Delft Technical University: The Latest Architecture and News

QS, Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, has announced the annual list of the top universities to study Architecture and the Built Environment in the year 2024. The ranking evaluates over 1,500 institutions from over 100 locations. The evaluation system has been updated this year to include new metrics such as sustainability, employment outcomes, and international research networks.

The top three contenders, the Bartlett School of Architecture, MIT, and Delft UT, have maintained their ranking from 2023, with ETH Zurich showing a slight decrease from an equal third position to the fourth. In the sixth position, Harvard University stands out as the top university for employer reputation in this subject. Among the top 10 universities, Politecnico di Milano had the greatest advancement in rankings, moving from the 10th position last year to the 7th.

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Great movements in architecture are usually set in motion by a dull societal ache or as a response to a sudden, unforeseen reorientation of a community at large. The Dutch city of Rotterdam - vast swathes of which were cast into oblivion during the blitz of May 1940 - has been at the forefront of many shifts in approach to the built environment. It is therefore fitting that the latest exhibition at the Nieuwe Instituut (formerly the NAi), simply titled Structuralism, is being held in the city that was recently named Europe’s best.

Furthermore, Dutch Structuralism is a timely subject for Dirk van den Heuvel and the Jaap Bakema Study Centre (JBSC) in Delft to tackle. With major civic buildings like OMA's extension to Rotterdam's City Hall taking shape, it appears that a resurgence of Structuralist formal thought is appearing in the contemporary city. The exhibition seeks to shine a new light on the movement by uncovering drawings, models and texts which profoundly shaped 20th century architectural thinking.

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Imagine a pervious asphalt that not only significantly reduces noise pollution, but saves millions in maintenance and repairs by its ability to self-heal. Well, this type of super-asphalt is not far from being distributed world-wide as experimental micromechanic pioneer Erik Schlangen of Delft Technical University has been studying the material’s potential on a test track in The Netherland’s for the past few years.

Basically, with the introduction of small steel wool fibers, Self Healing Asphalt is capable of repairing micro-cracks and significantly extending the service life of roadways through induction heating. Similarly, Schlangen is leading the research on Self Healing Concrete, where by infusing concrete with a harmless limestone-producing bacteria that feeds off of calcium lactate - a component of milk - the material has the potential to self-heal micro-cracks in the presence of rainwater.