GORAN IBRAHIMOVIĆ
Master Architecture · Year 1 · 2025-2026

Learning to think
like a designer.

I come from hbo bouwtechniek, where I was trained to solve problems. This year I learned that an architect does something else: instead of fixing the immediate issue, you shape the whole environment so the problem never arises in the first place.

Five projectsThree studios, urbanism, theory
One shiftFrom problem-solver to designer
One methodLearning when to decide
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The through-line

A year about retraining how I think.

Every project this year, in some way, pushed against the same habit: the urge to solve fast. Bouwtechniek taught me to reach for the immediate fix, deductively and inductively. Architecture asked for something else: abductive reasoning: embracing uncertainty and constantly asking "Is that so?" of every design premise, so that reframing the question comes before answering it.

Deductive problem-solver → Abductive designer who reframes the question
My position

Architecture as infrastructure for human life, not a product to be traded.

There is a fundamental divide in how we approach the built environment. On one hand, architecture is the careful organisation of space, light, and material to frame and elevate daily human ritual. It is a discipline that derives its form from the specificities of site, program, and human scale. On the other hand, contemporary production increasingly treats buildings as generic, scalable volume, where spatial complexity is flattened in favour of standardised, repetitive floor plans.

When we prioritise mere square footage over spatial performance and tectonic details, the architect is reduced to a decorator of envelopes. The building becomes a mute container, indifferent to the life it encloses.

I design from the conviction that architecture must remain the infrastructure of human life. This means shifting the focus back to the spatial logic, material permanence, and tectonic details that the final user actually experiences and appreciates. By prioritising the moments where human habit meets physical form, architecture regains its purpose.

This conviction stays quiet in my studio work this year. But it is the exact reason I question briefs instead of just executing them, and it is where my interest lies for the coming year.

About me
Portrait of Goran Ibrahimović

Goran Ibrahimović, Apeldoorn, NL

I'm a part-time Master of Architecture student at Fontys Academy of the Arts, which means I design by day and learn to question that designing by night.

My background is technical. I studied Building Technology (Bachelor of Architecture) at Saxion, then a pre-Master at ArtEZ that opened up the creative and conceptual depth the Master expects. By day I work as an assistant designer and architectural drafter at Witteveen Architecten BNA in Apeldoorn, where I started as an intern and moved into a permanent role six months later. In a small, versatile firm my work runs from complex renovations to commercial developments and medical centres.

That practice grounds me in the realisation phase: the technical, constructional side of architecture. But assisting my mentor with conceptual design and visualisation showed me the other half: how a vision travels from a sketch into a buildable reality. The past year taught me that good architecture needs both, and that my own work is still maturing in its creative expression. That gap is exactly what this Master year is for.

My interest keeps returning to renovation, especially historic and protected buildings. I like researching traditional building techniques and finding ways to preserve architectural heritage while carefully integrating modern additions. It's where my technical background, my conviction about architecture's social role, and my curiosity meet, and that is where I want my graduation to go.

The dual context: bridging academy and practice

I currently work at Witteveen Architecten B.N.A., a tight-knit firm in Apeldoorn with deep expertise in technical craftsmanship, residential renovations and monumental heritage. There I've been given the responsibility to independently manage smaller, permit-free expansion projects (vergunningsvrij bouwen), guiding clients through the entire process: from the initial briefing and conceptual sketching to the final working drawings.

My academic growth at Fontys MA+U has profoundly shifted those ambitions. I still value the execution-driven nature of permit-free building, but immersion in architectural theory and the design studios sparked a desire to look beyond immediate problem-solving. I'm now actively aiming to transition toward larger residential new-build projects and complex permit applications. I no longer want to just solve spatial puzzles; I want to dedicate substantial time to rigorous pre-design research, exploring how a design integrates with its context, expands on local history, and uses innovative construction methodologies. This cross-pollination between the academy's investigative nature and the concrete reality of my firm is what lets me grow from a technical draftsman into an analytical, holistic designer.

