This project seeks a balance between the highly productive agricultural land and the residential areas that exist side by side in southern Skåne. The project focuses on the village of Grönby, located on the outskirts of Trelleborg municipality, which serves as a test bed. In southern Skåne, many villages like Grönby are surrounded by large-scale agricultural landscapes, where the publicly accessible land is scattered across various marle pits, tree groves, and field boundaries. This creates a strong car dependency and limits the opportunities for residents to explore the surrounding landscape. Furthermore, Grönby, like many rural areas in Sweden, is strongly affected by the urban-rural gap that has emerged over time, resulting in a lack of diverse housing options, especially smaller and cheaper homes that complement the single-family norm. But, how can smaller and cheaper, yet qualitative, housing emerge where the will to build from the market does not exist spontaneously? And, what can a new housing addition give back to existing rural communities?

To address these issues, the project explores a strategy that combines housing and pathways. The pathways link publicly accessible land in a network of permanent, multifunctional greenways and temporary paths, creating a more accessible lifestyle and environment for residents. The dwellings are realised as building communities and serve as destination points along the pathways, breaking down distances and complementing existing housing stock.

In Grönby, the strategy results in a permanent main path that enables a bicycle connection to bus stops and services in the neighbouring town of Anderslöv, as well as a network of more temporary paths further out into the landscape. At a detailed level, a potential housing addition is explored, where self-building and a possible adaptation and expansion over time plays a major role in the design.

The subject of this research was to conceptualize a Museum for the Future of Design in Copenhagen. Particularly, the museum collection focuses on experimental research in design, architecture, art, and engineering.

An open flat brownfield towards the sea on Refshaleøen Island was chosen as the most suitable location for the Museum. Refshaleøen is a harbor and industrial area with a plethora of natural and urban assets. The area has gained popularity in recent years as a cluster for creativity and leisure.

The idea was to create long corridors with far-reaching sightlines, exhibition halls with roof openings, and spaces with colorful surfaces that allow the gradations of daylight to enter the structure. The purpose of this study was to encourage interaction and exploration by designing spaces that could offer multiple sensory experiences.

Innovation and fluidity are the keywords of the concept. Two different cells - a sharper exterior, and a soft interior cell- merge together to create the building. The outer layer is designed with an industrial feel in mind - a look that is reminiscent of the past and that is well-fitting to the area. This cell can be considered a "White Canvas" that sparks the public's curiosity to explore further. Following a different logic, the inner cell has curved surfaces, textured elements, and accent colors that enhance the overall experience.

The design is to inspire movement - a gesture that mimics the momentum of change/ future of design. In addition, the inner spaces are kept fluid, and flexible - meaning they are able to transform over time always according to the museum’s needs. The plan also incorporates spaces for resting and reflecting, allowing the audience to pause and absorb the ambiance.

In terms of the building program, the Museum is developed horizontally in two levels with a total area of ~ 9,000 m2.

Architecture transcends mere physical structure. It reflects the culture, history, and values of a society. Colonialism has influenced the architecture of many African nations, resulting in a disconnection from their pre-colonial past.

The thesis project "Decolonising Architecture in Africa" investigates this disconnection of African architecture from its pre-colonial past in the case of Kenya. To achieve this, the project includes ethnographic research into Kenyan vernacular architecture, both the built and social aspects of architecture. Then the project analyses these studies through careful unlearning and relearning to incorporate positive aspects from pre-colonial architectural practices into a contemporary Kenyan context.

As a proof-of-concept, it proposes a co-working space in Nairobi, Kenya, which incorporates vernacular architecture's positive elements into its design through relearning the working culture that focuses primarily on collaboration in order to find solutions for the rising demand for flexible working spaces for emerging start-ups in a rapidly developing area of Nairobi. The initiative also compares itself to current building and construction trends, both in terms of materials and office space.

Moreover, this project attempts to de-exoticize African traditional architecture by conceptualizing architectural decolonization as a response that places buildings and cities at the centre of their contexts and realities, normalizing building traditional forms and ways of working. Throughout the design process, the project explores hybrid design techniques that incorporate global trends and technological advances to improve pre-colonial architecture's spatial and material capabilities.

Overall, the project investigates and demonstrates how architectural decolonization can positively influence African architecture and contribute to the development of sustainable, context-specific design goals. By highlighting the significance of pre-colonial architecture, the exploration hopes to inspire a new perspective on African architecture that integrates the past into the present and apply it to impact the future.

“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” are famous words from RuPaul, the queen of drag, capturing the performative nature of gender and self-expression into one sentence.

As Katarina Bonnevier describes, architecture has performativity built into it – it is produced culturally, bodies and social situations are engaged with building elements, settings and scenes. This in turn means that heteronormativity is encoded into the built environment around us, as by repeating the same principles of how we build over and over, they are naturalized.

This thesis researches how incorporating drag into architectural design, one could start to queer the fragments of urban space to question and break out of binary and normative ways of space making.

