For over a decade, the “Wall of Names” was one of the many celebratory monuments of BK. Furthermore, it represented, by action or omission, what our faculty accepted to be the paradigms of relevance, achievement and success in architecture. Now that it is gone, understanding this wall and its background might open a window for questioning the way in which we created a monument that was supposed to represent an international and diverse community and ended up normalising gender inequality and colonialism.

Land sculpture has arguably existed for thousands of years, in which case studies such as Nazca lines (see photo) and Indian burial mounds were identified as one. These ancient augmentations of the land surface could be ceremonial, or symbolic in nature. Nevertheless, these sculptures exhibited spatial qualities inherent in architecture and landscape design, and inform us about the increasingly ambiguous distinction between them.

A month ago, our beautiful building started becoming defaced with some slightly less beautiful TU Delft blue ‘no smoking signs’. Alas … they haven’t appeared to be as effective as whoever is responsible probably would have liked. The next move in this one-sided game of chess was to relocate the smoking pit at the East entrance, from under the sheltered entrance to out in the open between Bouwpub and the faculty building.

Our ambition to represent all the voices within BK faculty; our slogan clearly states "your voice is ours". However, achieving this can be challenging at times. In the digitized world, in which news and opinions travel rapidly and dispersed, the information we are exposed to has become fragmented and fleeting. Thus, among all the online platforms, our hard copy Bnieuws publication might seem outdated. However, if you close your eyes for a sec, instead of hearing your overheated laptop buzz or your phone beep, listen to the crinkly sound and textured feel of freshly printed paper, waiting to be read.

Nietzsche (1876) states: “I believe, indeed, that we are all suffering from a consuming fever of history and ought at least to recognize that we are suffering from it”. In the case of Lithuania, the years 1944-1991 consisted of a period of destructive occupation; the Church was suppressed, the intelligentsia was harassed and obstructed and massive deportations were carried out to eliminate any resistance to collectivization or support of partisans. However, the evolution of thought still continued and so did the evolution of the built environment. The question is: what symbolic values should be considered while reimagining the architecture of occupation?

During the Christmas Holidays, I was trying my best to avoidwatching dull family movies on the couch. The ones I dislike most are adventure movies with heroic protagonists,like in Indiana Jones and The Mummy. What triggers me most in these movies isthe representation of the archaeologist as a handsome, tomb-discovering acrobat.In these movies, the archaeologist is combatting and unveiling the traces ofthe past, reading landscape, object and architecture like a true detective. Asdesigners of the built environment, our interest similarly lies in the readingof traces, albeit, gratefully not receiving the status of a pop-culture hero indoing so.

January 2016, the seismic tremor made the porcelain statue tremble on the floor. As I ran down the stairs to help my grandparents, shivers ran down my back. Sadly, the worst was yet to come... Being born in the eastern end of the Himalayan seismic belt, my personal experiences have been the driving force of this research. Traces of the events that I have witnessed in the Indian city Shillong, have created an urgency to meet more rational living standards. In this article, I discuss my graduation project and how it reacts to this urgency by local traces of timber construction.

For a large majority of the student body of TU Delft, the four-year-long siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996), is a thing they might have learned from history books. However, for the inhabitants of Sarajevo, the small red-raisin-filled craters from mortar damage are a daily reminder of their tragic past and what became the longest siege of a city in the history of modern warfare.

'Artefact' is a recurring two-page spread, which features a beloved object presented by one of the BK City staff members. Every month, the author passes on the 'Artefact'contributorship to the next. Last month's contributor Nathalie de Vries chose Paul Vermeulen, who is a professor in the department of Architecture and leads Belgium based architecture office de Smet Vermeulen.

Since the beginning of the academic year, the new chair of Urban Architecture offers studios in the Architecture track. The graduation theme of this year is spolia. A term from archaeology, spolia are the left-overs or ‘spoils’ of a building, which find themselves back in a new structure. The students were asked to introduce themselves together with a personal piece of spolia.  The spoils, taken to the studio by students, illustrate that every-day artefacts can change function,  carry emotional narratives or transform in meaning.