Curriculum vitae

Education

2025-2029
Master of ArchitectureFontys Academy of the Arts, Netherlands
2022
Pre-Master ArchitectureArtEZ University of the Arts, Arnhem
2020-2025
Bachelor of Architecture (Building Technology)Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Enschede
2015-2020
Havo, Natuur & TechniekRSG Noord Oost Veluwe, Epe

Work experience

2025 - now
Assistant designerWitteveen Architecten BNA, Apeldoorn

Working across all project stages, from first conceptual sketches to final technical delivery: drafting plans, developing complex details, and crafting presentations and 3D prints for the office.

Feb-Jul 2025
Internship (technical designer)Witteveen Architecten BNA, Apeldoorn

Contributed to a range of architectural projects, from the concept design phase through to final design.

Skills & languages

BIMRevit
ModellingForma · Rhino + Grasshopper
RenderEnscape · Twinmotion
SketchingMorpholio Trace · fountain pen
AIXFigura workflow
LanguagesDutch · Serbo-Croatian · English
The studios

Three design studios.

Read in order, the three studios tell the story of learning to design: failing, finding a method, and slowly trusting the process over the quick answer.

01 / Studio 1
Visitor centre · Loonse en Drunense Duinen

Duinwaker

Where I learned that a strong concept is not a design.

The question

Design a visitor centre rooted in a single species of the dunes. I chose the duinpieper, a bird threatened by the Dutch nitrogen crisis: acid rain stripping minerals from the soil, nitrogen-loving grasses like bochtige smele smothering the heath and the open sand.

Research → concept

My thinking started from one question: how can a structure give something back to the landscape? An early idea was a limestone form that erodes and returns nutrients to the soil. That shifted into a second question, how can a visitor contribute, which led me to plaggen, the old heathland practice of stripping vegetation to keep the soil poor and open. From there came Duinwaker: a silent festival where visitors trample invasive species and drag dead branches through the sand, disturbing the soil exactly as the landscape needs.

The turning point

I spent so long generating concepts that I left no time to design. My final structure was weak, and I had to resit. In the resit I went back to my very first site sketch (a pile of large branches) and the whole design grew from it. The sketch I made before I knew anything held the answer.

What I learned

Research and concept mean nothing if I don't reserve time to let them become form. This exact weakness, doubting endlessly and never committing to a path, is what the Double Diamond method later gave me a tool to fix.

Early thinking sketches for Studio 1
Early thinking: working out how a structure, and then a visitor, could give something back to the dunes.
Plaggen and visitor-as-caretaker concept board
The concept before the branches: plaggen and "how can a visitor contribute?"
Model of the branch structure from above
The turning point made physical: the pile of branches from my first site sketch, built as a model.
Model of the branch structure from the side
The same structure from the side, the raw dead wood forming a canopy.
Final Duinwaker presentation board
The final Duinwaker design: plan, section, site plan, details, and the structure in the dunes.
The Mineral Sequence presentation sheet for Studio 2
The Mineral Sequence: the mass evolution from year 1 to year 10, section and plan at 1:50, the Anthos campestris that drove the brief, and renders of the structure eroding into the landscape.
3D-printed maquette of the eroding structure on a cork landscape
The vanishing sculpture made physical: the 3D-printed model standing in its landscape, heather already taking hold at its eroding base.
02 / Studio 2
Parametric design · Rhino + Grasshopper

Wild Encounters

A concept already settled, so I could finally focus on form.

The question

The brief was to take a Studio 1 design and rebuild it parametrically, working with my classmate Ege Özcan. We chose to build on Ege's design and carry over my Studio 1 erosion concept: a structure that erodes back into the landscape. From there the question became a precise one, how do we let the way limestone erodes in nature drive the form itself?

The new tool

This studio was where I learned to design parametrically in Rhino and Grasshopper. Learning the software was genuinely the part I enjoyed most: instead of drawing a fixed shape, I was building a definition where the geometry responds to the values I feed it. That shift, from drawing an object to defining the rules that generate it, changed how I think about form.

Research → form

To make erosion the engine of the design, we researched how it actually behaves, and found studies describing the rates at which calcium limestone erodes in nature. We used those real rates to drive the geometry in Grasshopper. The result was almost a sculpture: standing in the landscape, eroding slowly and on purpose, one day vanishing entirely, ideally leaving a healthy heather field where it stood because it had given all of its nutrients back to the soil.

