Chepos 65

CHEPOS built environment magazine

AQUATECTURE 65 CORAL REEFS | ZAHA HADID | MAN-MADE ISLANDS

FEB. 2020

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Colophon CHEOPS, Study Association of the Built Environment: Eindhoven University of Technology • Groene loper 6 Vertigo 1.15 • Mailbox 513 • 5600 MB Eindhoven • T 040-2473140 • info@cheops.cc • www.cheops.cc Chepos editorial board: Karim Jaspers (chairman and editor-in-chief), Tessa van Amelsvoort (final editor), Joep Dirx (board responsible), Sacha de Bruin, Henryk Gujda, Quirine Heijnen, Karim Jaspers, Aron den Otter, Jasper Poel, Ipek Topalkara, Teun van Warmerdam, Lianne Willikers Chepos is a publication of CHEOPS, Study

Association of the Built Environment. Content may be used for research and study purposes, if credited properly. Exceptions include copyrighted imagery; these may not be reproduced or published without specific consent by the original author.

Collaborations: Nynke Hofstra, Chris Waanders, Jacob Voorthuis, Study association Stylos Acknowledgements: Anneke Reuver (Huis van Verhalen) Images: Cover: design by Teun van Warmerdam, Sacha de Bruin and Karim Jaspers • Editorial: design

by Karim Jaspers, photo background: pxhere.com • NL News: Source: Didde, R. 2020. “Reportage

Dijkinnovatie”. volkskrant.nl Image: Monterey Bay Aquarium (photo: Rhinopias) • NL News: Source: Musch, S. 2019. “LocHal in Tilburg wint prijs World Building of the Year. nrc.nl Image: LocHal Tilburg (photo by Hein, M.) • NL News: Sources: Marije de Leeuw. Aalst-Waalre krijgt de eerste slimme wijk voor ouderen. 18-2-20. Cobouw.nl Image: https://pixnio.com/nl/mensen/opa-oma-vrouwkind-mensen• File pages 16-17: Watersnoodramp 1953, beeldbank.rws.nl • • Agenda: Den Haag skyline, wikimedia.org • Agenda: Vienna, tiqets.com Offset: Drukkerij Snep BV, Eindhoven, circulation: 1200

Chepos, built environment magazine: ISSN: 1873-183X • chepos@cheops.cc www.chepos.nl • www.instagram.com/chepos_ magazine• www.issuu.com/chepos_cheops Advertisements & exploitation: Joep Dirx: voorzitter@cheops.cc Co-Main sponsor Chepos: CarrièreTools, BAM Want to be an editor? Want to share your opinion?

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is only their second magazine, I am proud of what we have achieved together.

CHEPOS built environment magazine

Behind every edition of Chepos is a whole story. Some evoke more positive feelings than others. Sometimes the cover is not printed as it should be. Other times there are still four articles to be made on the final editing day.

And during the process of some editions, the theme is still unknown after a few weeks. This time, however, everything went very fluently.

We all agreed with the theme of this edition after only one quick meeting. The topics of all articles came immediately afterwards. And the corresponding lay-outs were thought of quickly as well. Even though most of the Chepos Committee is relatively new and this

Coincidentally, the fluid workflow of this edition comes back in the new CORE-theme of Aquatecture. This edition of Chepos focuses on the relationship with water and the built environment. Water has been crucial to humans and therefore to the built environment. Meandering rivers cut right through city centers for a reason: so humans can be close to water. It has been key in survival to be in proximity to this important source of nutrition. Nowadays, however, this has become less critical as the possibilities of transport have improved enormously. In what way do we need water in the current built environment? Or is fear of the rising sea levels the only thing that has remained?

Water and architecture also form an interesting conceptual combination. Water itself is fluid, free and formless whereas buildings are rigid, rough and robust. However, their characteristics can be interchanged. Waves can be powerful and peristant, while architecture can be smooth and serene.

into each other and fluctuate over time. The classification of them is not as defined as it frequently seems.

This contrast is further elaborated upon in the many articles that relate to water in some way. How should we deal with the rising sea level that creates major threats to cities all around the world? Why are we developing our own islands even though there is enough space on land? What can we learn from coral reefs when designing urban landscapes?

Besides Aquatecture there are articles that vary between the influence of the aging population, the legacy of Zaha Hadid or the newly opened Groninger Forum.

This edition of Chepos has a wide variance of articles that each deal with the contrast of fluid and rigid in their own way. I hope the positive story that is behind this Chepos will be visible in this 65th edition.

Have a good read!

Karim Jaspers Editor-in-Chief

Architectural styles are neither as solid as their matching buildings. They come and go, flow

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NL NEWS 4 CHEPOST 6

Building under pressure GRONINGER FORUM 8 SUSTAINABLE AESTHETICS 10 AN AGING SOCIETY 12 EDITOURS 14 THE 10 MOST INFLUENTIAL BUILDINGS OF THE DECADE 16 OFFSHORE STRUCTURES ARCHITECTURE IS LIKE WATER...

RISING SEA LEVELS AND CHANGING URBAN STRUCTURES THE DELTAWORKS MAN-MADE ISLANDS WATER SYSTEMS AND IMPENDING WATER CRISIS WHAT CAN CITIES LEARN FROM CORAL REEFS?

20 22 24 26 28 30 32

A CRISIS AS THE SOLUTION 34 ZAHA HADID 36 FAILURE WORTH DYING FOR 38 DEALING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE: 40

A case study in urban water management AIR INFRASTRUCTURE 42 PANTHEON 46

Verbeelding voor Altijd AGENDA 48

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IND EX 3

Glass dyke Maas LocHal Tilburg Elderly

Glass dyke Maas What do you do when dyke has to be increased in height, which will take away the view from a village over a river? Strukton and Van den Herik have the solution: you put windows in the dyke. The glazing for this project has been tested in the world’s largest wave generator, found in Delft at Deltares. They loaded the glazing with water pressure, but also tested impact-resistance by bumping trees into the six centimeter thick glazing. Lasers and sensors check the behavior of the structure during loading. The costs for a dyke with windows is expected to be twice the amount of standard dykes, though this has yet to be proven. Critics have their doubts about the hunterproofness of the dykes. Though one could only damage the first 8 millimeters using an axe, it will lead to loss of view through the window and therefor possibly a replacement. If the tests succeed, the regional water authorities want to apply the glazed dykes in more places where dykes block views.

Feyenoord stadium

LocHal Tilburg At the World Architecture Festival and Awards in Amsterdam, the LocHal in Tilburg is named 2019 building of the year. The LocHal (short for Locomotive Hall) is a former production and maintenance hall, completely remodeled into a centre for art, culture, literature and meeting.

The main purpose of the LocHal is the library that is relocated into the largest hall of the Tilburg station area. Thanks to the box-in-box principle, the renovation has taken place without removing any old ducts, cranes or even flaked paint. It was not the first prize the architects won with the design of the LocHal. They already won the public vote for best building, the international Plan award and the Dutch Design Award in the ‘Habitat’ category. The juries often prize the LocHal for its “openness to the public of every layer in society and the way they revitalized a building that was proposed to be demolished.

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Elderly

Aalst-Waalre has an scoop that is quite unusual for a town that size; together with the TU/e they will develop the first smart neighbourhood specially focussed on letting (the increasing) elderly part of our society living independent. The initiative for this noble goal is taken by Masi Mohammadi, professor at the built environment of the TU/e, and housing cooperation Wooninc. There are already tools designed for achieving this goal, but in this neighbourhood the elderly support will not stop at the front door. The public space is specifically designs for elderly; think about flat surfaces and low angle ramps, lots of greenery, arrows on the road and art. This is however not why this neighbourhood is special; the neighbourhood will also be ‘smart’. This means that the built environment around the elderly would monitor them and send help only when needed. This is however a very complex goal to archive as it is in direct contrast with the privacy of the elderly.

A lot of research has yet to be done, but this very noble intention might be the start for a radically view on elderly care.

Feyenoord stadium The plans for the new Feyenoord stadium have already been approved in 2016. However there is still a lot of consternation around the project. Namely, different stakeholders are still considering their financial contribution to the plan, as the final price is still only an estimate. As the whistle has not yet been blown for the construction, there are talks about reshaping the project to be cheaper and more efficient. The steel roof is apparently too expensive, and there might be a lot more concrete coming into play with foundations. Despite not reaching a financial close, which is normal in projects of this scale as by that time the project is already executed, it is hard to imagine how many times the construction schedule is going to be shifted. The new start of the construction is estimated to be in March 2022 and the building is to be opened in 2025.

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ChePOST NYNKE HOFSTRA 2ND YEAR CADET MILITARY SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGY 20 YEARS OLD

Building Under Pressure Already the 65th edition of the CHEOPS magazine, which means a new magazine has appeared for 64 times with interesting information for built environment students!

This edition I want to take you with me in a chapter of my life which actually started after a study at the department of the Built Environment (a study which I not even completed?!) and has nothing to do with architecture, structures or building physics…

Starting from the beginning: September 9th 2003, I turned 4 years old that day. All my friends (including me) were dressed up like little Disney princesses before we went to the local snackbar. Our transport? A big, green, military jeep my dad borrowed to take us there. It is kind of funny to imagine of all those little girls in princess dresses stepping out of that huge jeep. After my birthday, this event kept sticking in my head, and it was the first time I really became curious about this exciting ‘green world’.

When I was 15 years old, I started to do some research by myself to find out what the world behind ‘driving in a jeep’ and ‘wearing a military uniform’ actually meant. After visiting a couple of open days, speaking with soldiers and gathering information I decided I wanted to join the army. I had no idea at which unit I wanted to serve, but I just wanted a job which was spectacular, where I could see and learn a lot about the world including its cultures and moreover where I would make friends for life.

I signed up for the artillery because that was

the only available function at that time. I got an invitation to take several tests. At first, I did not pass all tests. Conform standard procedure, I had to wait one year before I could retake the test.

Since I was also fascinated by architecture and construction, I decided to start studying Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences at TU/e and I would retake the test one year later. If I passed the test, I would swap models for uniforms, otherwise I would’ve kept studying, probably Structural Design. All in all, it was an eventful year where I met a lot of new friends, lived on my own for the first time and joined the student rowing association Thêta. During this year I grew in several qualities, some of which I might use during the military training a year later. This study gave me a whole new perspective on construction, so I decided to do some more research on the variety of functions in the army. The second time I applied for the combat engineers instead.

A combat engineer is someone who performs a variety of (re)construction and demolition tasks under combat conditions. For example, the combat engineers assisted in the Bahama’s in September 2019. They were coincidentally on exercise along the Caribbean Coast to practice giving emergency aid, when the hurricane Dorian made landfall on the Abaco Islands.

“We could not close our eyes and stick to the planned exercise”, commander Van de Sande

said. When the official request for help came from the government of the Bahamas, they immediately went to work. The hurricane had wiped out a bridge, cutting off thousands of people on the northern part of the island from the rest of the island. Ships were barely able to reach the island shore because of the strong current. There were only 12 military engineers on site so they collaborated with the local population. With the engineers’ knowledge and trucks from the locals they got to work. In my opinion, these kind of construction tasks under challenging conditions are part of the most fascinating job in combat.

May 2018, the day of the final test I had to take. At the end of the day I walked out of the base in Amsterdam and I could not stop smiling. I made it! A whole new chapter in my life would begin in less than 5 months.

September the 4th was my first day at the Royal Dutch Military Academy located at Breda. After some paperwork we were allocated to a platoon and further divided in groups. After that, we were assigned a room where we could drop off our gear before continuing the program. I shared a room with 7 other girls. The first days were really about working as a group and becoming more disciplined. For example, we had a lesson on how to properly fold our clothes and how to fit them in a closet. One restriction: all closets in one room must look the same. They kept us busy from 06.00 am to sometimes 22.00

Have something you need to share? Send an email to chepos@cheops.cc and your article might get published!

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pm with a variety of sports, group activities, lessons in weapon safety and how to operate in the field following doctrine. All assignments had to be finished in a given time. If we failed, we had to redo the whole assignment plus some physical exercises such as push-ups. In this way we worked on our fitness and became more motivated to get the job done.

On the fourth day we went out on a training week for the first time. During this week we had to perform tasks in situations involving pressure. The group started to show several signs of stress, which of course did not help to fulfill the tasks. The instructors wanted to achieve for us to work together as a group and to get to know each other under stressful conditions. The ability to listen to others, the resourcefulness to delegate and the ability to be decisive are all qualities one learns during this kind of training to eventually build effective leadership and fulfill the any assignment in time. Even a simple assignment can be used to visualize the behavior of the group under stressful conditions. It turned out that my plan B, to study, was not a bad idea at all. I had grown in a lot of qualities in Eindhoven, which were necessary to make a plan and lead an assignment.

After 5 days we moved from the base to the field where we learned how to arrange a proper place to sleep, how to dig ourselves in and what to do when the enemy is nearby. We worked mostly on our tactical displacements, noise and light discipline and patrolling at night. During training I made a lot of new friends, but had to cope with friends who left because they were not qualified for the job.

We started with 49 new cadets and are now

with 37.

After these 4 months of training we needed to pass the final exercise which finished with a 50km march from Oirschot to Breda. At night we walked, during the day we kept patrolling and had some rest. During this march we needed to fulfill exercises such as carrying the wounded (of course no one was wounded but this was just another scenario sketched to see how the group would react). After this we speed marched (a fast way of moving with some gear of a certain weight) and we ended up walking through a ditch. After two nights of marching we arrived in Breda at dawn, where most of our platoon got promoted to cadetcorporal as a sign of passing the first training period.

The education continued with the bachelor program, which for me is located in Den Helder because I do the technical study. The bachelor is comparable to studying AUBS at TU/e with general courses during freshman year such as mechanics (combination between statics and physics), statistics, calculus, linear algebra and programming. Currently I am in second year where I am starting more in-depth courses. These I will need especially in my work field. For example the course about soil mechanics. In this course we learn all about the different layers of soil, how much load they can carry and how it will react in different weather conditions. This is necessary to know when constructing a military base for example.

The education at the Royal Dutch Military Academy consists of 3 main fundamentals: good education, breeding soldiers during training and fulfilling tasks in the so called

‘Cadettencorps’, which can be compared to a student association. This means that next to the education and military training there is also time to have fun. For example, every year we organize a two-days gala. We work a whole week to decorate the rooms in one theme.

Officers and dates are invited to dine with all cadets and build a big party. In addition, the Cadettencorps organizes several sport competitions and a variety of activities outside the academy. For example, I had the chance to raise money together with the RopaRun team (a charity run from Paris to Rotterdam).

There is a possibility to join committees to help organize these kind of activities and to develop your competences.

Every year the cadets return to the field for a certain period to catch up their military skills and improve their competences which they will need as a future leader. For me this period continues in February, probably while you read this. I still have 2,5 years to go where I can improve my qualities and become physically stronger to actually reach the goal of becoming a platoon commander, which for 95% sure will be our first function.

I hope you enjoyed reading my story and I would like to especially thank the Chepos committee for giving me the opportunity to share it. I wish all students good luck with continuing the study, and remember: if you pursue the things you love doing, you will inspire yourself.

Images: 1. Nynke Hofstra (photo: Nynke Hofstra) 2. Building bridges (photo: Nynke Hofstra)

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GRONINGER FORUM A new landmark is added to the skyline of Groningen. Recently Forum Groningen opened its angled doors to the public after eight years of designing and building.

Text: Aron den Otter, Lay-out: Sacha de Bruin TheGroninger Forum building replaces a concrete parking garage that was located on the site. To stop the process of the central market place becoming a dead part of the lively city of Groningen, the forum was built.

