After graduating in constructive engineering in his home province of Limburg Ralph did a master at the TU Delft, as a result of his enthusiasm for the architecture of Zaha Hadid and Marc Fornes. Their designs seemed to express a future that was all about the subject he was involved in, being parametric design, which promises a freedom of shape and innovation in construction.
At the department Hyperbody-non standard and interactive designhe had wonderful adventurous experiences, working in informed design, roboticsand constructive experiments that involved complex data sets.‘But it quickly dawned on me that I was drawn more to situations in which constructive design was dominant and the focus was on practical applications of those abstract and theoretical discoveries.
’At ZJA he feels right at home, he says, because here research into new applications of parametric design is connected to significant projects such as train stations, bridges and new building types like The Shaded Dome. That is very satisfactory. It’s exciting to work with other programmers, who work in a completely different style than I do, and to find common ground to improve collaboration. The new fields to work on keep popping up.’