Large cities in the West respond to an ever-increasing shortage of affordable housing by accelerating the process of urban densification. Amsterdam, for instance, aims to increase its housing stock by 10 percent in the next 15 years as its population is expected to grow by 20 percent. As in other cities, …

Cities are confronted with more frequent heatwaves of increasing intensity discouraging people from using urban open spaces that are part of their daily lives. Climate proofing cities is an incremental process that should begin where it is needed using the most cost-efficient solutions to mitigate heat …

Granite G682 is a yellow to pink color stone of the Precambrian period, the most famous yellow granite from China. I am from G682 granite town. I used to live in a village surrounded by stones. however, I never knew the beautiful and scary story behind it until I saw hundreds of abandoned quarries in …

About 30 years ago the ruin of a church became the starting point of an ongoing journey that brought together strangers, strangers of different nationality and confession and with different languages and cultures. Strangers that once faced each-other as enemies. But strangers with one common ground. …

The Exodus of rural settlers to urban centers with greater attractiveness of quality of life, has brought serious consequences to the rural environments all over the world. An example of this phenomenon is Spain, that has around 3,000 abandoned villages, half of them in Galicia. These settlements have …

Increasingly, adding trees to the city is a new goal on the urban agenda in order to fight climate change. There is an interesting contrast when looking at the average lifespan of trees in the city: 30 years. The reason is that trees are still being seen from a utilitarian perspective and as urban furniture …

Designers of the Anthropocene era have to work with and for nature in order to reintroduce its beauty and functionality into our everyday life. As humans, we are colonising every single spot on earth. According to the United Nations, 55% of the human population is currently living in cities and by 2050 …

Substantial changes in the Dutch health care landscape have led to new ways of funding and designing hospitals. Flexibility in the design of hospital real estate provides options to adapt to changing circumstances. FREM plays an important role in managing hospital real estate and the utilization of these …

Abandoned villages and ruins are the consequence of depopulation. The region of A Ribeira Sacra (Galicia, Spain) is an example, where since 1981 the region has lost 40% of the population. A sustainable masterplan based on a strategy will bring a future to those areas by using the ruins and reactivate …

This design offers an alternative of camping into nature reserves. 'Into the Dutch wild' promotes immersive access to the Dutch landscape by facilitating architectural campsite interventions within the natural, yet human made, landscape of Flevoland. Around the world, nature reserves are either being …