Buildings, cities and regions matter to people’s lives. Well-planned cities help communities prosper and flourish, and therefore city planners can make a difference. Planning for better cities requires new forms of collaboration, organizational structures and new urban futures. In rethinking challenges facing the urbanizing world today, UUA realizes interaction between architecture, cultural heritage planning and urban planning and design.

Focusing on (trans)formation of the city and its architecture anticipating on the systemic changes in urban society, economy, technology and governance

Adaptation of the existing urban environment to changing social and economic constraints, making use of innovative technologies is a key focus area. The group carries out research into urban form as the manifestation of evolutionary processes of development and change. These processes are driven by social, economic and technological innovation, particularly within the changing institutional frameworks of governance. UUA aims to understand the multi-scalar nature of urban form in which building typologies, block- and neighbourhood morphologies as well as urban and regional configurations determine each other reciprocally in a co-evolutionary process. The city and its architecture are studied by combining theories and methodologies from the fields of morphogenesis, urban studies as well as innovation and transition studies. 

The research of the chair of UUA is organised in both a PhD program on fundamental research as well as the Urban Lab platform for applied research on real world urban agenda’s with real world actors in a real world setting. Both are intrinsically connected by a similar research approach and focussed on a common research agenda.

Research approach:

• How dimensions of urban morphology, townscape, and programming shape and reshape each other reciprocally
• How global forces, structures and agents build, manage, plan, govern and shape cities.
• Urban theories, strategies and concepts developed to deal with the challenges of society, economy, technology, ecology and politics.
• Translating these global challenges and trends into local, contextual interventions, building in an evolutionary way on the existing local capital both spatially, socially as well as in terms of governance.

Key areas of research:

• Healthy Cities, smart mobility and public space design
• Circular Cities, urban metabolism and system thinking
• Smart Cities, participatory urbanism and place making
• Cultural Heritage, spatial biographies and contextual design

UUA strives to connect tradition and knowledge, innovation and imagination. Working with colleagues across TU Eindhoven, other universities, the municipality, and the region, the UUA engages actively in the advancement of interdisciplinary research. The UUA research and educational program combines an urban, architectural and social dimension, aimed at constructing a sustainable and emancipatory future.