For whom are our cities built for? The project looks at drag queens to search for a spatial expression of drag. The result explores the topic of inclusion and diversity around multiple elements of urban space. A space that we all share but are not all included in. In honour of this year’s Baltic Pride, taking place in Tallinn, Estonia, where the LGBTQIA+ communities of three countries come together to take space, celebrate diversity and fight for equality, this thesis will use Tallinn’s urban spaces as testing grounds for the project.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the discourse of queer architecture and to explore through design how drag can contribute to a more inclusive and diverse future of architecture.

Österskans is a project that investigates the place with the same name in Halmstad. It went from being a transport hub at the end of the 20th century, to the municipality announcing in 2017 that they were going to have a land allocation competition for a hotel with a market hall and restaurant. White Architects won, but public attention and media coverage resulted in delays before there was a referendum in the municipality in 2022. Around 63,000 people voted and it ended with a “no” after a lot of time and resources were put into the project. The site is one of Halmstad’s most central lots, but has been in a limbo between different projects for several years and is currently stuck at that stage.

The project is based on interviews, newspaper articles, reports, literature studies and field studies and with this tries to understand the discussions, problems and public opinions that can arise in connection with these situations. Why do these kinds of problems appear and how could one design a place at Österskans that gets accepted and is well received? The discussion is more complex than just producing populist architecture to please the opposition - it is also about several other factors beyond that. Based on the collected information, a new proposal is designed with a reworked program for what could be developed at Österskans.

Wood is increasingly being recognized as one of the most promising building materials on the market as a result of environmental challenges. Aside from the fact that wood is a sustainable material, it has the benefit of being high-quality, strong, flexible, and speedy to construct, which makes it a much more attractive material compared to its less eco-friendly counterpart.

The latest computational technologies allow architects to create new artistic expressions using 3D printers, assembly robots, laser cutters, milling machines, and CNC routers (computer numerical control). 

With their exceptional precision, we are able to design perfect assemblies--without screws or visible metalwork--resulting in structures that will last a lifetime, are simple to assemble, and will be aesthetically pleasing as well. 

Traditionally, Japanese architecture has been noted for the high level of craftsmanship, precision, and simplicity employed to build wooden structures so that they can be constructed without the use of nails, screws, adhesives or modern power tools.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential of wood by combining Japanese wood craftsmanship with latest digital technologies. In this study, traditional joinery is redefined from three perspectives, geometry, material and fabrication, which leads to three main results expected: customization, penalization of construction, and enhancement of joints by leveraging the revolution of 3D modeling software, material innovation, and digital fabrication.

A presentation of the design forms and ideas for an actual architectural project will conclude the thesis.

In this study, I aim to contribute to the development of wood as a modern, high-tech material capable of making a sustainable society through a contemporary interpretation of its potential in order to establish a successful and sustainable future.

Historically, inhabitants have always altered their domestic spaces to adapt to different environmental conditions and to meet personal needs. Especially in rural dwellings, lowtech but very effective and simple ways of adaptability have been and are still in use. These methods stand more than ever diametral to the way we dwell and use our domestic spaces today. All the building elements are getting more complex and need to fulfil several different functions together, without any conscious (human) action. The climate is automatically regulated by a number of air conditioning systems, automatic heating and highly efficient windows that provide a view separated from other external climate aspects and weather phenomenas. With the complexity come also more costs, both monetary and environmentally. In the course of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis in Europe, a vivid discussion about heating and temperature in buildings has taken place.

This thesis project aims to investigate how domestic space can be built and used in correlation to the environment. A type of dwelling in harmony with the environment and not against it, living with the seasons and weather rather than in an isolated box, hermetic separated from the context. The domestic spaces are implemented as different climate zones which directly relate to weather, activities, comfort and allow a modification by the inhabitant.

The project is planned in Norra Sorgenfri in Malmö, one of the latest development areas creating new living quarters on a former industrial site.

Considering the house as a product in the service of humans, it is essential to redefine this space based on the users’ current needs.

The traditional image of the family including parents and children is transforming into a new meaning of the family following new social tendencies and trends. Considering the rapidly transforming social needs and the emergence of new ways of living, reviewing the different factors impacting people´s lives and designing an adaptable house compatible with current requirements is a priority in residential design.

The crucial factors in housing design are social issues. Three social transformations are outlined in this report. The live-work residence is one of the necessities that should be considered in new housing, especially after the pandemic the importance of telecommuting is more obvious. Moreover, the number of single, single-headed families and childless couples has increased which can affect the temporality of families. As temporality is inextricably intertwined with the new lifestyle, finding an efficient way to design a flexible space compatible with social needs is necessary.Another trend is co-living. The main reason that most people find shared living attractive is because it creates new ways of socializing with others.

Main questions:

1.     The main question for the first goal would be: how can we design a dwelling-office space which can respect the private borders in addition to improving work productivity?

2.     How can we design a flexible space to adapt to new changes in the form of families?

3.     Based on the attractiveness of co-living for residents, how to improve people´s social life without disturbing their private life?