The building houses multiple cultural functions such as the city library, a cinema, education, museum, restaurants and cafes. The building offers this cultural experience almost constantly as the building is opened every day from 9h to 23h. At the 45 meter high top, a viewing terrace is placed with views in all directions, with clear weather even Delfzijl can be seen.

The building rose from the turmoil of recent history of the province of Groningen. Quite literally actually. The building was already partly built when the earthquakes hit the city of Groningen. All works stopped on the building site and the parts of the building that were already built were destroyed again to build the forum again with an earthquake-safe design. The company that is responsible for the devasting consequences that came with the exploitation of the natural gas beneath the surface of Groningen paid 68 million of the total 160 million building costs.

A project of this size, in the middle of an already functioning city and funded by mainly municipality money meets quite some resistance by local residents even before actual planning starts. A questionnaire concerning a large part of the local residents was held to gain public coverage and the design was chosen by a committee out of the results of a design challenge, where Zaha Hadid also delivered a proposal. However, the winning proposal was from the relatively small firm of NL Architects. Their design was quite unique and also got acquainted with the resistance of the public of Groningen citizens. Many people feared it would look like a pube on their beloved historic centre. Together with the earthquake troubles, it was quite a difficult process to get to the end result.

The result of all these troubles, however, is stunning and definitely not a pube. It adds to the row of squares that characterizes Groningen. The building can be seen as a vertical set of squares providing cultural

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recreation. The main volume is sharpened as a diamond and provides daylight to all neighbouring streets and squares. It also makes the building a surprise: because of the interesting cuts is shows itself sometimes with a small part in a street or hole between other buildings, but is never seen in its whole until seeing it from a certain height. It lures its visitors by showing only small yet interesting parts. The volume is not only interesting architecture wise, it also makes sure the building fulfills the municipal requirement of a building having a maximum height of 45 meters and an average height of 30 meters.

When standing in front of the building the forum is still somewhat mysterious. Due to the weird angles and multiple plains, one only sees a small triangular part of the building leading one’s eyes into the sky.

When entering the building, visitors are welcomed in a place that is of total contrast with the rest of the city centre. A clean and white atrium is the heart of the building.

Two of the four walls (still not sure how to count the actual amount of walls) are made of glass. Due to the vertical squares having different overhangs, these glass walls have the form of a keyhole, representing the building being the key to Groningen. These squares are connected with escalators that span and

cross the atrium at different angles. It is hard to explain in text, but for the readers who saw the Harry Potter films; imagine a modern moving stairway hall and you are quite close to the actual sight and feeling. The atrium does not end until the actual roof of the building and is 45 meters high. All named aspects of the atrium invite the visitor to go to the roof terrace called the Hoogmarkt, which translates into a high market. While undertaking this journey you are distracted multiple times at every floor as every square has a different interior and function. Every terrace is designed

Still not sure how to count the actual amount of walls

NAM paid 68 of the total 160 million building costs

Imagine a modern Harry Potter stairway hall

by a different interior designer. During the journey, one is also treated with multiple interesting works. An example is a gorgeous double staircase in the children’s section.

When moving upwards the visitor experiences a dynamic view on the city that constantly changes the higher one goes. Important to mention is that one does not see a very large part until reaching the roof terrace. During the adventure of reaching this one is encountered with a lot of framed views framing a nice and typical part of Groningen. When arriving at the top the journey is awarded with a beautiful panoramic view of Groningen.

To stop the central market place becoming a dead part of Groningen the Forum was built

The contrive design that comes with these volumes is, and the main form was already, quite a challenge before the earthquakes decided to make life a little bit harder anyway for the construction engineers at ABT. The integration of the constructive engineer and the architects, however, went quite prosperous and the architectural design was almost not compromised.

The basic construction of the building is actually quite simple: two individual towers

fixed with structural glue to prevent them from falling off and hurting visitors or obstructing the visitors escape routes during a possible earthquake.

All subjects discussed earlier in this article make from the Groninger Forum seem like it has no disadvantages. This is however not entirely true. The structural additions make the building of course earthquake proof but certainly not sustainable. The stone and glass panels are not that easy to maintain or replace and concrete is definitely not a sustainable material in an environmental context. The materials are not local and the craftsmanship that designed the building is also not local. It is a bit odd that a building that is made to contribute to a close Groningen community of locals and visitors is designed, materialized and built with a small contribution from that same community. In a financial point of view, the building is also built on the earthquakes that traumatized Groningen.

All discussed topics considered, Groningen has definitely added a landmark to its city and maybe even to the Netherlands as a whole.

The building is, without doubt, an impressive structure, seen in structural, architectural and many more building disciplines. Opinions are divided and the discussion is heavy on the building. My advice to you would be to visit the forum and forum your own opinion.

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Images: 1. Groninger forum (llustration by Sacha de Bruin) Sources: 1. Bambouwentechniek. “Nieuwbouw Forum Groningen”. bambouwentechniek.nl. 2. Marieke Gielen. “Architectuur van Gestapelde Pleinen”. 28-10-2019. De Architect. 3. Marieke Gielen. “Bouwen in Aardbevingsgebied”. 11-12-2019. De architect.

made of concrete have steel frames attached to them. Only at the last two stories the floors are connected to both of the towers. In the beginning, the option was discussed to put the whole mass of the forum on shock-absorbing materials. But with part of the building already constructed, this rather innovative concept was not used and the choice was made to make the existing design stronger and more earthquake resistant. This meant that a lot of the already produced custom steel frames could not be used anymore. Higher quality concrete is used, more reinforcement is added, holes in the concrete volumes were replaced or put away. In this way, extra mass is provided to the building to counteract movement caused by earthquakes. The façade panels of Italian Dolomites stone is anchored to special new in between panels. The window frames are

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Sustainable Aesthetics The increasing negative impact of the built environment on earth is widely known and cannot be ignored anymore. Every future building should in some way address the environmental challenges. More and more innovative techniques, materials and energy concepts are applied to create buildings that become energy positive. The architectural style of this decade can be best described as ‘sustainabilism’. But such as any style, sustainabilism is expected to have a certain appearance, a way of representing the philosophy behind the style. One of these ways of expression is done by greenwashing: creating a superficial layer of greenery, trees and flowers on buildings. Many critics see this as a negative tool to promote your building without adding real value to it.

A layer of greenery does not fix all the problems underneath it. But why exactly is greenwashing considered as negative and what are the alternative appearances of sustainable buildings?

Text & Lay-out: Karim Jaspers The appearance of sustainable buildings is a widely debated aspect of green architecture.

Currently, there are roughly three main categories and none of them are desirable.

First of all, nothing of the original appearance is changed and the building is kept a regular building, but with better insulation and a higher energy efficiency. Although the building will fit in its surroundings easily, this approach will not add any value to the sustainable aspect of the building. The building shape has not become optimal, nor has its materials and way of building. Furthermore, nobody from the outside knows whether the building performs well, which will not promote environmental awareness in the neighborhood.

The second option is to have sustainability as the main concept in the design of a building.

This will create highly technical dwellings.

It means that every decision - think about volume, materials, technical systems - is focused on minimizing material or energy usage. Although the building might become energy neutral, think about thick glazing, optimal insulation and innovative energy systems, there is a chance that this is made insignificant due to an even higher embodied energy of all these innovative technologies.

Furthermore, this technocratic approach could also lead to a lack of attention to the appearance of the building. A very well programmed computer can in principle design its own optimal building. The appearance is then only shaped by for example the parameters of optimal energy efficiency and solar direction, but not by the experience of

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users or artistic freedom. In the end, users will live in an optimized building that has the highest energy certificate, but looks like a square box with small windows.

The last approach is the most beloved by the public and most criticised by engineers and architects. Greenwashing can be seen as a superficial layer of (apparent) sustainability.

It is the act of literally making your buildings or urban landscape green by implementing as many trees, flowers and other natural features as possible. The biggest trend right now is to put forests on skyscrapers to clean the air and absorb CO2 from it. This neglects the fact that trees need enough soil, water systems and maintenance. In addition, these trees and their soil need a lot more foundation and structural support, thus more embodied energy and materials are being used. These vertical forests are not able to compensate for the amount of CO2 that is emitted in their own production.

It should be said, however, that trees and greenery have more benefits than absorbing CO2. They increase the biodiversity, clean the air, reduce urban heat and create more liveable spaces. Moreover, it can be argued that a sustainable appearance can promote environmental awareness in the surroundings due to the fact that people are more exposed to nature and sustainability, they are more often thinking about it and are easier in accepting these new innovations.

However, greenwashing itself does not seem like the optimal solution either. It solves some problems, but makes others worse as well. It can be used as a tool to promote projects in competitions. If it looks green then it must be sustainable. Cities use greenwashing to increase their sustainable image while adding greenery should not be the only focus point of the project.

It seems that none of the current approaches are adding true value to the sustainability of buildings.

It seems that none of the current approaches are adding true value to the sustainability of buildings. Why is that? Perhaps it is good to look at the concept of sustainability in a broader sense. Sustainability means that an object can be sustained for a very long time.

It should be useful and should not waste materials. Then what does appearance have

to do with sustainability? When looking back at the three current approaches, it seems that none of these methods are actually sustainable in the sense that their appearance does not contribute to making a building that lasts longer.

To achieve aesthetic sustainability, a building should be attractive throughout the entire lifespan. In that way, the materials and energy used in creating the building will not be wasted once it gets removed.

The appearance of a building should therefore still be desirable after fifty or a hundred years to prevent unnecessary demolition. But how can this be achieved when desirability and attractiveness is a matter of taste, subjectivity and cultural trends? How can a building be designed so that it will be liked by many people for a long time? There are already a lot of buildings like this. Almost all buildings that are built before, let’s say, the Industrialization and are still here must have some characteristics that ensure their endurance over time. There has been an architectural survival of the fittest: the old buildings that shape city centers nowadays probably have had a desirable appearance for their entire lifespan.

Those buildings that have been found ugly by some generation have been demolished or renovated as soon as they had the chance.

Other buildings face a different problem: many governments want to demolish numerous post-war buildings, but their concrete rigidness holds back this wish. When post-war buildings were built, the airy accommodations and open public spaces were a relief compared to the chaotic and cramped city centers. The buildings responded perfectly to the demands of that time by creating affordable, easily constructed and large apartments with lots of light and greenery. Nowadays, however, this idealistic image is outdated. The green, empty grassfields are not desired anymore and the apartments are too small. So even if the whole concrete structure and bad insulation is ignored, these buildings cannot be considered sustainable. Demolishing post-war buildings is an unfortunate waste of energy and materials and could have been prevented if the future was taken into account as well.

There are three main approaches to achieve aesthetic sustainability. The first one is a minimalistic appearance. The architecture itself will not stand out and it will act as a type of white canvas on which usage, furniture and culture can be placed and replaced. It is the podium that supports activity, but it is not the activity itself. This will ensure that different

functions and cultures can take place in the building during its lifespan and it can therefore be sustained for a long time. The appearance has become sustainable and valuable, without having to imitate nature with the addition of greenery. However, it can also be seen as a type of anaesthetic: the disappearance of aesthetics and creativity. Should a sustainable future look like a city of white canvases?

The second option is the opposite: a complex appearance. A certain type of complexity can be used to keep the users engaged. The user keeps discovering new aspects of the building even though he is there every day. After a while, it will feel more like home as he knows every detail and all possible routes through the building. Due to maintaining the interest of users, its appearance has become sustainable - people will want to preserve this building as long as possible. However, it is difficult to reach this ideal state. How much complexity should a building comprise? What is this complexity and how can it be achieved? The complexity should be balanced enough so people will not get lost in it. For this to be sustainable, users should understand it to a certain degree to begin with.

But getting to such an adaptive architecture requires the mindsets of people to adapt as well. Currently, there is a slow but ongoing process of changing mindsets in which nature takes a lead role instead of humans.

Architecture follows slowly as well: new aesthetic approaches are made that involve the challenges of sustainability as well.

Greenwashing is one of the most practiced approaches right now, but it is just the start.

The question remains: what will architects come up with next?

Images: 1. Bosco Verticale (source: commons. wikimedia.org, edit: Karim Jaspers) Sources: 1. Kristine Harper. “Aesthetic 1 Sustainability”. December 17, 2012.

Textiletoolbox.com 2. Kristine Harper. “An interview with Kristine Harper”. June 4, 2019.

Goodreads.com 3. Ronald Rovers. “Hoogbouw - Nergens goed voor...”. May 18, 2019. Ronaldrovers.nl 4. Ceridwen Owen & Kim Dovey. “Fields of sustainable architecture”. 2008. Journal of Architecture.

The last option relates back to the problem of trends. Trends in essence are not compatible with the built environment. Trends come and go, are fluid yet strict, and require change. The built environment, however, is rigid, static and, once built, does not change anymore. Most architecture is created from an idealistic view of that time and reacts to the problems of that period. They do not assume changing trends nor do they react to problems in the future, which leads to appearances that become outdated.

The built environment should assume and embrace future uncertainties.

The built environment should instead assume and embrace future uncertainties. The third approach of aesthetic sustainability is adaptive architecture - appearances that are able to follow trends and react to changes in these trends. Façades will adapt to current cultural climates. Spaces will adapt to demands of users. This creates a truly aesthetic sustainability.

An appearance that can last for centuries by adapting itself.

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An Aging Society

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When the world undergoes a major change, the built environment has to change alongside. The society shifts constantly due to political, social, economic or technological adjustments. Nowadays, the world is aging.

People aged 65 or over are considered elderly in developed countries like the Netherlands.

Elderly comes from the obsolete term elder, which suggests respect and wisdom, as in respect your elders. This is considered a vulnerable group. Therefore, the built environment has to make adaptations to be ready for this future full of elderly. In this article, the influences and changes made due to the aging population are assessed.

Text & Lay-out: Quirine Heijnen

falling is very dangerous for elderly and it is hard to recover from. Difficult surfaces like stairs, uneven pavements or bumps make the probability of falling higher. Also, a lot of elderly have a chronic disease like dementia.

These mobility problems causes loneliness and social isolation to nearly 50% of the elderly population. Loneliness increases blood pressure, stress level and the chance of depression. In addition, lonely elderly seem to have 14% higher chance of an early death than the average person. Therefore, these factors make living alone difficult for the elderly, while research suggests that elderly want to live longer on their own. So, when is the point that they are obligated to move?

The group aged 65 and above is growing exponentially. In 2015, 8.5% of the population of the world was aged 65 or over. It is predicted that in 2030, 12% of the population will be composed of elderly and this percentage will increase to 16.7% of the population by 2050. This growth can also be seen in the graph on this page which presents the growing curve of elderly over the years.

What is the source of this growth one may ask.

To answer that question, we have to back up in time. After the WW2, a lot of babies were born; this generation is known as the baby boomers. These babies became children, young adults, adults and now they are elderly. Also, the health care and hygiene is better than ever before (and will become even better in the future). For example, 49,6% of the elderly in the Netherlands suffer from diseases like heart diseases, diabetes and arthritis. Health care has the facilities to cure these diseases while that was not possible in the past.

“No matter when the older person’s home was built and regardless of whether it is modern or traditional in style, it likely was designed for young adults and their young families.

As adults age their homes also grow older, but most are not updated to accommodate a senior’s changing needs.’’ (Connolly, n.d.)

Consequently, during the life cycle of a house, it needs to adapt to its residents, making elderly self-sufficient, mobile, safe, secure and comfortable. Such a transformation of a house has a lot of different names like designfor-all, lifespan design or universal design.

Even small changes in a house like indoor air quality, coloring the walls or reducing the noise level can make houses more livable because they support the “emotional health” of a person. Sometimes major adjustments are also necessary like eliminating stairs in a house.

