Delft’s university has a lot to offer to its students. It’s not all about hardcore calculations and theoretical education because at the end of the day, the products on the market are created for the user. That requires certain know-how of what the people require and what they will find easy and comfortable to use. You can see that here a designer will play a major role. If you want to be one, the IO (Industrial design) faculty is just for you. The other creative place, from which a lot of cool urban project come out is the Boukunde (Architecture) faculty. We have two faculties especially for the creative people – where cool ideas spring to life.

Although IOers have a kind of unofficial competition with the architects about their outfits, coffee corners and their buildings I still believe the insides of the IO faculty are unique and fresh. Immediately after entering you find yourself in a spacious hall which incorporates workshop area and  coffee lounge. Above them are ‘hovering’ the 2 study area islands and the row with fast-rendering computers. The whole facility is full of little studios and chill corners, and the walls give special mood to every corridor, to every room.

To get inside information about the processes, studies and ‘little secrets going behind the scenes’ in IO, I met with Rado – a good friend of mine, who is currently doing one of the masters track. We did the interview at end of his ‘working’ day in a room divided in project ‘boxes’, where the creative process takes place. The walls of this ‘cubicles’ were full with sketches, brainstorm notes and colorful agendas. The design could be ‘felt in the air’.

Listening to the interview recording, reminded me of the friendly chat, the laughter we shared and all the exciting facts I learned about the study. Rado’s team is now in their second year of the master’s and busy every day of the week with IDP (Integrated Design Project) – the biggest one, which runs the whole semester.

The master profiles combine ‘forces’ during this period in order to design and prototype a product for a real company. There are about 20 teams from the 3 master tracks. The first, Strategic Product design concentrates on the marketing strategies, the economics, the company and how to put the product on the market. The second, Design for interaction is about the interaction process between people and product. They involve the user early in the process in order to understand “what, how, when and where is the target group doing what they do”, shared Barbara – one of Rado’s partners in the project. The third master, Integrated project design concentrates on the inside of the product, the engineering and technical side of the product.

The story of this two IO students was appealing and I kept on asking them questions about their divert experiences. Rado, like me, also came from Bulgarian university and I was curious if he also encountered the differences that struck me in the beginning.

R. : “Here, you go the first day to class and the professors tell you what are you suppose to deliver at the end of the project or semester. But they do not tell you how to do it. You should figure that on your own. In the Bulgarian is the opposite : they teach you a lot more theory. Working in groups, was also new for me. It took me one semester to get used to this different but interesting approach. We also have a lot of international students – from Spain, Germany, Turkey and Italy.  “. There are actually that many Italians in Design for Interaction, that some joke it is Design for Italians J

So what are you actually doing right now?

R. :“ We are working on a design concept of an urban wind turbine which is creating an information screen with the principal 'Persistance of Vision'. The LEDs are powered by the energy generated from the turbine. We  encountered various problems throughout the stages of the project. But finally we are working on the prototype and in 2 weeks we should be ready to demonstrate our product to the company. “

And I thought Design is easy, but after this talk I realized that they are busy, just in a different environment and on a different tempo. For example, once heads are stuffed with info, my friends from IO do a creativity boost activity – spinning rings around the chest.

And just to keep students motivated for real life interaction, the industrial design café opens every Wednesday evening and students from all the campus join to enjoy its beer. Rumor has it that there a lot of girls in IO (more than other faculties) and that is why it a popular place. But after my visits to Leiden, Utrecht and Amsterdam I am not easily impressed at those gatherings. But the grass spots are comfortoble for a beer and chat and the people are usually fun to talk to, more relaxed than in my Aerospace faculty or at least with a different 'glasses' through which they look upon life.

But I am certainly looking for the big yearly festival this Friday. The faculty is going to be transformed into party place and more than 1000 students are going to attend.

This place …..

Will become like this!

Long live holy-days! April and May are particularly pleasant in the Netherlands, not only because the weather is improving, the day is becoming longer, but also due to the many national holidays. This week we had the Thursday and the Friday free from university, which resulted in a looong weekend of 4 days.

Painting by Il Garofalo – Ascension of Christ

The dilemma was the following : to study or not to study. As you might have guessed already, the decision was taken and the backpack was packed. Off I went to the North of the Netherlands, my destination - Leeuwarden. The reason : to explore this part of country and meet with Valya – a classmate of mine.  She is studying Tourism at Stenden University of Applied Sciences. The trip was postponed a couple of times, but now the time had come.

The trip lasted little over 3 hours (pretty long for the Netherlands), but I enjoy traveling, especially in an air-conditioned train, while outside is hot (25^o without clouds) . I was greeted at the train station and we had a little walk around Leeuwarden. I got the impression that it is a lively student city with long canal running through the centre, friendly bars and Frisians. These people speak a different language and are very proud of it and their culture.

A statue and a rocker

I was curious about the different education that my friend was getting at her university, so she brought me to the campus. The Hogeschool concentrates on the practical side of the studies. In other words, the students get to chance to practice their future profession and learn about it by actually doing it. Since it was a holiday, the main building was closed, but the backdoor of the kitchen was still opened. We were guided by Valya’s roommate, who is studying Hotel  Management. I learned that every day the students cook 7000 meals which are consumed by their colleagues and the guests of the Hotel, which is run by the university. After the quick tour I was convinced that the level of preparation of this ‘not so serious’ study was high.

