1.1.3 Meet the Course Team of Global Housing Design
Course subject(s)
Module 1: Getting started: Global Housing Design
Dick van Gameren is a full professor and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft, and a partner at Mecanoo Architecten. He has been combining his work as an architect in practice with education and research for many years, maintaining a critical approach to design by lecturing, researching, and publishing. In 2008, van Gameren founded the book series DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing) and he is since then editor in chief. Ten years ago he started the TU Delft research and education group on Global Housing, an international network that focuses on the problems of building affordable housing in rapidly expanding cities. In 2007, van Gameren won the prestigious Aga Khan Award for the design of the Dutch Embassy in Ethiopia.
Nelson Mota is Associate Professor of Architecture at Delft University of Technology and a founding partner of the architectural office comoco arquitectos, awarded in 2013 with Portugal’s National Award for Architecture in Wood. He has more than two decades of experience as a designer and educator. He graduated as an architect and concluded an Advanced Master in Architecture, Territory and Memory at the University of Coimbra (Portugal) and earned his doctoral degree from the TU Delft. Nelson writes and lectures regularly on the topics of housing, citizens’ participation and vernacular social and spatial practices. At the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment-TU Delft, Nelson is the leader of the research group Global Housing and coordinator of the Global Housing educational program. He is production editor and member of the editorial board of the academic journal Footprint and DASH- Delft Architectural Studies on Housing.
Frederique van Andel is a researcher in the Global Housing research group of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft. Frederique holds a Master’s degree in both urban planning and architecture from Delft University of Technology. She worked for Mecanoo Architecten and DP6 architectuurstudio in Delft, and lived in Barcelona where she worked with the architect Toni Gironès. Her main topic of interest is affordable housing for growing cities in the Global South. Frederique curated the exhibition ‘Global Housing – Affordable Dwellings for Growing Cities’ (2016) with venues in Delft and Addis Ababa. She is managing editor of the book series DASH (Delft Architectural Studies on Housing) and coordinates and edits the online Platform for Affordable Dwelling (PAD). Frederique teaches Master (research) courses on Global Housing and Bachelor courses on Plan Analysis. She is project manager for the research project ‘Addis Ababa Living Lab: Creating Resilient Dwelling Clusters for Urban Resettlement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’, funded by the Dutch Research Council and TU Delft (2019-2023).
Rohan Varma is an architect, tutor, and researcher based both in Mumbai and Amsterdam. He graduated as an architect from the KRVIA in 2009 and received his masters in architecture at the TU Delft as a Tata and Mahindra Scholar in 2013. He has previously worked in the offices of Charles Correa in Mumbai and Mecanoo Architecten in Delft. In private practice since 2015, Varma currently combines his work as the founder of REP – an architecture studio based both in Mumbai and Amsterdam – with his work at the TU Delft where his doctoral research and teaching activities focus on the inter-relationship between housing policies, physical form and people’s spatial practices. He has published and presented several papers and articles on housing and urban development in India. Most recently, he co-authored the book ‘Living Ideals’ and co-curated an international traveling exhibition on the housing designs of Charles Correa.
Ramona Scheffer recently graduated cum laude in architecture from the TU Delft in 2021 with the focus on housing for migrant workers. Her interest in this socio-economic topic originated from her teaching and research experience at the Department for Urban Planning and Architectural Design at the GUtech in Muscat, Oman. She has gathered further teaching and research experience at the Chair for Structures and Structural Design at the RWTH Aachen University in Aachen, Germany and worked as a student assistant at the Chair of Dwelling at the TU Delft, where amongst other things she helped organise the exhibition ‘Housing the urban invisibles‘. Prior to her studies in Delft she studied at the Faculty for Architecture at the RWTH Aachen University. Throughout her training she worked for offices in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Amsterdam.
Stephany Knize is currently pursuing her master’s degree in architecture at TU Delft, focusing on housing and public spaces. She emphasizes the idea of addressing societal and cultural issues through research-based solutions, entailing architecture as a medium to enhance the environment and enrich the human experience. Stephany graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, in Architecture, from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in 2018. Following graduation, Stephany was awarded the 2019 AIA Design and Honor Award in Atlanta, Georgia for student design excellence. She then gathered experience in practice working as a full-time Architectural Designer at HKS Architects in Dallas, Texas, bringing together a synergy of collaborative designs within projects and competitions of various scales. While in practice Stephany founded KNIZE Architecture + Design, following a high standard not only for design but also in her own approach toward architectural research.
Hugo López is currently pursuing his master’s degree in Urbanism at TU Delft, focusing on energy landscapes on the scaling-up of renewable energy sources. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism in Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil, with an exchange course on “Urban Management & Development: Sustainable Urbanism” in the Institute for Housing and Urban Development (IHS), in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Yet during his bachelor, he joined the “Laboratory of Urban Studies” (LeU/PROURB/UFRJ), led by Dr Prof. Margareth da Silva Pereira, participating in research and presentation activities of the group. Before joining the master in TU Delft he has worked at faculties and architecture offices in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, like UNStudio and Studio for New Realities.
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