According to John Connolly in agingcare. com, timing is also important. The best time to adjust a house is when people plan ahead which means to make these adjustments in their fifties or sixties and not during a crisis.

Elderly are less mobile and more prone to get for diseases and injuries. For example,

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Meanwhile another major change that is going on, being that due to technology, mobility possibilities are increasing. People take cars, trains and aircrafts which tend to make people move a lot. While younger people are mobile, elderly are not so much anymore. This means that they physically cannot keep up with this major change. Younger people move out of little villages to bigger cities while elderly stay in these little villages, making the percentage of population of elderly grow. They need help from younger generations but they are not there anymore. The Sociale Staat van het Platteland (SSP) of the Dutch government wrote a report “Kleine Gebaren” about this problem. They state that to prevent elderly from getting lonely, it helps to have a place closeby where they can meet people. This would look like a community center or bar where elderly can interact. Although this is a good idea, practice shows this does not work like it should on social and emotional areas.

Elderly do not show a lot of initiative. Often it turns out that the same people are active in the village, leaving out the most vulnerable group.

The government has focused on optimization of independent living and social participation in its elderly policy as the most important starting point since 1970. Meanwhile there is less budget available for this, therefore the government tries to resolve healthcare

Lack of professional help and elderly facilities makes that elderly have to leave their comfort zone

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problems in other ways . Since elderly do need a lot of healthcare, this has a big impact on this group. Lack of professional help and elderly facilities makes that the most vulnerable people have to move out of their village and thus their comfort zone. One of the things that the government tries to stimulate is civilian participation. Civilian participation is important for this problem as people can help each other if they know about the problems of the other.

But for that, people have to show initiative.

More people are starting to notice this problem and architects are working on houses that can be adapted for elderly. Like a lot of social problems, the aging population does not have a “one size fits all” kind of solution as they all have different and unique needs. There are different organizations like ‘The Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation’ (HAPPI) that provides architectural and social advice to elderly about their living conditions.

They made a housing concept called Pilgrim Garden Project with which they won several prizes. The most important features of this design were double-aspect flats that are located around a communal garden space of hard and soft landscaping. There is a shared colonnade that acts as a slow circulation space.

Furthermore, an important feature is the built-in sliding glass door. This makes it possible to use the balconies all year.

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connection between residents. It created a multipurpose space where residents can meet.

A similar project is the Casa del Abuelo (house for elderly) in Spain, Portugal and Mexico which is a little bit like a community center but then only for elderly. It offers an open and modern design, creating a blur between the inside and the outside. This is also considering the temperate climate where these projects are located in. Another design stimulates the physical activity of elderly like the Guangxi senior center in China. This center includes game courts, gardens and an indoor swimming pool. In Japan there is a center created that is called “yoro shisetsu” which means facility for elderly and children. In these facilities, interaction goes both ways. Seniors can volunteer in the nursery and children visit the care home of the elderly. They also do activities together like eating meals and physical activity.

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over the world. To make that possible civilian participation, government funds and the built environment are needed. Also the younger generation (our generation) is needed to help elderly and make universal design possible.

Images: 1. Percentage of the World Population Over 65, 1950-2050. (photo: UN World Population Prospect, 2008).

Sources: 1. Jeroen Schumacher “Cijfers: 1 vergrijzing en toenemende zorg”. 13-07-2019. zorgvoorbeter.nl. 2. Jasper Veldhuis. “Kleine dorpen – geen sociaal vangnet voor de meest kwetsbare ouderen”.

2016. Rozenbergquarterly.com. 3. N.d. “Feiten en cijfers ouderen in Nederland”. N.d. loketgezondleven.nl. 4. Flavia Ranieri. “How to design for senior citizens”. 26-08-2018. Archdaily.com. 5.

Matthew Usher. “To design for the elderly, don’t look to the past”.

30-10-2018. Archdaily.com. 6. John Connolly. “Home Modification for Senior-Friendly Living”. N.d. agingcare.com. 7. Agingcare.com.

“Aging in place: creating caring environments”. N.d. agingcare.com

As mentioned above, there are a lot of possibilities and projects that feature universal design. Yet, this has to be implemented all

A project in the Netherlands done by The Architect in Utrecht stresses the social

Percentage of the World Population Over 65, 1950-2050 13

QUIRINE HEIJNEN LOPPIA

My grandmother lives in a small village called Pont All’Ania in Tuscany, Italy. The village basically consist of a street with houses on it.

Pont All’Ania is surrounded by a lot of villages like these that can be accessed through little, slightly dangerous paths like Francighena and Via Romana. Looking from my grandmother’s house gives you a beautiful view on some extraordinary mountains called the Pania and L’apenino Tosco e Miliano, or to be more specific il Monte di Gragno. Around every corner there is a beautiful church, dome or house. For example, the church in the picture.

The church is called Santa Maria di Loppia and built in 1265 made in the Roman style. Next to the church there is a graveyard and a bridge also constructed in 1265. It was built under the control of Rolandinghi and after that had a lot of different owners. The oldest part of the church is the base of the bell tower.

LOPP

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SACHA DE BRUIN KRAKAU

N E G N I GRON ARON DEN OTTER GRONINGEN

I never visited Groningen for a big part of my life, neither the province nor capital city.

It might have been the long journey, the absence of built environment studies at their university or maybe the terrifying religious approach the people of Groningen take when telling somebody of their home place. Things have changed however and since I have been there once, I have come back multiple times.

The local cuisine (eierballen) is nice, the city

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is beautiful, Groningen has some very high quality cultural instances and the night life is great. Just as my opinion is shifting, also the city of Groningen is moving. The first time I was present there was a great pit besides the Martini tower which evolved with quite some setbacks into the impressive structure it is now.

I went back again to Groningen to check what the result was of all the effort and made the attached photo. If you are interested in the final result please check out the full article in this magazine.

If one thinks of a cool city trip, one might not immediately think about Krakow. This city is located in the southern part of Poland and is its second largest. The city has seen a rapid transformation in its atmosphere, moving from grimm and filthy to vibrant and progressive, as we were told by a local. The old city center is home to some great examples of old polish architecture, as it has survived the second world war without substantial damage, the Maria Church located at the town’s square being the absolute highlight with its beautiful nave. Don’t forget to visit Kasimierz, the Jewish Quarter of the city. It is filled with lovely restaurants and bars. Another important part of Polish history is located just outside of Krakow; a visit to Auschwitz. This site is the prime example of a black page in European history, making not the most fun activity, but definitely an impressive one. Krakow also is a very popular student city, making its nightlife a must see, each bar serves a wide array of craft beers, often for under 3 euros. We loved our time in the city and advise everyone to travel there themselves!

EDITOURS

STOCK

HOLM

KARIM JASPERS STOCKHOLM

KRAKAU

The city of Stockholm surprised me in every aspect. Before going, I only knew about its cold weather and the Abba museum. However, when walking through the city in the Chepos shoes, I became aware of the beautiful scenery.

Gamla Stan, or The Old Town, consists of original medieval townhouses with bright colours. The narrow passages between buildings lead to small squares with benches and trees. On the opposite side of the water you can find a hill to climb on where you can enjoy the view of Stockholm’s modest skyline.

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The 10 most Influential Buildings of the Decade

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Core:

Aquatecture

Mankind has lived close to water for its entire existence. Their survival is depending on it.

For this reason, cities have evolved with rivers running through their centers. All around the world water plays a crucial role in the development of towns, ports and villages. Living with water also faces its challenges: how to deal with rising sea levels and excessive rainfalls. All the varying topics of Aquatecture are central in this 65th edition of Chepos. How are man-made islands actually made, what purpose do water systems have in cities and what can we learn from coral reefs. Take a dive into Aquatecture and find out! Text: Karim Jaspers

Offshore structures

When we think of extremely large buildings and structures, our mind tends to go towards the skyscrapers that have been popping up all over the world. Althoughpeople often forget about the largest structures of them all; offshore structures. Oil platforms are some of the largest structures in the world. The depth that they reach rivals the tallest skyscrapers built on land. Not only that, but they have to be built under extreme circumstances, something that is not the case with skyscrapers. This makes them infinitely more impressive than buildings made on land.

Text: Lianne Willekers, Lay-out: Henryk Gujda These oil platforms are often huge steel or concrete structures used to extract oil from the earth’s crust, which can then be used to generate energy. These extremely large offshore structures are one of a kind and are some of the most impressive structures mankind has ever created. They operate under extreme weather conditions and as such, have to be tested extensively to make sure they are safe. Oil rigs are not the only type of offshore structures that exist; these structures can have a very wide variety of functions. An example is the offshore wind farms that are being constructed in oceans all around the world.

Because of climate change and the growing popularity of green energy alternatives, these wind farms are used to generate energy in a sustainable way. Of course, a lot of the same limitations and considerations count for these types of structures, but they have one very large advantage over the oil rigs, besides the fact that it generates clean energy. Oil rigs need to be operated by people, all year round, and as such, they need extra safety measures that wind farms do not need. This obviously adds to the already enormous amount of money needed to construct an oil rig.

Oil rigs in the ocean have been around since the late 1800s, when it was discovered that oil could be extracted from underwater.

Since then, the design and operation of oil rigs have improved greatly. An essential part of the design of these structures, or any sort of structure, is extensive research. The research conducted for structures in the water is obviously different than the research for

normal structures made on land. Many things that are important to consider here are not considerations that would have to be dealt with under normal circumstances. These large structures are subjected to extremely high loads from wind and waves. The soil and the water need to be investigated to determine whether this particular spot would be a good place to build a structure like this.

Another extremely important aspect to take into account is the duration and the cost of construction of an oil rig. The average oil rig takes about two to three years to construct, and costs around $650 million. Needless to say, this is an extreme amount of money for structures that are decreasing in popularity.

Environmental parameters are also different in these cases, than in normal projects, that this has become an entirely new and different field of research. Many companies and research institutes are working on innovations and improvements in this field of engineering. An example of a company that does extensive research about this is the Dutch company TNO. They conduct research specifically about these offshore structures. They have the equipment to test materials and structures under extreme circumstances, like in the middle of the ocean, which obviously can be very difficult. Important design considerations include loads created by extreme waves and winds, but also marine life and marine growth must be taken into account. Sustainability is another aspect that companies like TNO have to take into account. Improving the sustainability of not only these offshore

Their days as the largest and most impressive structures on earth are numbered structures, but also of maritime transport, is a crucial piece of research that this company is conducting.

Because of climate change, oil rigs are becoming less and less desirable. People all over the world are calling for these structures to be removed, as the only purpose they serve, is to extract oil from the ocean floor. This has a direct connection to environmental disasters, like the increasing amount of CO2 in the air and oil spills in our oceans. However, as noble as it may seem to call for the removal of these structures, this is not very simple. They are built to withstand extreme conditions, so taking them apart is expected to be at least as difficult as it is to make them. Many structures made in the 1970s were built without being concerned about how to take them apart again when it is needed. The cost of taking apart these structures is also very high, with the cost of removing all of Britain’s oil rigs estimated around £40 billion. So even though these structures are built to last and removing them from our oceans is going to be a very difficult task, their days as the largest and most impressive structures on earth are numbered.

Images: 1. Oil Platform (Pexels.com) Sources: 1. Kabir Sadeghi. Significant Guidance for Design and Construction of Marine and Offshore Structures. GAU Journal of Soc. and Applied Sciences. slideshare.net 2. Unknown.

1 Maritime & Offshore: sustainable use of our oceans. TNO.nl 3. Richard Neilson. Oil rigs are built to withstand decades at sea - taking them apart is as tough as they are. 2016. Theconversation.com 4. Trevor English. The Engineering and Construction of Offshore Oil Platforms. interestingengineering.com

20 CORE

Aquatecture

I am looking for what drives you, what makes you happy and what matters most to you, in order to find the company that best fits you. In combination with the right function that will enable you to make the most of yourself.

How I do this you ask? We will go into deep conversation where I will take an advisory role. We will map your capacities and start looking for that dream job! Together we will go through the entire process and I will advise you expertly.

KIRSTY BUSHOFF TRUSTWORTHY, DRIVEN, HONEST AND PHLEGMATIC. I AM KIRSTY BUSHOFF, AND AS ADVISOR AT CONTINU I HELP PROFESSIONALS IN THE BUILDING INDUSTRY GET THE MOST OUT OF THEMSELVES. K.BUSHOFF@CONTINU.NL 06-27577621

aiv ni ej fjirhcS supmac/ln.unitnoc.www

Who is Continu?

For 25 years we make sure that technical professionals get a strong shoulder to lean on during their quest for a new job. We do this by making the right match between you, your ambition and your future employer. We are there for specialists in the building industry, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and logistics.

How do we do this?

When you start applying for jobs, chances are you will be overwhelmed. There are so many options you don’t know where to start and feel like a fish out of water. Where to start and what option actually is right for your personality and ambitions? What company suits you best? Where do you have the most future perspective? Where do you get the space and possibility to grow?

These are all questions where Continu can help and support you. We work together with your study association and will be present at a few activities coming up! Aside from that we organize together with your study association a number of activities such as company visits, workshops, drinks or inspiring lectures. We would like to meet you during these events, so we can help and advise you. Keep a close eye on the event calendar!

Would you appreciate advice in the meantime for your future career in de building industry? Feel free to contact me!

WWW.CONTINU.NL/CAMPUS CORE 21

Jacob Voorthuis Jacob is a publicist, associate professor and lecturer, who professes enthusiastically about philosophy and architecture.

Architecture is like water...

I am just back from Aruba. I have a great tan and loved swimming in the sea amongst the diving Pelicans and the Magnificent Frigate Birds suspended in the sky. But I shall not willingly return. Aruba has become a sad mix of Torremolinos and the worst that Florida can throw at you. It has become ‘ugly’ in its heedless sprawl, the brash and brawny exhibitionism of wealth so that the gap between rich and poor as expressed in architecture is just about as obscene as it can get. It is an island of littered urbanism in which the buildings are regimented only by the ability to pay whilst the ability to pay is all that is architecturally expressed. This brings me to a controversial thought. Colonialism was no doubt a bad thing, but its architecture was not what was bad about it. Its easily grasped orderliness, its familiar coherence of elements and consistency of expression, making everything part of a manifest larger order, is —and remains— attractive, regardless of the unfair power structures and real suffering that made it possible.

Now, apparently, my love for colonial architecture and the atmosphere of older cities generally, aligns me to the opinions of the far right. According to some recent architectural critics I am of a type that suffers from “false nostalgia” and pay inadvertent homage to the views of Thierry Baudet and the recently deceased philosopher-king Roger Scruton. Their view is what we would call fundamentalist, which means they do not like where the world is ostensibly taking them and all they can come up with as a response, is a call to return to “beauty” as contained in a version of the past they have forged their nostalgic imagination.

Nostalgia —far from being a false sentiment— is a real one.

What is false about nostalgia is not the sentiment but the image of a supposedly better past it creates as a container to hold and order its thoughts about the present. Now I am not sure Baudet and Scruton suffer from a false sense of nostalgia, given the fact that they applaud the imperial structures of power that made Europe dominate the world for a short while and would love to see it return: Make Europe Great Again would be their trumped motto. The word ‘again’ contains their magic panacea for all contemporary ills. That then leaves just me suffering from false nostalgia, because I pertinently reject those power structures and yet, hypocritically it would seem, love the architecture that apparently represents them. Quite a conundrum then. How might I rescue myself?