Table arrangements by the students (university’s hotel restaurant)

Later we formed a Bulgarian feast with our beloved drink - Rakia. The beverages ‘showed’ us the way to the disco and it was Thursday – the student’s night. The bouncer at the club wouldn’t let some people in, with the excuse :
“It is too crowded” . However, I was accompanied by two ladies, and therefore I was privileged to get in even with another person’s student ID.

The next day, we decided to visit Harlingen – an old town at the North’s Sea coast. It is famous for its long history in fishing and shipping. The train took us directly to the harbor from where the ferries to the Wadden islands and Vlieland depart. The ferry tickets’ price were not that tempting, and our feet took us to the nearby beach where we enjoyed the sun and strolled into the black mud in attempt to reach the sea.

After the long night our brains needed a good coffee and our bodies asked for some rest. The wish came true in a nice restaurant just above the beach. To make it complete, we had some Lokum, bought at the Bulgarian store in Leeuwarden.

The conversation was flowing and we did exchange a lot of ideas. I learned a lot about my companions and how our life paths have changed us. I truly enjoyed it! Moreover, the coffee ritual reminded us of the leisure times in high school, when we would run from class to linger over a cup of coffee for a couple of hours. In Holland, we rarely allow ourselves this pleasure, since ‘time here is expensive and should not be wasted’. But that Friday was different and university duties seemed far, far away.

The energy we got from the entertaining  chats and the delicious coffee inspired us to explore the city – and it turned out to be worthwhile. The canals were full with yachts, small ships and cool boats.

Local children were eating their ice creams and seemed not to care about the architecture of the town. But we could not just pass it by. We stopped here and there to admire the Dutch mastery of richly ornamented houses, the creativity when it comes to entertaintment and the idyll of the canals.

At the end of the day we truly agreed with Christopher McCandless on his quote that “Happiness is true only when it is shared”. Thank you Valya once again for this wonderful experience. I hoped all of you felt my happiness through this piece of writing. Good night and thank you for reading.

rn. Toddlers always remind us of the curious child within all of us – the explorer of the world’s wonders, the kid ‘inside’ which ‘sees’ and ‘touches’ everything for the first time. They, among all, deserve special attention and that is why around the world people celebrate ‘Children’s day’. In Bulgaria, as adopted in the former Communist bloc, we honor the youth on the 1^st of June.

Seeming purposively planned on that same day this year, a good friend of mine and son of a proud Bulgarian mother, gave his final graduation presentation. Family, friends and professors gathered in one of the rooms in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering to attend this memorable event.

Agent Dountchev is an important figure in our little but united ‘Delftse’ Bulgarian community. He is the one who greeted me upon my arriaval and took me as a brother in his house. With almost 10 years of Delft experience under his belt and all the dramatic ‘knock-outs’ he has given to the Aerospace exams, he has always been a ‘guiding star’ in my struggles when I needed him.

me and Dountchev with a mini gas turbine

Doutchev is the first Bulgarian who has graduated from a master program in our faculty. He specialised in Mini Gas Turbines and showed in-depth knowledge of the project he had worked  on.  The presentation was quite interesting and I could actually follow it – although the technicality was really specific.

The examiners did pay a close attention and after the presentation stroke a few on-point questions, but witty Doutchev, did answer back quickly without hesitation. After that, they moved in a special room where they ‘interrogated’ him thoroughly and were convinced he deserved the amazing  grade of 8 – quite a remarkable feat for an Aerospace Master of Sciences in Delft. We, his friends, are really proud of him and will do our best to built upon the good start he set.

But there is still some time until we, the 2^nd year of Bachelor Aerospace Engineers, reach this moment. So we should keep our patience levels up high and keep on striving persistently until one day we can also experience this success. In the mean time, we had  to prepare for a wind tunnel experiment, so I headed to the library. My friends were already studying the assignment.

Currently, we have a course in Aerodynamics, where we learn about the behavior of air at supersonic speeds (above Mach 1) and how these airflows act depending on the type of windtunnel. A wind tunnel is supremely useful and important in the study and development phase of a new aircraft for example. And our faculty has quite a few of them, which are also accessible by the students at certain period of the studies. In the 1^st year, we did do some measurements in the low-speed one, but in the second we shift gears are allowed to explore the high speeds. For stimulation, if we did good during this practical we could score extra 2 points for our upcoming exam.

At the Faculty’s wind tunnel laboratories we were greeted by a PhD student – an Aerodynamist from Spain and were quickly introduced to the wave behavior of water – which is a ‘cousin’ to air, differing in density.  

After the demo, we moved to the ‘real deal’ – the Supersonic Wind Tunnel capable of reaching speed in the range of Mach 3. On the picture below, you may also see all the pipes which measure the pressure throughout the tunnel.  

The instructor explained us everything about the operation of this tool and let us took the measurements ourselves. We needed the data later for performing a series of calculations, making graphs and for which we produced graphs and did interpreted the observations.

We had 3 short hours for completing the exercise and delivering our work to the tutor. Therefore, we were quite focused and  the teamwork skills we had learned from other projects proved to be invaluable.  

Having finished that and having it off our mind, we continued with a delicious Turkish doner and celebration drink in honor of Mr. Dountchev.