Lesson learned

Form follows logic. Parametric tools can generate spectacular, highly complex forms, but my deepest realisation here was that a design can be visually spectacular and still entirely worthless without a strong underlying concept. Credibility doesn't come from the complexity of the geometry; it comes from the integrity of the concept, and a valid concept is only born from rigorous, deep-dive research. So I stopped letting the software dictate the aesthetics and started using computational design strictly as a tool to materialise a well-researched, intellectually grounded narrative, which is also why I now plan exactly when the concept has to be fixed, so the design phase is never sacrificed.

03 / Studio 3
AI-assisted design · XFigura

The curator's workflow

De Hoeksteen, a brick tower on an Amsterdam canal, designed almost entirely through AI.

The shift

My old workflow front-loaded everything: a detailed Revit model, then Enscape renders, then external AI for realism: days of modelling before a single client impression. The new workflow, built on the XFigura canvas with Nano Banana 2 and GPT Image 2, starts with a simple mass model, a rough sketch of elements over it, reference images and a highly descriptive prompt. A photorealistic concept render appears in minutes instead of days, and is easy to adapt, where reshaping an existing Revit model is painful. Roughly 95% of this project was made in AI.

The limitation

Dutch monuments demand precise historical detailing. Trained on global data, the AI hallucinates, blending generic classical or vaguely Parisian motifs instead of accurate Dutch brickwork. It will happily produce something safe and historically wrong.

The method

Beyond AI, this studio introduced the methodologies major firms use to generate large-scale conceptual designs, with emerging technology like AI as one integrated tool inside the creative process. The core of it was the Double Diamond (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver): a structured framework for managing the balance between divergent thinking (opening up to endless possibilities and research) and convergent thinking (narrowing down to concrete design decisions). The moment the teacher explained it, I recognised it as the cure for my Studio 1 problem, a way to know when to explore and when to commit.

Lesson learned

AI shifted my role from creator to curator and director: it expands what I can do and saves time in the concept phase, but the critical evaluation and the final design responsibility stay firmly in my hands, especially in renovation, where historical integrity is easy to lose. The Double Diamond has been the real game-changer, though. It gives me the rigorous structure to remain organised during complex design phases, and I've already begun applying it to my projects at Witteveen Architecten, guiding clients far more clearly from their initial spatial requests to a well-defined architectural sketch.

De Hoeksteen AI workflow sheet
The workflow, left to right: inspiration, AI model testing, mass-to-image variations, representation styles, detailed views, and final product, with the full prompt that drove it.
De Hoeksteen final presentation sheet
The final sheet: conceptual massing and materialisation, the dusk impression on site, elevations and 3D sections, all curated and directed from AI output.
Double Diamond method mapped onto an architectural brief, hand-drawn
The double diamond mapped onto a real brief: understanding of a Dalmatian house I am researching, and how it can deliver a modern house with traditional details.
Courses & theory

Four courses beyond the studio.

Alongside the three studios, four courses shaped how I think: urban design, a circular-materials course, critical reflection, and philosophy.

Urbanism research sheet: the three agendas
The research sheet: the history of Dutch public space and the aesthetic, social and ecological agendas, with case studies from Amsterdam to Madrid and Seoul.
First page of the Beyond the Facade manifesto
Beyond the Facade: the manifesto itself, where my position on the architect’s role found words.
01 / Urban design
Guest lectures + manifesto

Beyond the Facade

Where my position found words.

The question

A series of guest lectures showed how Dutch urban projects handle social, environmental, economic and historical concerns, each told by the designer who worked on it. What I kept missing was the relation between them: it was clear they connected, but vague how one strengthens the other.

The research

With my group I built a research sheet that pinned that relation down through three agendas, the aesthetic, the social and the ecological, read against the history of Dutch public space from the 1901 Housing Act to the market-driven VINEX era and today's climate turn. Case studies (Bajeskwartier and the 15-minute Merwijde, Schouwburgplein, Madrid Río, Cheonggyecheon) showed each agenda reinforcing the others rather than competing.