Let’s first make the situation worse. Rem Koolhaas has speculated atavistically about the attractions of a designerless world as if that

22 CORE

would be a good thing. As an urban philosopher he has come closest to creating a radical if not always rigorous conceptual framework in which the heedless sprawl can be appreciated as something full of interesting social, economic and aesthetic secrets. His brilliant repositioning of values in his analyses of Atlanta, Lagos and various Chinese cities are legendary. He has created fascinating conceptual containers to understand the generic and the unplanned, the big and the even bigger, the air-conditioned enclave and so forth. And I happily go along with him… up to a point. And at that point —when I realise that the intellectual joy I get from his thinking, requires enormous intellectual investment, requires strange assumptions that are impossible to hold without the perspective of a socially and even economically secure and self-confident person— I falter and almost give up. Almost. His are views that can be ‘afforded’ only by the intellectually and economically well-established, who have the means to create their own carefully conceptualized and carefully designed bubbles within the mess and then view the mess from their sophisticated vantage points. Mess, without such a carefully conceptualized and designed perspective, is just mess, something that must be dealt with on a day to day basis by people going about their lives and intimately familiar with the hardships it throws up. Something similar is true for the orderliness of colonialism. Its beautiful architecture was no fun to live in for all but a very few who could afford the necessary personnel and the necessary number of candles. The rest were actively excluded by or imprisoned within an architecture that deliberately provided a very clearly hierarchized structure that made explicit that some were more equal than others. Moreover, we must remember that old buildings have really only begun to look good and feel comfortable with the introduction of modern technology. The old architecture we admire today looked much more sombre without electric lighting, proper sewage, heating and ventilation, proper maintenance etc. Ruins might be fun to look at for a while, but they are difficult to live in without the help of careful design. The far right has seen its chance to hijack the love of old architecture and harness it as a nostalgic horse to pull the cart of populism only because it has been sobeautifully restored, fitted with all the mod cons and lit up like glorious museum pieces. Without that they would be declared mad without further ado. A single, permanently exhausted mother, living in a concrete box in an urban sprawl, or indeed in a miserable hovel, is not —and wasn’t ever— to be envied, whilst the thoughtful and comfortably off contemporary architect living in such a box will make of it something wonderful, thoughtful and admirable. Thoughtfulness and design are two sides of the

Aquatecture

same coin. You cannot have design without thought and you cannot have thought without design. The basis for appreciation is careful conceptualisation and reasoning and we design what we want our clients and ourselves to appreciate. Architecture is structured thought made into brick and mortar. It will take too long to argue a point here that I have argued at length elsewhere, but I challenge you to disprove the idea. You won’t be able to. In so far as the thoughtfulness of design can be purchased at a price, the poor will never stop envying the rich for their ‘possession’ of beauty even though neither might be fully aware that beauty just is the emotional product of happy thoughtfulness. As such the poor will always feel excluded, whilst the rich may well squander their wealth thoughtlessly on the badly conceived, the poorly designed and the tasteless. There are, in the end, just two sorts of lucky people, those who are financially secure and thoughtful and the poor who are nevertheless rich in thoughtfulness, and wisdom. The rest is to be pitied as slaves to themselves as not just beauty but freedom and all virtues for that matter, reside in thoughtfulness.

Now I am going to make a little jump but try to follow me: Even with the thoughtful, the appreciation of beauty ‘for its own sake’ is a misnomer that tries to objectify a person’s feelings about things as the properties of those things. But that is not how it works. The feeling of beauty is and must be subjective. Feeling is embodied thought, the product of the thinking body. Being subjective does not mean that anything goes or that a feeling cannot be made subject to precise and compelling descriptions and made subject to a conscientious game of reasoning. It does mean that one person can be more rigorous in her thinking than another. Beauty is the product of a continuous and ongoing process of intersubjective reasoning in which anything is allowed that passes the test of plausibility. For the gullible and naive that test is easily passed, for the profound and the healthily sceptical the process of reasoning is in itself part of the joy of contemplation, whilst for those overly concerned with the opinion of others, it is predominantly a social affair. Where does this leave us?

The old may be grasped and cherished by many, partly because it is contained by an orderliness that is familiar and therefore loved and partly because it has become conceptually contained by a musified sense of the old and rare: because it is loved and under threat of the different, it is beautifully restored, lit up and wellmaintained like the objects in a museum and has thus become the gentrified abode of those who can economically afford its

rarefied atmosphere of intellectual offerings. The heedless and the unplanned and brash exhibitionism can also be intellectualised and made subject to brilliant exercises in aesthetic sophistication as Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas long ago demonstrated.

There is good and bad in everything and much well-designed modern architecture is truly beautiful in its thoughtfulness, no less so than the beautiful old cities and buildings I love —not of nostalgia— but as the result of a growing and deepening understanding of them that has taken some forty years to develop, embody and mature at my own rather slow pace.

But now back to my conundrum. If it is possible to intellectualise the generic and the informally planned, the big and the huge, if we can even find intellectually satisfying ways of appreciating the brash and the heedless, why was Aruba such a disappointment?

There is only one answer: I had decided to remain in my intellectual comfort zone, I was being lazy, settling back into my slothful love of the easily grasped, the gently neutered structures that were the product of a bygone era whose power structures have been replaced by others that are no better. I could not make the effort to enjoy the vulgarity and brashness of the tourist high-rises, and their brawny behaviour of arrogated entitlement.

Moreover, I refused to accept the social realities that make Aruba what it is today and saw its built environment as the raw product of them. Stupidly, I looked at Aruba’s few colonial remains, and saw a seeming friendliness in their expression, a modesty in their scale, and I was able to discern the easily grasped orderliness in their arrangement that says far more about me than about the past they are supposed to represent. I should go again.

Postscript.

Oh yes, I forgot: How is architecture like water? Architecture needs concepts like containers to hold it in place, just like water needs a vase or a glass or a drainpipe or a valley to be seen as a separate thing. Make good concepts and you make possible new ways to think and design with. But be careful, because you can make any architecture do anything you want it to; you can even use it to justify far-right views as long as the people you talk to are gullible enough.

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Images: 1. Jacob Voorthuis (source: Voorthuis Archive) 2. Water integrated into Architecture (image: Karim Jaspers)

CORE 23

Rising Sea Levels and Changing Urban Structures Climate change has become an increasingly dominant subject in our vocabulary and day to day conversations since the past 15 years or so. This issue gathered public attention following the initial discovery of the holes in the ozone layer. It has entered our lives in the form of global warming, and in the initial phases of its development it was mostly associated with droughts and the loss of our water sources. What followed was even more interesting as with the rising overall global temperatures we started to slowly and gradually lose our polar ice caps. As they melted away, the levels of big bodies of water, such as seas and oceans, started to rise thus creating a new perspective to the whole problem. To propose an analogy, for the idea of the survival of the fittest, what needed to be done is to adapt the urban structures of coastal cities to ensure their survival through an era of climate change with drastic consequences.

Text: Ipek Topalkara, Lay-out: Tessa van Amelsvoort In order for us to have a better understanding of the ways of solving the issue at hand, what is needed is to get to the bottom of the problem and analyze its causes. Climate change is an undeniable result of human activities ranging from transportation, creation of new industries, construction and deforestation. The better the technological advancement get, the more demanding and controlling we become of our planet which also result of a much higher life expectancy, up to a point of slowly driving it to a state of being uninhabitable for our species. Our species here can be defined as humans and any other animal that has evolved to be fit for the living conditions of our planet’s regular state of temperature, atmosphere and other factors.

Thus, resulting in a paradox of making our own planet hostile to us, while we are trying to advance our civilization to acquire a more comfortable way of living.

Waterfronts have been a preferred location of settlement for our species due to certain practicalities such as the ease of transportation of goods, better land quality for agriculture, trade, ease of travel, climate, aesthetic views, irrigation and biodiversity. Apart from its benefits, this application comes with its consequences that we are facing today.

Waterfront oriented urbanization has made our urban settlements more and more fragile

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to the water level fluctuations. According to the values of 2007, 70% of the largest European cities are vulnerable to rising sea levels and a great deal of these are merely 10 meters above sea level. This situation renders urban settlements and populations fragile to such changes since a great deal of urban components are not mobile. Bridges, subways systems, buildings, roads, the cultural and historic heritage and the sense of community among residents causes drastic changes to be more difficult, and only enables precautions to a certain amount. This causes the current situation to be even worse than it is. The worst-case scenario for future projections predicts up to an average of sixty centimeters

This causes the current situation to be even worse than it is. increase in the sea levels within the next 100 years. Because most infrastructure works, such as roads, sewage systems and buildings, have an even longer life expectancy, including flood protection works, major transportation systems, and energy production plants. This scenario indicates the occurrence of one of the largest losses of value in land and infrastructure, along with the largest transfer of economic wealth in human history.

Resilience becomes a key factor in the eve of such a hazard. Necessary precautions need to be taken to provide both the already existing and the newly upcoming urban systems and structures with resilience in order to guarantee their existence and continuity. There are two possible paths to be taken to ensure the existence of such resilience. These are mitigation and adaptation. While adaptation mostly covers the problems arising on a local scale, and it is concerned with changing the lifestyles to be more suited with the newly occurred problems, whereas mitigation is on a broader scale and goes deeper into methods of how to prevent the chances of the increasing climate change. By pure definition, mitigation is any effort to reduce loss of life and property by reducing the impacts of disasters. The best approach to take would be a combination of adaptation, mitigation and suited urban development techniques. Infrastructure improvement, planting of mangrove trees along the coast, urban agriculture programs

and continuous tree planting campaigns are just a few examples of solutions that are already being applied.

The other side of the coin displays another part of this reality, and it is that the ones that had the least to do with the rising of this issue have become the most vulnerable to its consequences. While wealthier residents of the cities have had the opportunity to locate their residencies within the parts of the cities where they are less likely to be impacted, poor citizens have been drawn to more floodprone and marginalized areas. This causes the precautions to be further delayed in an attitude of ignoring it as it is not yet at a level of impacting the ones with the highest voice and societal impact. The irony that comes into picture is that the economic activities of the wealthier parts of the population is usually at the basis of the triggering of this avalanche.

What needs to be done for such a case is to enhance the aid of ecosystem services by letting nature find its own way of dealing with the problem at hand, by healing the impact of human activities on its integrity.

What is needed with regards to the given circumstances is to keep in mind the worstcase scenario while taking further urban design decisions and ensure its continuity throughout the monitoring of the development paths of cities. Designers, stakeholders and decision makers need to bear in mind that cities are created by adding onto one another and thus special care needs to be taken for the decided methods, designs and resources as whatever is constructed will have a lifespan that is longer than a few decades. It is highly likely for such constructions to even exceed the lifespan of their creators, hence affecting the day to day lives of the successors. Thus, climate change has become a new design parameter to be taken into consideration during the decision making. Though these may be more costly in terms of the short-term investments, hazard prevention and the hindrance of future damage related costs is more than enough for the compensation. For that reason, future projections are needed to be done with the aid of simulation models in order to come up with certain estimations regarding what is called a 100 years flood risk zone. This enables the newly built areas to be prepared and ensures that the immobile structures will be able to see the completion of their expected life span without going through an evacuation and thus

Aquatecture

hindering further economic losses.

In terms of the cases of short-term solutions, cities with higher networks and more global importance are more likely to survive than those that do not have such an advantage.

We can easily realize this by even doing a small social media scan for the news of global disasters and how they are perceived by the public, especially by groups and people who are not necessarily geographically connected or related to the area in question. If a city has high touristic value, and global popularity and importance, then it becomes a common commodity that is valued by many and thus ensuring its survival. For such cases the collection of funding and aid becomes a rapid process and relief comes fast. As in the case of other cities, a different method of network can be created with other neighboring districts and areas by strengthening the bonds in order to sustain their mutual succession.

The common trend depicts that measures that have short term cost benefits are favored among those that are not nearly as profitable in the short term but are more environmentally beneficial. The main failing in this method of decision making is that it is a highly selfish approach that is built in such a way as to ignore the mere existence of future generations and thus furthering the problem. We are still relying heavily on landfills because plots with proximity to water are more profitable without considering the future consequences. Especially for a country like the Netherlands where there are even segments of land at an altitude below sea level, the increasing climate change can have a highly destructive impact. For such cases we need environmental services more than ever to ensure the continuity. However, if it comes to it, evacuation may still be an alternative. Preventing this is in our hands, before it is too late to save our cities, we need to start respecting our planet more and start listening to its wishes and find a way to live by cooperating with our natural environment.

Images: 1. Drowning in Work (illustration: Tessa van Amelsvoort) Sources: 1. Henning Sten Hansen.

Modelling the Future Coastal Zone Urban Development as Implied by the IPCC SRES and Assessing the Impact From Sea Level Rise. Landscape and Urban Planning. 2010, p. 141-149. 2. n/a. The Impact of the Climate change on Cities. Cities and Climate Change: An urgent Agenda. n/a, p. 8-13. 3. n/a. What is Mitigation? January 30, 2020. Fema.gov. 4. C. Greig Crysler, Stephen Cairns, Hilde Heynen. The SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory. London: SAGE Publications, 2012. 5. K. J. E. Walsh, H. Betts, J. Church, A. B. Pittock, K. L. McInnes, et. al. Using Sea Level Rise Projections for Urban Planning in Australia. Journal of Coastal Research. 20/Spring, 2004, p. 586-598. 6. Henrik Ernston, Sander E. van der Leeuw, Charles L. Redman, Douglas J. Meffert, George Davis, Christine Alfsen, Thomas Elmqvist. Urban Transitions: On Urban Resilience and Human-Dominated Ecosystems. AMBIO (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences). 39/2010, p. 531-545.

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CORE 25

TRIVIA 1 The design of the Deltaworks is highly dependent on the ways of water. As stated in the article, the current processing power and programs to simulate the ways of water were non existent in the fifties.

Johan van Veen created the Deltar (Delta Getij Analogon Rekenmachine) to supply the right numbers for the design.

This calculator was specifically built for this design and the principles on which it is based are very complex. The main concept is the analogy that is in the phenomena of water and electricity. The electrical phenomena of current, electricity, selfinduction and capacity were used.

By using this analogy the calculator could simulate the phenomena of water 100 times faster.

This ingenious system was used until 1984, still relevant in a rapidly changing digital world after 24 years of use. Most of the system is sadly lost but some parts still remain in the Neeltje Jans museum.

TRIVIA 2 There is one dyke which is not kept up to date concerning its height: the Voorstraat in Dordrecht is a shopping street in the middle of the historical centre. To still protect the area multiple mini dykes are created around Dordrecht.

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THE DELTAWORKS The Deltaworks are the most prominent part of the Dutch water defence system. Five stormvloedkeringen, two sluices, six dams and multiple dykes protect the Dutch and neighbouring areas from the accidental angry hits of mother nature. As is widely known, large parts of the Netherlands are below sea level. For the areas in the middle of the country, dykes and mills provide sufficient defence against water. The case of the area of the Deltaworks however is quite different. At first it is a coastal area and the water provides ships a way to transport goods to the world scale harbours of Rotterdam and Antwerp.

This complex system gave new impulse to the century old reputation of the Dutch civil engineering concerning waterworks.

Text: Aron den Otter, Lay-out: Sacha de Bruin

Aquatecture Most people think the systems of dams and dykes were an answer to the disastrous situation of 1953: almost 2000 people died and it left large parts of the Netherlands uninhabitable. This is however not the case.

One of the first reasons to defend the land were more of an economical nature: during the First World War the Netherlands learned the hard way how much they were dependent on the agricultural products of foreign countries.

This is the reason the Dutch government heavily supported Dutch agriculture, resulting in one of the largest parts of current Dutch economy existing of agricultural export. A flood would be a disaster for the Dutch stocks and economy. The “father of Deltaworks” Johan van Veen, a civil engineer from the university of Delft presented a report in 1942 as a result of interbellum research showing the unsafe position of large parts of land. The disaster of 1953 gave the final call and the plans for the Deltaworks were started 20 days after the flood.

