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More than 80% of the world’s urban population is exposed to unhealthy air, according to the World Health Organization.

The ERIES–ValUr project addresses this challenge by improving our understanding of how air pollution spreads in cities. Using a detailed scale model of a city, researchers recreate airflow and pollution dispersion in a wind tunnel and measure how pollutants move through a dense and complex urban layout. The experimental results improve computer models and urban digital twins, supporting the design of healthier and more sustainable cities.

Timber floors give us more sustainable and circular constructions. However, their low self-weight also makes them more susceptible to human-induced vibrations, which can negatively affect occupant comfort.

Mass can be added, but it increases the material use and floor weight. The objective is to achieve acceptable vibration performance with the minimum amount of additional material, thereby preserving the sustainability advantages of lightweight timber construction. Hollow-core timber floors use the timber very efficient, while providing internal space to add the mass.

Stepwise the added mass is reduced while maintaining the acceptable comfort limits:

• only add mass on most efficient locations.
• place mass on springs and dampers (tuned mass dampers).
• incorporating an isolated floating top-floor layer

Modern construction methods and energy-efficient retrofitting are increasingly pushing nature out of our built environment. In particular, bats, sparrows, and swifts are losing their urban habitats, even though these animals are crucial for natural pest control in our immediate living environment.

Together with ecologists as part of a European project, we have optimized architectural details that create vital habitats for birds and bats, without adversely affecting residents. By testing these solutions directly in real-world projects, we seamlessly integrate biodiversity into architecture and demonstrate that nature-friendly construction can become the new urban standard.

by CASA Vertigo

The installation Theoria makes visible Jacob Voorthuis' lifelong philosophical project: an artistic venture to think carefully about words that matter to the design process and to get them to work well together.

As a philosopher of design, Voorthuis holds himself to exacting aesthetic standards. He does this not by changing words’ meanings, but by making their implicit meanings explicit, and by visualizing in diagrams what those meanings might look like. He is interested in the behavior a word helps to characterize, and in the way words and images behave in discourse, particularly in the all-important game of giving and asking for reasons that must underpin every design decision. To do this well, he ensures that the activity one word or image represents is both different from and complementary to another, so they can work together like a team without getting in each other's way. Focused on words important to the architectural design process, Voorthuis has recrafted them to fit together 'beautifully,' so that each can play a clear and satisfying role in any design conversation. Theoria invites you, as a fellow muddler, to decide for yourself whether he has done a good job.

by VIRºÚÁϸ£ÀûÍø

MOD[us] is an adaptive modular building system by Team VIRºÚÁϸ£ÀûÍø for the Netherlands’ changing spatial needs. One shared structural and technical DNA lets modules shift between housing and Meet[us] spaces, reducing vacancy and avoiding demolition.

Visit at The Body Building, Gashouder 41

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