News in Brief

Closer to home, the Design Management Europe Award was presented in Wales for implementing design philosophy and design culture in business operations. 

,New website

As of 4 November, when visitors enter http://www.tudelft.nl they will see a new TU Delft home page. The underlying pages will be updated soon afterwards. With this new website, TU Delft aims to provide information efficiently and effectively to both internal and external target groups. The website will be more attractive, more interactive, and more demand oriented. The TU Delft website is the face of TU Delft to the outside world. It is not just that prospective Dutch students are making far more frequent use of Internet to find information about degree programs, but foreign students and researchers also view the Internet as the primary source of information about studies, research, partnerships, people and organizations. Demand orientation is an important motive for restructuring the website. “Internet contributes to achieving the objective of providing information about TU Delft efficiently and effectively,” says Rob Speekenbrink, TU Delft’s Internet manager.

,Southwest Delta

Rotterdam’s Mayor Ivo Opstelten and TU Delft Rector Jacob Fokkema will sign a collaboration agreement for ‘Climate, energy, sustainability and water’ on Thursday, 30 October. The agreement commits the two parties to an underlining joint ambition to turn Rotterdam and the Southwest Delta into an international showcase for solutions to climate problems. The agreement will be signed at the Aula during the annual conference of the Netherlands Royal Institute of Engineers Kivi Niria.

,Bamboo

Thanks to the fact that bamboo grows so rapidly and has other good properties, giant bamboo can form an interesting, environmentally friendly alternative to various other raw materials and wood types. This is the conclusion drawn by Pablo van der Lugt, who received his PhD degree from TU Delft on October 21. However, designers are still not sufficiently familiar with the possibilities bamboo offers. In Western Europe, bamboo, especially in its industrial form, is still a fairly unknown material with a low market share (under 1 percent). Industrial designer and architect Van der Lugt regards this as a missed opportunity, because the possibilities for creating high-quality industrial products from bamboo, such as blockboard and flooring, are increasing constantly. Bamboo is moreover an environmentally friendly material. It has a tremendously fast growth rate, through which the material absorbs large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. Giant bamboo therefore is an interesting alternative to less environmentally friendly materials, such as tropical hardwood.

,Cheese please

The Sports & Culture (S&C) center restaurants aren’t popular with students, primarily because the food is too fancy and the prices too high. According to the 2007-2011 Sport & Culture business plan, S&C restaurants are supposed to cover their own costs. However, the restaurants had a negative balance of 50,000 euro this year. The business plan also called for the restaurants to be staffed primarily by students; therefore, in the first season (2006/2007) only students worked in the restaurants. But this proved to be impractical. Student workers proved to be unreliable, often failing to show up for work and being difficult about scheduling work shifts. “Not all the students workers seemed capable of learning how to work in a restaurant,” says S&C Director Raymond Browne. “Customers sometimes had to wait 45 minutes for their food. And this of course was reflected in the bottom line.” Students also complained of the ridiculously high prices and fancy food. Joost Willems, of Oras: “If you order a cheese sandwich, you don’t want salad and cucumbers to come with it.”

Senz wins

Senz storm umbrellas have won three major international awards recently. In addition to the Good Design Award 2008, the most prestigious Japanese design award, the Delft-based company also won the Japanese Deshima Award for the most successful Dutch product introduction in Japan. Closer to home, the Design Management Europe Award was presented in Wales for implementing design philosophy and design culture in business operations. 

New website

As of 4 November, when visitors enter http://www.tudelft.nl they will see a new TU Delft home page. The underlying pages will be updated soon afterwards. With this new website, TU Delft aims to provide information efficiently and effectively to both internal and external target groups. The website will be more attractive, more interactive, and more demand oriented. The TU Delft website is the face of TU Delft to the outside world. It is not just that prospective Dutch students are making far more frequent use of Internet to find information about degree programs, but foreign students and researchers also view the Internet as the primary source of information about studies, research, partnerships, people and organizations. Demand orientation is an important motive for restructuring the website. “Internet contributes to achieving the objective of providing information about TU Delft efficiently and effectively,” says Rob Speekenbrink, TU Delft’s Internet manager.

Southwest Delta

Rotterdam’s Mayor Ivo Opstelten and TU Delft Rector Jacob Fokkema will sign a collaboration agreement for ‘Climate, energy, sustainability and water’ on Thursday, 30 October. The agreement commits the two parties to an underlining joint ambition to turn Rotterdam and the Southwest Delta into an international showcase for solutions to climate problems. The agreement will be signed at the Aula during the annual conference of the Netherlands Royal Institute of Engineers Kivi Niria.

Bamboo

Thanks to the fact that bamboo grows so rapidly and has other good properties, giant bamboo can form an interesting, environmentally friendly alternative to various other raw materials and wood types. This is the conclusion drawn by Pablo van der Lugt, who received his PhD degree from TU Delft on October 21. However, designers are still not sufficiently familiar with the possibilities bamboo offers. In Western Europe, bamboo, especially in its industrial form, is still a fairly unknown material with a low market share (under 1 percent). Industrial designer and architect Van der Lugt regards this as a missed opportunity, because the possibilities for creating high-quality industrial products from bamboo, such as blockboard and flooring, are increasing constantly. Bamboo is moreover an environmentally friendly material. It has a tremendously fast growth rate, through which the material absorbs large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. Giant bamboo therefore is an interesting alternative to less environmentally friendly materials, such as tropical hardwood.

Cheese please

The Sports & Culture (S&C) center restaurants aren’t popular with students, primarily because the food is too fancy and the prices too high. According to the 2007-2011 Sport & Culture business plan, S&C restaurants are supposed to cover their own costs. However, the restaurants had a negative balance of 50,000 euro this year. The business plan also called for the restaurants to be staffed primarily by students; therefore, in the first season (2006/2007) only students worked in the restaurants. But this proved to be impractical. Student workers proved to be unreliable, often failing to show up for work and being difficult about scheduling work shifts. “Not all the students workers seemed capable of learning how to work in a restaurant,” says S&C Director Raymond Browne. “Customers sometimes had to wait 45 minutes for their food. And this of course was reflected in the bottom line.” Students also complained of the ridiculously high prices and fancy food. Joost Willems, of Oras: “If you order a cheese sandwich, you don’t want salad and cucumbers to come with it.”