The responsible engineers faced an enormous challenge. They had to design a civil work of art that could hold exceptional water heights and storms. This design process took place in after war Netherlands where materials and money were scarce. This was in 1953.

This means no fancy computational models of water heights and storm simulations were available or programs that could predict the numbers about the storm the works should be able to withstand. Creating these works also influenced the area greatly. Moving water would become standing water, salt water would become sweet water and tides would be gone. This influences the ecosystems drastically. Considering also that there were also the worldwide economical important harbours of Rotterdam and Antwerp that were very dependent because this delta is their gate to the seas and oceans.

The major concept of the Deltaworks consists of shortening the coast line. By closing of multiple parts of the delta 700 kilometers of coastlines are reduced to only around 80 kilometers. This decreased the needed defence works quite a lot. The design was completed in 1957, four years after the great flood and the queen accepted the Deltalaw defining the height of dykes and other requirements.

The works could start five years after the first meeting of engineers was held. The

government understood the complexity of this design and assigned 25 years of construction to it. The project in the end however took 43 years along many budget and design changes.

As stated in this article many times before, these works were groundbreaking and the impact on the Netherlands was (and is) therefore extensive. The works caused the area of the province of Zeeland to increase with land becoming available after being reclaimed from the sea. It also brought roads that were placed on top of the works. Prosperity gladly used these roads to introduce itself to Zeeland.

Local inhabitants who lost almost everything during the flood provided the badly needed hands that built the dams and dykes. Before, most of the transport went via small ferries.

With the new roads tourism got a boom and the amount of inhabitants increased.

The change with the biggest impact was however the impact on the natural systems.

Not only the ecosystems within the delta that is called Zeeland are affected, the works also affects the ecosystems further inland.

The works handed the Netherlands control over the large influence that water has on Dutch ecosystems. This gave interesting possibilities. This is an effect that was not really thought about a lot during the initial design phase as protection was the most important focus. The building however commenced during the sixties: the sixties were the time of the flower power movement; as the name of the movement suggest, the human control of Dutch ecosystems did not provide a happy marriage with this movement. Mass protests were held and the government decided to make a compromise.

This compromise consisted of creating a half open stormvloedkering which did not close the Oosterschelde permanently but could be closed during test and emergencies. The other parts of the delta stayed closed. It shows that the design of the Deltaworks is an example of engineering history. The design belonged not only to a closed to the outside world engineering office anymore, the works are now also a product of the municipality which oversees the works.

The remaining power given by the Deltaworks is actively used: the sluices can let water in and let redundant water flow into the sea. The Haringvlietsluizen are used to keep the river

water level low. If during periods of drought however the water level is low the dams are closed to hold the water and stop salinization: if a river provides too little pressure against the sea, salt water will enter our agricultural land destroying crops and poisoning cattle.

The closing of multiple parts of the delta also provides negative effects as mentioned before.

In the first decades of the Deltaworks, nature and the quality of water were struggling a lot.

On top of that biodiversity decreased. Mussels, salmon and trout could not reach multiple rivers anymore and simply disappeared.

Economy based on this got a big hit and as is known, an ecosystem consists of chains: when removing one link the whole chain fails.

Another negative effect is the still water. The combination of still and sweet water is used by algae to spread. These problems are solved by creating new openings in the works that are closed off during disasters or tests.

The Deltaworks are very adaptive. This adaptive design is demonstrated in one of the more recent changes: water turbines are added on the partly open elements of the system providing green energy. The Deltaworks are constantly tested to keep them up to date.

Regulations concerning the requirements of the Deltaworks are re-evaluated every 50 years to keep the Deltaworks working and relevant.

The Deltaworks can be labeled as one of the most interesting and influencing works of art that the science and art of civil engineering has brought to mankind. It has shown (and still shows) the capability of Dutch water engineering to the world because of the scale, the concerning parties, the design process and the background of having no experience with this before. The reputation of the Deltaworks is quite interesting as it is never actually used to its full potential. History and the present however show us that the works, although made of permanent concrete, are very adaptive. This leaves us all with a resting and safe feeling, which might actually be the greatest benefit of the Deltaworks.

Images: 1. Deltawerken (photo by Raimond Spekking) Sources: 1. Rijkswaterstaat. ”De Deltawerken”. Rijkswaterstaat.nl 1 2. Stichting Deltawerken Online. “De Deltawerken”. 2004. deltawerken.com. 3. Delta.

“De Afronding van een Onmogelijk Karwei”. 1997. delta.tudelft.nl.

CORE 27

Man-made islands An insider’s look into the bizarre world of Dubai’s man-made islands Whether it is about enforcing dykes or constructing new land in sea, the Dutch are well-known for their ability to tackle any water-related civil engineering challenge. All over the world, Dutch people are working on projects like these. In this interview, Chris Waanders will give us an insight into the bizarre world of man-made islands in the Middle-East. Chris started as a crane operator, later he got more leading and managing roles.

He worked on projects like the ‘Palm Islands’ and ‘The World’ in Dubai, where dredging and other techniques are used to create artificial islands in distinct shapes. Let’s dive into the interview. Text: Teun van Warmerdam, Layout: Quirine Heijnen What is it like to work and live in rich Middle Eastern countries as a Dutchman?

“Everything is artificial, everything is fake.

There is basically nothing. Right outside the city, you enter the desert. Out there is nothing, lives nothing, nothing to experience. Within the city, everything is artificial and fake. But is that bad? I’m not sure. But does one need to kid himself financially to create this much land in the water, with all the financial and environmental costs… It is quite something.

Workwise, the largest difference with the Netherlands is the uncontrolled and unstructured way of working in the Middle East. In the Netherlands, people come wellprepared and there is a clear planning. But in the Middle East everything is very unorganized.

You could be working on a certain part of

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a project, when suddenly someone decides things must go differently, and you need to drop your work and start on something completely different. That was something frustrating I encountered quite often. The fact that some islands are left deserted without buildings, characterizes this. You won’t encounter this in the Netherlands that often, it would be the same as if the second Maasvlakte would be left unfinished and deserted. For me personally, it is a pity as well. In a preferable situation you work on a project that can be left behind finished, with a proud feeling. “ Could you elaborate on the deserted islands?

Everything is artificial, everything is fake “The prime example of this is found in the ‘The World’ project in Dubai. (In this project, the actual world is rebuilt in small islands with the shape of countries and continents, resembling the world). When the first island was finished, rumours had it that the mistress of the former crown prince lived on this island for a few years. In the meantime, the surrounding islands were being constructed but have not been built on to this day. The first island is the only built-on island in the prestigious project ‘The World’. On the mistress’ island a large villa is constructed with complete utility amenities like aggregates and desalination units to water

the garden and to use for showers. Complete madness, but truly happened.

The third Palm Tree remains unbuilt and therefore unpopulated as well (Chris shows me Google Earth images from November 2019, which show completely empty islands). The construction started in 2007, but when the crisis struck in 2008 the project was postponed.

During the construction of the third Palm Tree, the word was that a large casino would be built on the islands. As can be seen on Google Earth, this has not happened to this day. Such a shame for these projects. The intentions were good, but in the end the projects have not lifted off. Even the first island, finished about 15 years ago, is not fully built-on yet.“ Who are the people that initiate and design these islands?

“We all worked for Nakheel, the state-owned real estate firm from Dubai. They develop and supervise these type of projects. The royal family of Dubai has a big influence, but I do not know their influence on projects like these and the finances behind it. What you can see with these projects is that they are prone to fail when the economic interests are not substantial. The construction of a LMG-terminal, also on an artificial island for a gas bubble between Qatar and Iran, has been used from day one due to the economic interests. Those projects are fulfilling, but what happened in Dubai, basically made no sense.

Aquatecture

Yet it was a beautiful experience in a great environment.

The first island is the only built-on island What always surprised me over the years is when you empty a large vessel with twenty to thirty thousand tons of stone for dykes into sea, it all seems to disappear. To create the dykes to protect these artificial islands, the number of tons of material needed is gigantic.

It actually isn’t sand that is being gathered for these islands, but it is starving coral, taken from about thirty kilometres offshore. Things like enforcement of dykes, looking at rising sea levels, are essential to protect us from water. What happens in Dubai however, is of a completely different level. There is no urgent need for the islands and their dykes. You’re working here at the equator, which means tides are not a big deal.

The developers had the biggest plans during construction of “the world”. The idea was, for example, that the miniature version of Ireland would be bought by an Irish firm, to build a small version of Ireland on the artificial island. That was the plan, but it could not be further away from reality. ‘Palm Investia’ was a Benelux oriented investment firm that even aired commercials on television for plots on the

Palm Trees in Dubai. The firms did not survive the crisis in 2008. Nothing remained from these plans.“ How do people experience living on manmade islands?

“In my experience, it’s all about status. It’s either their second home, or they live here because they earn a lot of money now that they have a job in Dubai. Being an expat, you earn quite some money in Dubai, which makes the life in Dubai pleasant. The native inhabitants of Dubai don’t have to work, they get a monthly payment from the state, which is about 150.000 dollars, just simply because they are born there. Half of the inhabitants of Dubai however, are workmen. They live in container dwellings outside of the city. It’s the disguised reality that can be found in more places in the Middle East. I won’t call them slaves, since they get some money, but they live far off under poor conditions. The same happens with the football stadiums now in Qatar. Cheap workers with lack of knowledge result in many deadly incidents.“ Looking forward into the future, do you see chances or innovations related to man-made islands, both on national and mondial scale?

“Of course, there are possibilities, we have been doing this for years, also in the Netherlands. Looking at costs however, it is a bit more complicated in the Netherlands. Since there is still space in the Netherlands to build,

why would you choose to build on water? “ Do you see any opportunities with artificial islands in the battle against the rising sea levels? “It is definitely possible. The way we do it now is similar, with the nation-wide running project of dyke-enforcing. It is just something we will have to do without a choice.

The tricky thing is, people want to live where other people live. Looking at Dubai, everything revolves around one economic bubble. That is why everyone wants to be in Dubai. Same for the Randstad. That is why people look for new opportunities to build more and more. One of those options is to build on water, which of course is not the cheapest option.“ Who knew that in the glamorous and prestigious Middle East countries the reality of these bizarre projects can actually be quite underwhelming? I know I didn’t. The projects have resulted in deserted islands at a huge financial and environmental cost. I highly recommend you to dive into Google Earth yourself and experience the tragic sight of the empty islands around Dubai for yourself.

Images: 1. Water (photo: pxhere.com). 2. Beach (photo: pxhere.com) 3. Sandboot (photo: Rory Batho) 4. House (photo: Chris Waanders)

CORE 29

Water Systems and Impending Water Crisis Water is the most fought for resource in the history of mankind. A large range of water related conflicts have occurred throughout history, though many times the conflicts or wars that started were not for water alone.

Control over territories changed, dams were built and borders were drawn, all for the control of water sources. An extensive database of such conflicts has been developed by the Pacific Institute, an American nonprofit organization that focuses on analysis of policy with regards to development, environment and security of fresh water. This database has details of water conflicts going back to almost 6,000 years ago. There are still conflicts over water all over the world. Some conflicts occur between nations or within nations, between private corporations, etc.

Freshwater scarcity is a global concern. This is interlinked with how water is obtained throughout the world. Text: Arjun Tyagi, Layout: Tessa van Amelsvoort Across the globe different water management techniques are applied to obtain water. They vary with climate, geography and resources available in each country to purify water for consumption and use. Many countries do not have safe drinking water in the taps and only some countries are able to provide this service.”Water: A privilege or a right?” The UN declared drinking water as a basic human right in 2007, however drinking water is still

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considered a privilege in many countries.

Purification of water is done differently in each country. Europe heavily relies upon surface water sources, such as lakes, rivers, coastal waters, canals etc, from which it is purified and provided for use. Whereas in Asia, a lot of countries depend on rain water to fill the surface water sources and underground water sources as well. Some parts of both Europe and Asia have snowfed rivers that do not dry over time, depending on use.

For instance, the Netherlands has a water refineries in all provinces that are responsible for supplying water to each province. The Netherlands relies upon the rivers and its canals and groundwater that is regularly replenished by rain. Similarly, in France, every province has different water suppliers that get their water from different regions of the Alps and provide for different provinces and that has a unique taste in the water they supply. Each province of France considers itself to be superior in terms of water quality provided compared to the other. This healthy competition internally between water suppliers ensures that the water quality provided is good and reliable. Drinking water from the tap is not common across Europe, some countries in Eastern Europe provide water for household purposes on tap and drinking water is purchased in large cans based on need per household.

In middle eastern countries, water is not as easy to obtain as the land is majorly a large desert with little to no ground water available.

Many countries have to filter seawater in order to be able to supply to the cities. The water purification has two levels, basic purification is done to supply water to households, offices, restaurants, hotels, etc. that would need water for daily use such as showers, toilets and other cleaning purposes. Then additional purification is done to water that is sold separately in cans that are used for drinking purposes. To have a difference between tap water and drinking water is a common method of water management in a lot of countries in Asia and South America.

”Water: A privilege or a right?”

Water management throughout the world is either reliant on surface water or groundwater, both of which are a finite resource. For example, in Southern India, rivers are rainfed and not snowfed. Therefore for water to be replenished in lakes and rivers, there is a huge dependence on Monsoon season (rain season) for water. As the name suggests, it is seasonal across different provinces and is limited. This brings forth a need to be highly conservative with the use of water. However,

Aquatecture

with a growing population and the increasing needs of people, water is becoming more and more scarce across the world. Due to a much lower rainfall in 2019, a major metropolitan city in India, Chennai, suffered extensively in August and September. Schools were forced to be closed, hotels and restaurants were running out of business, major neighborhoods had to buy water in trucks and be very careful in the use of it. Cape Town of South Africa suffered similarly in 2017 and 2018 due to unpredicted low rains. Similarly, spring 2019 was the driest season in Australia in 120 years according to the Bureau of Meteorology of the country. The heat was the major cause of the problem, leaving people to take fewer showers, gardens to dry, dirty clothes and dishes piling up and not having the required resources to clean them. Although the situation in Australia is pressing right now, it will not be the only place to experience extreme water shortages and crisis as a direct result of climate change. A report from the World Resources Institute projects that one quarter of the world is at risk from impending water crisis and at least 233 million people currently live in cities or regions that are experiencing a crisis right now. The number is only projected to grow as global temperatures rise and the frequency of extreme weather conditions such as drought, flooding and wildfires keep increasing and so does the intensity of effect. The report also projects that nearly half a billion people, living across 45 major cities of the world, would be in high-stress areas which could potentially face water shortage issues. Situations like these are only expected to aggravate as suggested by the recent findings that our global water sources are shrinking.

It may seem contradictory that we are both seeing our water supplies dry up in some regions of the world and sometimes experiencing immense and unmanageable rainfalls as well. But the fact remains that the dramatic weather occurrences such as these put immense pressure on our water management systems because they are unpredictable and are unmanageable in terms of intensity at which they occur. Water bodies such as lakes and rivers need a steady level of rainfall to prevent droughts and also to prevent flooding. It is highly likely that the planet will continue to experience extreme weather conditions such as massive rainfalls, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc. All of the above

mentioned calamities present a challenge to our systems in their own unique ways.

Climate change and the fact that water is a finite resource, puts immense pressure on our water management systems and questions the current techniques we employ in various parts of the world. Unfortunately, there is not a single solution of water management that can be employed all over the world. Different regions based on geography, climate, and access to water require different strategies and also different needs based on the amount of people living in different regions and the needs of water for farming, commercial purpose and normal household use.

“Water, Water, everywhere nor any drop to drink” Climate change plays a huge role in how we need to manage water. But there are other major factors that influence these decisions and possibly cause stress in countries that are facing crisis. One example is the private sector, such as the hospitality industry that requires huge amounts of water for their functioning.

