master's thesis

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Sustainable urbanization is key to a successful development at an urban scale mitigating the negative aspects of urbanization with respect to social and environmental issues. Some of the most relevant social concerns that we take into consideration in our design are affordable housing costs for the less fortunate stratum of the society, striking a balance between demand and supply in cities that go through an expansion, responding to inner-city social problems for the youth, long commute times to work and insufficient mobility solutions especially for the middle-class, and gentrification. Equally relevant to the social concerns are the environmental issues which include emission of pollutants into the air and water, hesitancy to use local regional resources and relying on imported resources, suboptimal transportation network leading to traffic jams, irresponsible consumption and noncompliance to recycling materials, noise pollution, global warming, and the incapability of old structures to the natural disasters happening more frequently and more extreme due to the human induced changing climate.

In this thesis project, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations are incorporated into the architectural design of a multi-purpose riverside residential/commercial complex in the district of Rummelsburger bay in Berlin based on a future-living concept.