boundaries. Not only between humans and non-humans, as already established, but also between form and fluidity, between architecture and landscape, and between program and regeneration for humans and non-humans. This not only strengthens the concept of architecture as a mediator but also takes on the role of being an interdependent system. Therewith it becomes a much-needed and long-lasting protagonist in the re-establishment of the relationship between the water and the city. That has resulted in the architectural design of the five river rooms along the Thames.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Architectural Design Crossover

Cytofast: A workflow for visual and quantitative analysis of flow and mass cytometry data to discover immune signatures and correlations

Multi-parametric flow and mass cytometry allows exceptional high-resolution exploration of the cellular composition of the immune system. A large panel of computational tools have been developed to analyze the high-dimensional landscape of the data generated. Analysis frameworks such as FlowSOM or Cytosplore incorporate clustering and dimensionality reduction techniques and include algorithms allowing visualization of multi-parametric cytometric analysis. To additionally provide means to quantify specific cell clusters and correlations between samples, we developed an R-package, called cytofast, for further downstream analysis. Specifically, cytofast enables the visualization and quantification of cell clusters for an efficient discovery of cell populations associated with diseases or physiology. We used cytofast on mass and flow cytometry datasets based on the modulation of the immune system upon immunotherapy. With cytofast, we rapidly generated visual representations of group-related immune cell clusters and showed correlations with the immune system composition. We discovered macrophage subsets that significantly decrease upon cancer immunotherapy and distinct prime-boost effects of prophylactic vaccines on the myeloid compartment. Cytofast is a time-efficient tool for comprehensive cytometric analysis to reveal immune signatures and correlations. Cytofast is available at Bioconductor.Computer Graphics and Visualisatio

Numerical modelling of erosion rates, life span and maintenance volumes of mega nourishments

Mega-nourishments, aiming at providing long-term coastal safety, nature qualities and recreational space, have been applied recently at the Holland coast and are considered at various other places in the world. Methods to quickly evaluate the potential and lifetime of these coastal mega nourishments are therefore very much desired, which is the main objective of this research. Two types of mega nourishments can be distinguished: feeder-type mega nourishments may erode freely to feed adjacent coasts for a more natural, dynamic dune growth while permanent mega-nourishments are designed to preserve safety levels and need to maintain their size and shape and thus needs to be nourished themselves. The design and impact assessment studies for both types of mega nourishments require detailed morphological studies to determine the morphological evolution. In this paper 2DH (Delft3D) and 1D (UNIBEST-CL+ and LONGMOR) numerical models were calibrated using data of the Sand Motor mega-nourishment and were then applied to model a series of mega-nourishments with various width over length ratios and volumes in order to derive relations and design graphs for erosion rates, life span and maintenance volumes. These relations and design graphs can be used in project initiation phases and feasibility studies. The magnitude of the modelled wave-driven longshore sediment transport rates in 1D coastline models depend on the representation of wave refraction on the lower shoreface, since a distinction should be made between the non-rotating lower shoreface and active surfzone. It was shown that the life time of nourishments is mainly determined by the dimensions of the nourishment and incoming wave energy.Coastal Engineerin