One such issue that recently occured, is the water crisis in Bali. Bali uses an irrigation system called the ‘subak’ – a sophisticated water system that diverts water from channels to rice fields and back. Subak not only stands for an irrigation system since the ninth century but it also represents a way of life based on their philosophy, to live in harmony with nature. But lately there has been a diversion of water to urban areas which are densely populated in recent years. To add to that, there has been an extensive overuse of groundwater by the hotels accommodating approximately 16 million local and domestic tourists annually.

Tourists are being held accountable for water shortage in Bali, which is also facing droughts from rain at the same time as the groundwater is being depleted. Over 260 of the 400 rivers in Bali have run dry and one of the largest water reservoirs of the island, lake Buyon had dropped by approximately 3.5 metres.

The holiday destination is still waiting for its delayed rainy season as these droughts affect over 50 million people living in Indonesia, which poses a threat to their food security, culture and quality of life, as farmers are not able to compete with the hospitality industry in

purchase of water. ‘‘Water, Water, everywhere nor any drop to drink” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These lines are used to describe a situation in which someone is in the midst of plenty of water but cannot drink any of it. Water is one of the most lucrative resources of our time and one of the most important for survival. It is therefore essential to all forms of life. With the current scenario of the world amidst climate change, it is important that all nations are careful and are judicious in the use of water. But as mentioned above, climate change is not the only factor that is threatening our way of life, industries play a major role as well and so does the end user and consumer.

1

Images: 1. Watersystems (illustration: Tessa van Amelsvoort)

Sources: 1. James Tulloch. Water Conflict : Fight or Flight Allianz. August 26, 2009. Allianz. com 2. French Public Utilities. Guide to water and Sanitation Services in France. French-property. com 3. Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. Water management in the Netherlands. Government.nl 4. Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, Ministry of Economic Affairs.

National Water Plan 2016-2021. December 2015.

5. Sujith Sourab Guntoju. Chennai Water Crisis. August 05, 2019.

Downtoearth.org.in 6. Edward Flattau. Water - A privilege or Right?.

January 14, 2015. Huffpost.com 7. WHO. Drinking-Water. Who.int 8. European Environment Agency. European freshwater overview.

January 30, 2019. Eea.europe.eu 9. Ian Lloyd Neubauer. Bali : Water Crisis. December 02, 2019. Aljazeera.com 10. AJ Dellinger.

Australian Water Crisis. December 09, 2019. mic.com

CORE 31

What can our cities learn from Imagine a city, housing millions of inhabitants, being climate-positive. Sounds ridiculous right? Nevertheless, it does occur all over the world. Not (yet) in our humanbuilt cities, but it does happen in the complex submerged cities occupied by marine life.

You can even roam through coral reefs using Google Streetview, just like our cities.

What can we, as humans, learn from the climate-positive coral reefs? Text: Teun van Warmerdam, Lay-out: Quirine Heijnen Let’s dive into the coral reefs itself first. Coral reefs are built up by so-called coral polyps.

These polyps are tiny, soft-bodied organisms, like anemones and jellyfish. At their base, a calcium carbonate skeleton provides the foundation. Layer by layer, millions of polyps together form massive colonies that grow on top of the limestone remainders of previous colonies. Even though these coral reefs only take up about 0.1% of the world’s ocean area, they house and provide nutrition for about Images: 1. Katendrecht (photo: Frans Berkelaar) 2. Coral (photo: pxhere) 3. Coral 2 (photo: NOAA Images) 4. Octopus (photo: Albert Kok) Sources: 1. Bauer, A. “Importance of Coral Reefs - Biodiscovery and the Great Barrier Reef”. qm.qld.gov.au. 2. “What is a coral reef made of?”. 2019. Ocean Service. oceanservice.noaa.gov 3. “Corals and coral reefs”. The Ocean Portal Team. ocean.si.edu 4. Wear, S. 2015.

“The Coral Reefs of Palau: Nature’s Amazing Underwater Cities” natureworkseverywhere.org

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25% of all marine life. The coral reefs are hubs in the endlessly large oceans and are therefore comparable to ‘cities’ as we know them.

The numbers are comparable for humans.

About 25% of our population lives in cities as well. Because of their positive impact on the environment, coral reefs are also called ‘the rainforest of the sea’. However, our cities are far from being called ‘the new rainforests’.

Coral reefs not only help and house marine life, but they also help in achieving climate positivity and vitality for human life as well.

Between the corals, fish can spawn safely and spend time before roaming the great wideopen oceans. The coral reefs also assist in carbon and nitrogen fixing in seawater, next to recycling nutrients. Additionally, humans retrieve medication from coral reefs, like painkillers made from the venom that certain coral snails disperse and anti-cancer drugs that rely on extracts retrieved from sponges found in Caribbean reefs. The vivid colourfulness of

the coral reefs gives us joy and pleasure, even by just looking at pictures. Ironically, lifeless grey tints often dominate our cities. Next to this, our intensive consumerism and energy use, strengthened by urban life, results in human-amplified greenhouse effects. This will increase the water temperature in our oceans, at which the colourful polyps in coral reefs starve, bleaching the coral reefs into desolated concrete-like ruins. This way, we directly pose a threat to the lively climate-positive submerged cities of coral reefs with our own often boring climate-negative cities.

The rainforest of the sea

Aquatecture

coral reefs?

Then the most pressing question arises: why are our cities not climate positive, vital and vivid like coral reefs have been for almost 500 million years? The answer might be found in the mutualism that can be observed at almost every level and relationship in the coral reefs. All work delivered by producers like algae, primary consumers like small fish, sea turtles and sponges and secondary consumers like sharks, is in essence beneficial for the community. The work us humans deliver however, is often self-centred and requires more resources and energy than it will ever deliver. The built environment around us and all of our properties require enormous amounts of energy and resources. When their lifetime comes to an end, even more energy is required to remove it from our sight, to

leave it to waste somewhere else. Most of our food, medicine and other products have to be retrieved from places far away from our cities, to be processed and transported into our cities. In coral reefs, this ‘production-line’ is very efficient, completely localized and free of

Bleaching the coral reefs into desolated concrete-like ruins waste. To achieve this in our cities, we should explore ways to make our (built-environment related) products generate our demanded food, medicine and other belongings.

Consider a living, growing tree that provides the structure for our buildings. All timber that is needed for the structure will be left untouched, which means that we have a carbon storing structure. The surplus of timber and growables like fruits, leaves and seeds can be used for our own consumption and healing.

More radically, the standard relationship us humans maintain with the rest of mankind (except friends and family) is far from mutualism. Rivalry, hesitations in trust, capitalistic approaches and overcomplexity in our personalities and psyche hinder a truly efficient, climate positive form of urban life.

We are more tempted to explore innovative technological solution for climate change, than take a few steps back and see what possible solutions there might already be around us on earth.

CORE 33

A crisis as the solution In 2007, the housing market collapsed in the United States, as a result of the financial and ultimately the economic crisis. This led to the fall of Lehman Brothers a year later, which was one of the largest investment banks in the world. Immediately after, the consequences of the crisis on the Dutch housing market was noticeable. The trust in financial institutions disappeared, the economy and the housing market came to a stop. Many households postponed their movement, the number of transactions decreased tremendously and the delivery of newly constructed owner-occupied houses decreased even more. A crisis is the cause of many negative changes in the real estate market. However, a crisis may also lead to positive effects, another way of thinking.

Maybe it is time for a new real estate crisis again. Text & Lay-out: Joep Dirx Since the financial crisis started, the housing market reached a low point. However, in the past years the market is getting back on its feet. When looking back on how the situation was during the crisis, the market is in a better position. Houses are getting sold again, the construction sector can make profits and

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construction workers are getting their jobs back. Though, when you look at the situation more clearly, it does not all seem so bright.

The construction sector cannot keep up with the demand and prices are going through the roof. The housing market will enter a bubble if it goes on like this. For certain groups, this means that it becomes impossible to get their hands on a new dwelling, especially for starters. The offer of dwellings in the lower and middle segments of the housing market is way too little. This means that the prices are rising excessively. This effect is even increased by the fact that the housing market becomes more of an investment market. New and different categories of investors, like foreign investors, and individuals are drawn to the housing market because of the rising rental and selling prices. For starters, who are just searching for a dwelling to like, this means that even entering the market has become impossible.

For real estate developers, the high demand for dwellings means good business. Developers can just build and build, dwellings will be sold anyway. There is only one aspect that is holding the investors back at the moment.

Since the lowest point during the crisis, the construction of real estate has risen again by 33,9 percent. However, the number of jobs since this moment has only risen by 5,4 percent. Thereby known that both these numbers decreased around 19 percent during the crisis. This means that construction companies have to search everywhere for manpower. A part of the employees they hire is the ones they fired during the crisis. This makes the rates for staff way higher. The staff is not the only aspect that causes higher construction costs. Materials and land are in high demand, which pushes the cost even higher. Since the construction sector is getting back on its feet again, the average construction cost is increasing with 4,5 percent per year.

These variations are causing an unexpected effect. More construction companies are going bankrupt, because of the rising cost. With the shortage of staff and the rising construction cost, they cannot keep up with the rising demand. For these companies, the contracts are just not viable anymore.

These aspects make it more difficult for investors to gain large profits from the

developments. Even though, dwellings are selling like crazy. The high construction costs force the investors to save on other cost items of developments. One of these aspects is creativity and exclusivity. Dwellings are selling since the demand is high, people just want a roof above their head. The esthetics of a dwelling may, therefore, be less of an important criteria for a buyer. This is just the tool that investors are using. Since the exclusivity is not that important, and construction cost is high, it is perfect for an investor to develop dwellings in masses. The same kind of houses are popping up in every neighbourhood. Social aspects become less important, as long as a dwelling sells as quickly as possible for the highest price as possible.

One might think that therefore a next crisis will be the solution to the rising problems in the housing market. Companies need to be creative during a crisis, they need to think differently. As Bouwend Nederlands mentions: “Some companies developed innovations during the time of the financial crisis. Those who could not get to work on a construction site were used for research and

development to think about creative solutions for contemporary issues. How do you build a unique home in series, modular and in a factory-like way, at a sometimes difficult location?” During a crisis, these are the aspects that are thought through. Companies need to earn their money in other, more creative ways. Problems with the housing stock may be solved with more creative solutions. Solutions that can only be discovered during a crisis.

In good financial times as at the moment, developers are just building what is most convenient and profitable for them. During the crisis, other ways of construction may come, some of which in the meantime can solve more problems. Similar to what happened during the last crisis, where friends housing became a thing and where offices were transformed into shared living concepts. These ways of living, these ways of solving social living problems, can only be thought of during a crisis.

So to combine everything, construction costs are rising through the roof, which construction companies go bankrupt. Creativity and exclusivity are sacrificed by developers to gain as much profit from dwellings. And

Problems with the housing stock may be solved with more creative solutions.

Solutions that can only be discovered during a crisis.

because of the pressure on the construction sector, social and demographic problems are not an import aspect anymore. One might argue that a crisis may be the best solution to save the housing market. Besides that, there is one thing that is not arguable and that is innovation. As Madeline Buijs, real estate sector economist, states: “Innovation is crucial for the construction sector. It ensures that costs are reduced and can be kept under better control. More efficient work and less personnel are required, and labor productivity can be increased. Innovation also leads to higher returns in construction, which means that companies are better able to build a buffer for when the weather gets worse. However, innovation requires capital and requires a different method of working.

Innovation, therefore, provides an extra risk in the short term. And this is precisely a sector that is already struggling with traditionally low margins that can hardly bear these extra risks.

The construction sector appears to be stuck in a loop at this point.”

Images: 1. Ratings through house (Illustration: Joep Dirx) Sources: 1. Elsinga, M., De Jong-Tennekes, M., Van der Heijden, H.. Crisis en woning1 markt. TU Delft. June 15, 2011. 2. Michael Hesp. Wakker liggen van de volgende vastgoedcrisis?. July 1, 2019. Vastgoedmarkt.nl. 3. Ad Buisman.

Accountants waarschuwen voor ‘onvermijdelijk keerpunt’. June 22, 2018. Vastgoedmarkt.nl. 4. Joke Geldhof. Crisis maakt creatief. July 6, 2018. Creditexpo.nl. 5. Madeline Buijs. Hoogconjunctuur blijft in de bouw voor problemen zorgen. January 22, 2019. Insights. abnamro.nl.

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ZAHA HADID Zaha Hadid was one of the most famous architects of our time and was probably the most famous female architect ever. Her daring designs faced criticism at first, but now they have become an inspiration for many aspiring architects. Not many architects could do what she did, as each design was as innovative as the last. Her architectural style has always been very hard to describe accurately. She was not tied down by one, but instead took inspiration from many different styles.

Even though her style is hard to define, it is immediately clear when a design is hers. Her impact on the world of architecture was great, but how great was it truly? And how did the world move on after her death in 2016?

Text: Lianne Willekers, Lay-out: Karim Jaspers

Her life Zaha Hadid was born in Iraq and her inspiration and love for architecture was sparked when she visited the Sumerian cities, in southern Iraq. There, she saw the site of one of the world’s oldest civilizations and was inspired by how everything naturally flowed together, as she described it. She started studying mathematics in Beirut, Lebanon, after she finished school. She later described these years as the happiest years of her life. Only after the rise of dictator Saddam Hussein did her family

leave Iraq, and she moved to London. There, she enrolled in the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where it became clear very early on that architectural design came naturally to her. One of her teachers was famous Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, who she said ‘ignited her ambitions’ and ‘taught her to trust her strangest intuitions’. After she had earned her degree she started working at his office, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, which was every bit as ambitious as she was. After working there for several years, she started her own London-based firm, Zaha Hadid Architects, together with her partner, Patrik Schumacher. Her unrealized plans and drawings drew much attention from the architectural community. She was praised for having new ideas and became a leader in theoretical design. Notebooks filled with ideas were published in magazines, but her designs remained unrealized. Only after a couple years, her first project was realized, the Vitra Fire Station, and it gained her international acclaim.

For years she worked on ambitious projects, which ultimately got her the Pritzker Prize.

She was the first and thus far only woman to ever earn the prize that is often described as architecture’s Nobel prize. Zaha Hadid was an innovator and helped shape the architectural world into what it is today. When she died, she left behind unfinished projects and a mark on the architectural world.

Inspiration and works A large part of her inspiration came from Russian avant-garde art. Tatlin, Lissitzky and especially Malevich, after whom she named

her graduation project, influenced her work greatly. A result of her interest in Malevich in particular, led her to adopt a design tool that helped her create her greatest design: painting.

Painting helped her see different perspectives as she was developing her designs. Malevich’s paintings gave her new ideas about how space could be distorted in such a way that it did not lose continuity. Using these paintings led to the idea of layering drawings over each other in order to create interesting shapes and views, that could later be literally translated into building designs. These paintings were a

Zaha Hadid was an innovator and helped shape the architectural world into what it is today. large part of her time at architecture school, but also served as a large influence for her designs in her professional career. Her first major project, was the Vitra Fire Station.

This is a fire station located on a corporate campus located in Germany. The composition of elements in the project is unconventional, with jagged edges and geometric forms that are not often seen. Fellow architects praised the project, while the firefighters who actually had to use the building were very critical and eventually moved out. This project marked the start of her reputation as an architect of unconventional ways, and one who paid

VITRA FIRE STATIO N 36

HEYDAR ALIYEV CENTER no attention to critics who called her works impractical. Many great projects were made after this. These include an opera house in Guangzhou, China, for which she used nature as a large inspiration. She compared the building to ‘pebbles in a stream smoothed by erosion’. This unique shape reminds you of the relation between architecture and nature, and the way that the two are connected. Another brilliant piece of architecture was completed in 2013. The Heydar Aliyev Center in the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, was designed as a cultural center with fluid lines and motions made to connect the building to the surrounding square. It is simply an excellent, original piece of architecture, that stands in stark contrast with the rest of the city. Her extravagant ideas and concepts became a reality, and with it she became one of the most famous architects of

all time. Proof of her fame and renown came when she won multiple awards for her work, especially the Pritzker prize. She was one of the few architects to ever win this prestigious prize.