The manifesto

Then I wrote Beyond the Facade: A Manifesto for Spatial Equity and Human Leadership. Coming from a family from former Yugoslavia, where my grandfather's home in Zadar was simply provided by the system he worked for, I argue against a Dutch market that has quietly demoted the architect from a leader of human behaviour to a decorator of facades. It closes on a pointed fact: in the Netherlands you are not legally obliged to build with an architect, so when investors cut, what goes first?

Lesson learned

The Urbanism module shifted my perspective from the micro-scale of individual buildings to the macro-scale of the city. I learned how urban planners analyse spatial designs, and how interventions at a larger scale dictate the success of the public realm. An architectural object never stands alone; it must actively communicate with, adapt to and enrich the surrounding public domain and infrastructure. This is also where the personal and professional met: the three agendas gave me the structure I was missing, and writing the manifesto forced me to say what I actually believe, giving the rest of my work a position to stand on.

02 / Materials & circular building
Short course · TU Delft

Reading the catch

Learning to distrust the label.

The question

Using the Circular Building Product Canvas, we analysed a material sold as circular: the Pirrouet brick by Van der Sanden. Development, lifespan, raw materials, mining, manufacturing location, on-site materials, cost, health effects, carbon footprint: the whole chain behind the claim.

What I learned

To look critically at what the producer tells you. It usually looks excellent, and there is almost always a catch. The professor framed it through the R-strategies: Refuse, Rethink and Reduce sit at the top of the ladder; recover and recycle at the bottom. But every R only makes sense inside its context, never imposed from outside.

Why it matters to me

This critical eye for materials sits directly next to my critical eye for AI output and for investor-driven briefs. It's the same instinct: don't passively accept what you're handed.

The R-ladder of circular strategies, R0 Refuse to R9 Recover
The R-ladder, from R0 Refuse down to R9 Recover: the hierarchy the course taught me to read materials against. Source: TU Delft, The R-strategies.
03 / Critical reflection

Architectural research

At the start I judged buildings instinctively, almost emotionally, as finished objects to react to. The lessons taught me to slow down and ask why: what problem does this answer, what behaviour does it support, what values are built into its form? Good architecture comes from a chain of reasons, not intuition alone.

Two habits stuck. Thinking out loud: forcing myself to articulate a decision makes it clearer and easier to defend, at school and at work. And sketching: with almost no drawing background, a fountain pen (committing to lines without erasing) and Morpholio Trace on the iPad became part of my everyday process. I now doodle to think.

04 / Philosophy

Philosophy

The honest one. We attended lectures and made a booklet of sketches explaining each class, which is hard, because to draw an idea you first have to understand it, and philosophy isn't something I'd ever really been taught.

I'm still deciding what I think of it. My instinct is that this is a subject I'd absorb better through reading than through lectures alone. I'm keeping that as an open question rather than a tidy conclusion, which is, in a way, the point of the course.

Lesson learned: deconstructive analysis, reframing the architectural premise

My greatest insight across the theory program was learning how to deconstruct and break down complex spatial questions by shifting my perspective. Rather than analysing a building through dense text or standard parameters, I discovered the power of analytical sketching: by stripping a design down to its essence through simple, conceptual diagrams, I learned to understand the underlying architectural logic, intentions and historical context of a structure. This methodology aligns directly with abductive reasoning, questioning the status quo ("Is that so?") and reframing my architectural framework.

Looking forward

Bridging innovation and expression.

Moving into my second year, I've set clear goals for both sides of my development, the firm and the academy, so the two keep feeding each other.

I no longer want to only solve spatial puzzles. I want to develop concepts from zero, and to draw them so well that the design speaks for itself.

In professional practice (Witteveen Architecten)

I aim to take the lead on a larger-scale new-build project from inception to execution. Professionally, I plan to optimise my design methodology by fusing the structured approach of the Double Diamond with the XFigura workflow and AI tools I mastered this year, allowing me to generate innovative concepts efficiently while maintaining organisational control over the process.

In the academy (Fontys MA+U)

Academically, I want to deepen my ability to develop abstract concepts entirely from scratch (from 0). Furthermore, I want to master the art of 2D representation: making my drawings, structural diagrams and analytical illustrations so compelling and visually clear that they tell a powerful architectural story on their own, ensuring my design intent is immediately communicative to critics and clients alike.