Parametricism Of course, this all could not have been accomplished if it was not for her architecture firm, and her partner Patrik Schumacher. He played an instrumental role in her designs and even created the term parametricism to accurately describe the way they used a computer-based approach to their designs.

Explaining what parametricism really entails and why it is so important that these two architects popularized the term, is not easy.

The simplest way is to say that parametric design uses a system of variables to produce a certain geometric shape, which can be made

into any possible shape, as long as the variables allow it. This way of designing obviously allows architects to come up with outrageous shapes, and was therefore a revolutionary approach in architecture. Schumacher even argues that it will become known as the next great style after modernism. Parametricism is an entirely new style in and of itself, but will be different than other great architectural styles, in a way that is very remarkable. Mainstream architectural styles today are nothing more than modernism with a slight twist, according to Schumacher.

Parametricism is completely new, with daring projects popping up all around the globe, many of them created by Zaha Hadid Architects.

Their projects have proved that parametricism as a style is not just a distant dream, but it is a style that works and a style that is liked and appreciated by architecture lovers. These architects made this new architectural style big and have had, without a doubt, an enormous influence on the architectural community. To say that they invented this style is not correct, as there are many cases of architects using variables to determine the shape of a future building, but they did in fact popularize it immensely. Perhaps this is the reason why many people always say Zaha Hadid’s buildings cannot be categorized in one particular style. It is because she made her own.

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Images: 1. Black Square and Red Square (source: wikiart.org, edit: Karim Jaspers) 2.

Vitra Fire Station (source: flickr.com, edit: Karim Jaspers 3. Heydar Aliyev Center (source: commons.wikimedia.org, edit: Karim Jaspers)

Sources: 1. Michael Kimmelman. “Zaha Hadid, Groundbreaking Architect, Dies at 65”. March 31, 2016. Nytimes.com 2.

Unknown. “Zaha Hadid receives Royal Gold Medal”. February 4, 2016. Architecture.com 3. Patrik Schumacher. “Patrik Schumacher on Parametricism – ‘Let the style wars begin’”. May 6, 2010.

Architectsjournal.co.uk

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Failure worth dying for The definition of architecture to Jay A. Pritzker: “Architecture is intended to transcend the simple need for shelter and security by becoming an expression of artistry.” Architecture can be seen as an expression of creativity. It is a work of art created by the architect. The most public work of art, since architecture is the art of making sure that our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live. However, sometimes the expression of the architect does not fit the way people want to live. A building may not fit to the aesthetic or practical needs of the people and can therefore fall to the opinion of the public. Text & Layout: Joep Dirx

When does an error become greater than life?

Critique from the public on a building or just the malfunction of a building itself can lead to devastation consequences for the architect.

Even so devastation that it can cost the life of the architect. In past years there have been several architects that committed suicide due Images: 1. Architect drawing (image: Ramon Rugl) 2.

Clouds (Joep Dirx) Sources: 1. Becky Quintal. 121 Definitions of Architecture. January 12, 2019. Archdaily.com. 2. De Wereld 1 Draait Door. Boek ‘Waagstukken’ – Charlotte van den Broeck. October 31, 2019. Bnnvara.nl. 3. Julia Teresa Friehs. The ‘sunken chest’: The building of the Vienna Court Opera on the Ring. N.d. Habsburger.net.

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to or by their designed buildings. Several of these occurrences are described in the book Waagstukken by Charlotte Van den Broeck.

The main question asked is: “When is a failure worth dying for? I want to ask: when does an error become greater than life, or so large that life itself becomes failure? Where does the seam between maker and work run?”

One of the examples given is the Vienna State Opera, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. The opera was the first major building on the Vienna Ring Road and should be the first grand building of many to follow. However, the building was not very popular to the public. This was simply for one reason that the public did not like the architectural style of the building. The public simply thought another architect, Theophil Hansen, could have done a better job. The architectural style of architects August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll was too organic and therefore to bold according to the public. Next to that, the level of the street surrounding the opera was raised by a meter in front of the opera after its construction had begun. This resulted in the optical illusion that the building was sinking, thus it was linked to a sunken treasure chest.

All the hate exclaimed because of the building, even before competition of the building, was resent to the architects of the building. In this occasion the error became greater than life, even so large that life itself became failure. Architect Eduard van der Nüll committed suicide because of all the critique and hate on the building. His piece of art was not appreciated by the public, which led to the worst possible consequence. For other forms of art, people have the choice to see it, for a building it is stuck in the city, in the public space, and will therefore get the opinion from the whole public. So in case of the Vienna State Opera that failure became worth dying for. The other architect, August Sicard von Sicardsburg died ten weeks later from tuberculosis, so neither architect saw the completion of the building.

Eduard van der Nüll was not the only architect that took his life due to his creation. There are several more architects known that took their life due to or by their own designed buildings.

So the failure of such a public placed piece of art can become greater than life. These architects literally gave their life to the building, to their architectural expression.

DURA VERMEER AT A GLANCE Branch Construction & Real Estate Employees 2700 Headquarters Rotterdam Contact Felix Kessels HR manager Visiting address Pettelaarpark 1 5216 PC ‘s-Hertogenbosch Contact details 06- 53 95 14 25 f.kessels@duravermeer.nl www.duravermeer.nl

Dura Vermeer is a family owned construction company operating throughout the Netherlands which, with a turnover of more than €1.3 billion and some 2,700 employees, counts among the top of the Dutch construction market. Dura Vermeer was founded in 1855 and has a focus on long term continuity and long term relationships with her most important stakeholders. We are active in the residential construction, non-residential construction, infrastructure and rail market segments. Our core activities are the development and realisation of our own newbuild projects, maintenance and renovation.

Dura Vermeer Bouw Zuid Dura Vermeer Bouw Zuid is one of the operating companies located in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and is responsible for the development and construction of new buildings in the area Brabant, Limburg, Zeeland.

CSR and sustainability Dura Vermeer subscribes to the view that proper and responsible business practices are a precondition for building trust and thus for the continuity of the company.

The CSR and sustainability policy focused in the following issues: • Safety • Integrity • Employees • Waste • Reducing carbon emissions • Customer satisfaction • Innovations • Supply chain partnerships INTERNSHIP TRAINEESHIP • •

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Dealing with climate change: a case study in urban water management

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Over the entire world climate issues have been growing in the last years, leading to problems for the built environment as well. These environmental problems mainly concern issues related to excessive heat zones and to problems related to water drainage. If these problems are neglected they can lead to serious health and safety issues, both in The Netherlands and in the rest of the world. Since the majority of the Dutch landscape is located beneath sea level, especially the problems related to water drainage are of utmost importance to Dutch governments. In this article two cases are looked into, one located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and the other in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Text: Jasper Poel, Lay-out: Sacha de Bruin The first case is located in Rotterdam, SouthHolland. Here a so-called ‘water square’ has been designed by De Urbanisten. The Water Square Benthem-square covers an area of 9000 m2 and has been completed in 2013 for the City of Rotterdam. The square lies between three buildings and functions as a gathering and recreational urban location. On the square, there are three main basins located. During dry periods, these basins allow for activities such as skateboarding, dancing, football, volleyball and basketball. These activities can be monitored from the steps, which together with the greenery and use of color create a playful and attractive design.

The extraordinary part of this square can however only be noticed in periods of excessive rainfall. When such rain showers occur, the basins will fill up with water. The entire square is designed with such slopes, that from all individual locations the water is able to flow into the basins. Of the three basins, two are active every time it rains, where only one fills up when there is a consistent period of rainfall. In total the basins can allow a maximum of 1.700 m3 of water to be stored and managed. The water will be lead in the basins by a rhythm of waterfalls and large steel gutters, which also allow active people to engage in skateboarding. Since the basins need to be drained in a sustainable way, an underground infiltration system is used. This system allows the water to gradually seep back into the ground, which ultimately leads to a more balanced ground water level. This balanced system will allow plants and trees to survive dryer periods. This survival will

ultimately lead to the reduction of urban heat islands, which is one of the most alarming climate problems that the Dutch urban planning system is facing.

This Water Square Benthem-square in Rotterdam is an example of urban water management which considered water drainage and heat zone problems during the design phase. This led to a balanced water system in which the possibility of floodings will be reduced to a minimum. There is however also a downside: the costs. The entire construction of this square cost around 4,5 million Euros.

Due to the fact that the urban square cannot be exploited by selling or renting, this ultimately lead to a high monetary loss for the municipality. In this case the question therefore remains: is one sustainable square worth 4,5 million Euros?

For the second square we take a look at a square located in Copenhagen, Denmark. The Tåsinge Square has been designed for the City of Copenhagen and covers an area of 7000 m2, which was ultimately completed in 2014.

Here the square originally used by private vehicles, was transformed into a new green and blue square, which deals with the same climate problems as the earlier discussed water square. The square was originally covered completely with impermeable asphalt. This asphalt did not allow the water to be drained into the soil, leading to several floods during periods of excessive rainfall and an unattractive location within the city.

The new face of the Tåsinge Square was created by a more subtle means of water drainage than at the Van Benthem Square.

Here the square basically followed the principle of a rainforest, where nature itself is used to clear the area from excessive water. The transformation consisted of a replacement of the large amount of asphalt by a new garden, where urban sculptures create an aesthetic appeal to the square. Creating aesthetics with objects instead of spectacular ingenious height differences is not also effective but also less expensive. Here, the total costs were approximately two million Euros, which is half the costs of the Dutch water square. These sculptures did not only follow beauty, but also function. Two of the objects are large metal umbrellas, do not only relate to the concept of water but also have another function. These

umbrellas collect the water and channels them into the subsoil, which allows the water to be drained more easily on these specific locations. The remaining part of the square has been created by a wide arrange of flora with numerous trees, plants, flowers and tall grasses. This does not only help tackle water problems and air pollution, but also allow numerous insects, birds and small mammals to survive more easily.

These two squares follow the same goal, but have different approaches in achieving this goal. In the Dutch square large basins are created, which are filled by ingenious height differences in the hardened, impermeable soil over the majority of the square. This allows for the water balance to be restored at a lower pace, but does come with high risks and costs during the construction process. Another way of achieving the goal of tackling rainfall problems and urban heat islands can be found in Copenhagen. Here not height differences, but the use of flora and small urban objects is used. This resulted in lower construction costs, and an increased focus on secondary benefits a water square can have. Here the bigger relative amount of greenery, and variety in greenery, will probably result in a better air quality and survival of numerous mammals and insects as well.

These two are not the only water squares that can be found in the world, as more are continuously built following the awareness of climate issues. Comparing two of them can be considered as interesting, but the most important thing for us is to do is to celebrate the presence of these squares as these squares are tangible examples of dealing with climate change and have, except for the costs, only positive characteristics.

Images: 1. Blue square illustration (illustration: Sacha de Bruin) Sources: 1. Nemo Kennislink, 2013, Water square makes Rotterdam rain proof. From: https://www.nemokennislink.nl/publicaties/ waterplein-maakt-rotterdam-regenproof/ 2. Public space, 2018, Refurbishment of Tåsinge Square. From: https://www.publicspace.org/works/-/project/j075-refurbishment-of-tasinge-square 3. Public space, 2018, Water Square in Benthemplein. From: https://www.publicspace.org/works/-/project/ h034-water-square-in-benthemplein 4. The Urbanisten, 2020, Portfolio Water Square Rotterdam. From: http://www.urbanisten.nl/ wp/?portfolio=waterplein-benthemplein 1

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Air Infrastructure The built environment is mostly located on the ground, or as we discussed in this Chepos sometimes on water, but what about the air?

Travel behavior is located increasingly in the air; first hot air balloons, zeppelins and now aircraft. The connection between cities is made more easily, which also changes tourism and business. All in all, it makes traveling easier. Yet, aviation has some downside effects on sustainability. Therefore, we nowadays face an important issue; how does the travel behavior in the air influence cities considering the advantages and disadvantages of aviation? How can the balance be found between these topics? Text and Lay-out: Quirine Heijnen A city is a large town or an urban settlement with a large population. These large towns, or big cities are not just from the last decades.

For example, take a look at the Roman Empire before Christ. Back then, there were only 40 million people in Europe of which one million were residents of Rome. Over the last centuries, cities have grown exponentially.

Cities become more dense and close to each other. These big cities can also be referred to as a metropolitan areas. Since 1920, US metropolitans have already grown by 17,9% per decade. In 2010, the mean size of the 366 (!) metropolitan areas in the world had 707,000 inhabitants where between 2000 and 2010, these cities grew on average 10,7%.

Since May 2017, 50% of the population lives in urban areas. Not only the US and Europe are developing, also the rest of the world changed their land use and developed big urban areas.

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A very surprising urban phenomenon at the time of the 1980s was in cities of the Pacific Rim like Bangkok, Guanzhou, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Jakarta, Shanghai and a dozen other cities. Just over a couple of decades, these cities grew immensely. “These cities were driven not by economic decline or desperate poverty, but by economies growing at more than seven per cent a year for a decade or longer (Sudjic, 1999).” This meant that in a large part of the world, there is an economic drive on global level. Therefore, the connection between the cities was more important than ever.

It is very difficult to plan such a big city. How do you define a conurbation on this scale? Is it defined by political, national, economical or nature boundaries? In some cases these new cities are replacing of the nation state. They have more in common with each other, than with the nation state in which they are located.

They are the principal economic engine, rather than the national economy as a whole. How can you still connect the metropolitan with the state? Is such a city based on continuously built up areas? How is the transportation system organized? How are all metropolitans connected with each other? Where do you plan airports, ports, public transport or other transport methods?

Considering the transportation between a city, aviation will be discussed. The importance of aviation in a globalized world is inescapable; its differential impact on the quality of urban life, influence on urban form, and thus

Rapid commercial developments at and around airports makes them leading urban growth generators. implications for urban planning, are profound.

Airports bring a fast connection between different conurbations. “Airports, along with shopping malls and museums, are one of the definitive ‘‘public’’ spaces of the contemporary city. (Sudjic, 1999)” Rapid commercial developments at and around airports makes them leading urban growth generators.

Because of these influences, airports are growing like weed. Some may say that airports are new city landmarks and new national gateways.

A good example to show how important airports have become is Schiphol. Around 1980, the Dutch government stimulated to make two main airports in the Netherlands; Schiphol and Rotterdam Airport. They were both the cornerstones to improve The Netherlands’s international position. Soon it turned out that Schiphol was much more successful than Rotterdam Airport. Schiphol has an amazing location due to the fact that it is close by Amsterdam but still had space around the airport for more urban development. In this area, a new business district was developed with Schiphol being the center of it. Nowadays at Schiphol, 320 destinations are offered by 111 different airlines with 4861 flights every week. So, despite the success of Schiphol, it constantly needs new development, but space is limited.

Therefore recently, they are even looking for expanding the, so called, AirportCity to Flevoland.

Although an airport brings economic prosperity to a country, it also has its downsides. These last few years, it has become clear that the environment of the planet is in danger and aviation is a major contributor to the environmental pollution. The environmental impact of aviation occurs when an aircraft engines emit heat, noise, particulates and gases. It emits gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxides, lead and black carbon. According to the European

Environment Agency report (EEA), an airplane emits 285 g CO2 /passenger/km for a plane while a train emits 14 g of CO2 / passenger/ km for the train. Hence, it is not ideal anymore to keep using the airplanes like we are using them now.

So far, the debate about solutions to the problems caused by transport has gone in two directions. One is making aviation ‘‘greener’’,

The environment of the planet is in danger and aviation being a major contributor to the environmental pollution. that is making them ‘‘cleaner’’ and using energy more efficiently, for example through increased kilometers per liter etc. The other is to get people to use them less, through various taxes and/or restrictions, and instead encourage the use of public transport. To make aviation “greener” and therefore make the sector CO2 free, is unfortunately not possible yet. It is predicted that it will be possible in 20 years.

There is an initiative to reduce short distance flights in Europe. According to the CBR, in 2018 8,5 million people flew for a short flight.

For example, 491.542 people flew to Berlin from the Netherlands while that is only 6 hours by train. Thus, GroenLinks (Dutch Party of Parliament) wants to decrease the price difference between train and plane, make it more easy to use (and book) the international train and make the trajectory faster to make for a shorter travel time.

Aviation gives great possibilities and new prosperities to a city. Nowadays, it could be said that it can be a landmark of a new city.

While aviation becomes more important, the importance should be reduced because of the environmental impact. People should be more careful how they travel and look if there are good alternatives instead of immediately taking the airplane.

Image: 1. Landscape (pxhere.com. n.d.) 2. Plane (pxhere.com. n.d.)

Sources: 1. Robert Freestone. “Spatial Planning Models of Airport-Driven Urban Development”.

2011. Journal of Planning Literature. 2. Gilles Duranton. “The growth of cities”. 05-2013.

Oecd.org. 3. Ute Knippenberger. “Airports in Cities and Regions”.

Karlsruhe 2009. 4. Blake Morgan. “How Far Are We From Flying Zero-Emission Airplanes?” 25-09-2019. Forbes.com. 5. Mette Jensen. “Passion and heart in transport – a sociological analysis on transport behavior”. Transport Policy. (volume 6/issue 1, 1999, page 19-33). 6. Tweede Kamer. “GroenLinks wil actieplan international trein”. 5-06-2018. Groenlinks.nl. 7. Deyan Sudjic. “The Third Megacities lecture: Identity in the city”. 19-11-1999.

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A CLOSER LOOK

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A sensational triumph of landscape architecture, Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport saw a redesign that transformed it into one of the most eye-catching and awe-inspiring hubs we’ve ever seen.

The redesign occurred because of air travel’s position as a staple of modern life.

The Federal Aviation Administration reports that it oversees an average of 44,000 flights daily, adding up to a staggering 16,100,000 flights yearly. With air travel’s popularity comes the need for airports to evolve. It’s not a stretch to say airports can incite feelings of dread — especially considering the necessity of arriving hours early, so as not to get brick walled by the often lengthy security check-in process.

An airport should not incite fear, dread,

VIEW OF THE JEWEL CHANGI AIRPORT. COURTESY OF PWP LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE.

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or worry; naturally, this is never the intention for those who design airports, but it’s hard to escape the feeling that an airport is a place entirely transitionary, not a destination in itself. It’s hard not to see your time at the airport as a waste, as merely a means to an end.

The Jewel Changi Airport is different, though. Instead of the bland colors and uniformity we’ve come to expect from airports, the 1.7 million-square-foot Changi Airport appears a feat of architecture

and landscape design, a destination in-and-of itself for citizens of Singapore and world travelers alike. The mezzanine is bordered by a shopping mall, restaurants, a movie theater, a hotel, and other tourist attractions, rebuking that all too familiar notion that time spent in transit can’t be enjoyable.

We’ve selected the Jewel Changi Airport as our 2020 Vectorworks Landmark featured project to demonstrate what’s possible in landscape architecture and design. The imagery captures your gaze, making you question whether you’re actually looking at an airport instead of a climate-controlled forest reserve.

The project brief, according to an article in Architectural Record Magazine, was to increase the airport’s capacity from 65 million to 135 million by 2030. It called for an “attraction,” too, the nature of which was left to the design experts. They had full freedom in that regard. Moshe Safdie of Safdie Architects responded in kind by proposing a “mythical garden,” the Record states.

over 900 trees and around 60,000 shrubs.

On the airport’s topmost level, walking trails allow travelers to traverse misty rock falls and enjoy the scenery from above. According to the airport’s website, there’s an intricate hedge maze with a watchtower at its center that lets dedicated maze-goers see the maze’s layout from above once they reach the end.

VIEW OF THE 9/11 MEMORIAL. COURTESY OF PWP LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE.

The Jewel Changi Airport is such a marvel that it makes you wonder how its uniform, revolutionary design could be done by over 10 different project groups.

That’s what’s so great about the evolution of design technology — never before has it been so easy to engage in a seamless collaboration process that exceeds what could once be considered impassable communication boundaries. vectorworks.nl

What resulted was a 130-feet-tall waterfall that pumps around 10,000 gallons of water per minute down through the airport’s interior into a renewable reservoir below. This feature may remind you of the gaping reservoirs in the 9/11 Memorial, designed by Peter Walker and Partners (PWP) Landscape Architecture.

And although PWP didn’t design Jewel Changi Airport’s waterfall itself, their familiarity with water flow and surrounding environments made them a perfect fit to design the airport’s interior landscape.

The verdant surroundings have been named Shiseido Forest Valley, containing

2D DRAWING OF THE JEWEL CHANGI AIRPORT. COURTESY OF PWP LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE.

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In every Chepos an article is published from the Pantheon// and vice versa. [introduction]

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Besef van tijd blijkt elastisch. Hoe lang ik nu al bezig ben met het verjagen van kwaadaardige vuurmannen weet ik niet. Met wilde bewegingen van armen en benen verzend ik energiebundels, die de wezens tollend door de lucht doen schieten.

Eentje belandt midden tussen de saladeschalen op de grote buffettafel. De onverstoorbaarheid waarmee mijn oom doorgaat met het volscheppen van zijn bord verbaast mij. Veel tijd om hierbij stil te staan heb ik niet. Vanaf bovenaan de trap komt er alweer een nieuwe groep wezens aangerend. Ik zie nu dat mijn moeder en tante met elkaar staan te praten.

Ze kijken naar me en lachen amicaal. In de ogen van mijn tante zie ik een lichte afkeer. Blijkbaar heeft ze het niet zo op kinderen die de wereld redden.

Opeens staat mijn één jaar oudere neef naast me.

‘Wat doen we?’ vraagt hij.

Ik rol met mijn ogen. ‘Dat zie je toch? Het vuurleger valt aan, we moeten ze verslaan.’

Heel even zie ik onbegrip op zijn gezicht, maar al snel vechten we zij aan zij en maken we het vuurleger koud. De aard van de ons omringende figuren is veranderd, oogt lieflijker. Paradijsvogels vliegen nu door de ruimte en lachend kijken we om ons heen. Dapper schieten de dieren langs de kroonluchter, die rustig op zijn plek blijft hangen.

‘Moet je horen. Ze zingen liedjes en roepen naar elkaar,’ zegt mijn neef.

En inderdaad, de vogels zingen zo hard als ze kunnen. Maar geen onverstaanbare vogelliedjes, nee, uit tientallen fladderende projectielen hoor ik nu de liedjes van juf Anja, over de jungle en aardig doen tegen elkaar. Euforie maakt zich meester van mijn lichaam en vrolijk spring ik mee op de cadans van de muziek. Omhoogkijkend en meezingend laat ik het vuurleger ver achter me. Een verfrommeld schetspapier dat zijn belofte niet heeft waargemaakt.

Met een schok stuit ik op een onbeweegbaar object. Ik val op de grond en samen met mij ook de paradijsvogels. Of vallen ze door de grond? Als ik opkijk zijn ze verdwenen. Het onbeweegbare object draait zich om en opeens kijk ik in de grote ogen van mijn oom. In zijn hand heeft hij een groot bord vol met tonijnsalade en cherrytomaatjes.

‘Och jongen, je liep zomaar tegen me aan. Gaat het?’

Ik knik en krabbel overeind. Geen spoor te bekennen van de vogels die net nog zo prominent aanwezig waren. Mijn oom pakt een bord van de stapel.

‘Hier, zal ik wat voor je opscheppen? Vierjarige jongens moeten goed eten. Daar worden ze groot en sterk van.’

Ik knik weer, maar eigenlijk wil ik mijn hoofd schudden. Alsof ik nog niet groot en sterk ben, hij moest eens weten.

Door het getik van regendruppels schrik ik op uit mijn gemijmer. Het boek dat voor mij op tafel ligt, deed onbedoeld dienst

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TEKST: RAF VAN OOSTERHOUT ILLUSTRATIES: MELLE HAAK

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als dekmantel voor de verhalen in mijn hoofd. Voorzichtig kijk ik om me heen, heeft iemand me weg zien dromen? Schuin tegenover me zie ik hoe een student van een jaar of twintig met een lachje op het gezicht zijn hoofd de andere kant opdraait.

Ik kom hier de laatste tijd graag. De plek weerspiegelt mijn huidige carrière, maar neemt me vaak mee naar tijden van vroeger, toen het ontwerp voor dit gebouw nog in mijn hoofd zat en ver daarvoor. Toen ik vijftien jaar geleden de opdracht kreeg voor een bibliotheek in het stadscentrum sprong ik een gat in de lucht. Na enkele jaren in loondienst bij een architectenbureau had ik toen net de stap gemaakt en was ik voor mezelf begonnen, een langgekoesterde droom. In het ontwerpproces van mijn eerste echte “eigen” project waren mijn gedachten overal en nergens. Aangezien ik zonder collega’s werkte, moest ik alles tot in de puntjes perfect definiëren. Ik was me bewust van de grote verantwoordelijkheid die ik op het gebied van veiligheid droeg, maar realiseerde me daarnaast dat de verantwoordelijkheid veel meer omvatte dan alleen veiligheid. Werknemers, gebruikers en passanten van de bibliotheek zouden decennialang lezen, rondlopen en om zich heen kijken in mijn hersenspinsel, dat zich door veel schaafwerk ontwikkeld zou hebben tot ontwerp. Mijn gedachten zouden talloze boeken, met bergen kennis, beschermen tegen weer en wind.

Ik sla mijn boek dicht en sta op. Met zorgvuldige stappen laat ik de grote tafel met de lachende student achter mij. Mijn ogen speuren de ruimte af die ik zo goed ken. Waar zou ze zijn? Twee grijze pensionado’s beantwoorden mijn blik, alsof ik naar hen op zoek was.

‘Hallo meneer, weet u misschien waar de toiletten zich hier bevinden?’ vraagt de man.

Ik wijs het stel de weg en loop door. Ergens steekt er iets. Een onbegrepen ontwerp maakt een architect niet gelukkig.

De architect is een egoïst. Waar de politicus zijn mening altijd aanlengt in de hoop iets van zijn gedachtegoed terug te zien in de beleidsvoering, is architectuur een vak van de grote uitspraken. Ondanks de hoge mate van overleg tussen architect, constructeur en aannemer, ligt in elke, vloer, raam of wand de ideologie van de ontwerper besloten. Dit uit zich in gebouwen die zich zowel fysiek, als mentaal in de belevingswereld van de gewone mens dringen. Onbeweegbare objecten neerkijkend op het individu. Een sleuteltaak van de architect is het gebruiksvriendelijk maken van zijn gebouw, zonder zichzelf hierbij te verloochenen. Gebruiksvriendelijkheid zit niet alleen in praktische dingen, zoals toiletten die duidelijk te vinden zijn. Een gebouw dat voor de bezoeker aanvoelt als een soort Grote Vriendelijke Reus kan het streven zijn. De bezoeker zich een beter mens laten voelen. Hem groot maken en tegelijkertijd voldoende ruimte geven of bewust heel klein maken en aan het denken zetten. Misschien is gebruiksinteractief een beter woord. Men moet met het gebouw kunnen communiceren. De architect als wingman aan de zijlijn, hij heeft zijn werk gedaan.

Toch voelt het niet alsof ik aan de zijlijn sta. Ik begeef me nu middenin mijn verzonnen realiteit. Overal om mij heen lopen echte mensen, van vlees en bloed, met meningen en gevoelens. Het lukt me om die mensen weg te denken en weer even helemaal alleen door het ontwerp te lopen. Om me heen zie ik hoe eerdere schetsontwerpen zich proberen te manifesteren. Een muur, die zolang vanzelfsprekend leek, verbrokkelt en valt uiteen. Bijna loop ik tegen de glazen balustrade aan die de vloer en vide van elkaar scheidt. De houten trap vervaagt voor mijn ogen. Mijn ogen, zijn ze open of gesloten? Ik weet het niet. Dan zie ik een blond hoofdje tevoorschijn komen achter een boekenrek. Het hoofdje kijkt omhoog en onthult een lachend gezichtje.

‘Papa! Kom eens kijken. Ik zag net twee pratende hondjes in de leeshoek, ze waren heel aardig.’

Met een grote glimlach til ik mijn dochtertje op m’n arm.

‘Echt waar? Dat moet ik zien!’ //

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Mar 24 - 26

May 29

Building Holland

Lecture Marco Vermeulen

Building Holland is a three-day innovation event for the construction, installation and real estate sector. This yearly returning event takes place in the RAI Amsterdam. With approx. 15.000 visitors and 250 stands from the 9th till the 11th of April, there is enough space to gain some knowledge, to enlarge your network or to see and experience innovative new products and concepts.

On the 29th of May, Marco Vermeulen will come to the department and give a lecture about building with wood. Vermeulen is a strong proponent of building with wood since this would be better for the environment. One of his new designs is The Dutch Mountains, two large towers near the train tracks and university campus of Eindhoven.

The tower should mostly be built out of bio-based materials, like CLT. Come to the lecture and get to know his motivation to build with wood.

Apr 24 Conference Disrupting Resilience On the 24th of April, Eefje Hendriks will promote on the knowledge exchange to support safer self-recovery after natural disasters. During this day, several speakers from all around the world come to speak about this topic and the self-recovery of cities after natural disasters.

May 14 Architecture excursion: Around Brabant On the 14th of May, Achitectuur Centrum Eindhoven will organize a trip through the ever changing landscape of Noord-Brabant. The pressure on the housing stock also results in chances in the landscape of Brabant. During the trip, De Meeuw in Oirshot and De Ploeg in Bergeijk will be visited. This event will be in Dutch.

Apr 29 & May 25 ARCHICAD Training Do you want to upgrade your 3D modeling skills? ARCHICAD might just be the program for you! Within this workshop, which also includes pizza and drinks afterwards, you will be explained the basics and insides of the software, how to make plans and how to 3D model! The software will be provided for free!

Jun 04 Plugged Festival Plugged Festival was created by a group of students who wanted to share their love for love music and decided to organize a festival. By hanging “bands wanted� posters all over the university campus, they tried to get in touch with enthusiastic musicians. The first edition of the festival in 2013 turned out to be a great success, with many talented artists and an awesome audience. In the last few years, Plugged Festival has evolved into the major music event of the TU/e. With five years of experience, a strong concept of giving local bands a chance to play for a large audience and many partners within and outside of the local music scene, the Plugged Festival crew will try their best to make Plugged 2020 an absolute success!

Jun 16 - 18 PROVADA PROVADA is the largest real estate conference in the Netherlands.

PROVADA is a three-day networking event with various meetings in different forms. With the focus on trends & innovations and a good network of experts, PROVADA presents a maximum experience on the exhibition floor. More than 26.000 real estate professionals visit PROVADA for knowledge, inspiration and for the many networking opportunities.

Agenda CHEOPS & Built Environment 48 AGENDA

CHEPOS