Cities are sites for the extraction of profit and wealth, where capitalist delusions of grandeur materialize in the most delirious ways. Real estate, at times in collaboration with city authorities, continues to project newer and bigger developments on top of existing lived realities. In the process of enacting their fantasies, entire neighborhoods and communities are violently wiped out. Many of these processes remain ongoing, even though the wounds of past events are not yet healed.This is the case for Brussels North, a district deeply affected by trauma. The city’s economic optimism that followed the 1958 World Fair, and the establishment of the first European institutions that same year, prompted the conceptualisation of the Manhattan Plan. This urban, modernist master plan, euphorically oriented towards its American namesake, envisioned the Northern district as a business hub connected to an immense highway network. The plan was never fully realized; only two of the originally eight planned World Trade Center towers were erected, causing, however, the demolition of an entire neighbourhood and the eviction of its inhabitants. Enthusiasm fainted, forcing the city administration itself to enter some of the buildings.
Such aggressive strategies of urban renewal have inevitably forced cities to become places of resistance and emancipatory struggle. Massive protests that followed the Manhattan Plan prevented authorities from pursuing further demolitions of the old city fabric. Today, Brussels North District is being reinvested in once more, with renewed optimism.How to deal with trauma? In this dramatically monofunctional district, investors and planning authorities have recently agreed on a 10% public utility within every new construction and renovation. We will use this as an entry point to question and rethink the notion of the public, as well as its mirror, the counterpublics.

Being densely inhabited environments, cities carry the immanent potential of radical change due to the continuous collective reinterpretation of urban culture. Through carefully listening, observing and collaborating with a variety of local positions, we will gain a deep understanding of the complexities at play. We will become active and intervene as designers while being aware of the paradoxes of practice. Sometimes making something sets unforeseen processes in motion. We will identify underlying risks, such as gentrification, commercialization and displacement, to prevent another chapter of trauma for Brussels North.

Further, we will ask ourselves: How to relate to utopian visions of the past? How to deal with the decaying and failed structures of burgeoning times? Even more so, within an overbuilt world facing ecological collapse?

The studio‘s endeavour is threefold: to strengthen the students' literacy/awareness with critical spatial theory, to articulate individual positions and to test alternative architecture practices and doing so by engaging and learning with and from artistic practices. The design studio will be tightly knit with a diverse group of local actors, We will cultivate a reading club, propose interventions in Brussels and Zurich, host a symposium and curate an exhibition.

Studio Brussels – Paradox of Practice

– Phase 1: Trauma I-IV
– Phase 2: Paradox of Practice
– Phase 3: Curation
– Fieldtrip to Brussels 10-11.10.2023

Urban Practice

Design Studio

Open Public Structures

Design in Dialogue

Deconstructing Power Dynamics

Europe

Brussels

Power

The first excursion, on 11 June, was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. A new date will be announced on our website shortly.

On the occasion of the double exhibition 

 (VAI) and the NEWROPE Chair organize a series of excursions and dialogues on how designers can take care of the future of our planet. Each of the excursions on June 11, August 20 and September 3 focuses on another part of Belgium.

During a day long bus tour, we will visit a selection of projects that are presented in the exhibition 

Care for Space for Care - Scenes from Flanders and Brussels

. Each excursion is followed by a public dialogue between the architects, excursionists, the team of VAi and NEWROPE and (other) invited guests.

 takes place on Saturday 11 June and combines a visit of Sporthaven by Import.Export Architecture with Huis Perrekes of NU architectuuratelier. A 

 includes visits to the observation tower in Negenoord, a project of De Gouden Liniaal Architecten, Ecotron of noAarchitecten and ends at Z33, a project of Francesca Torzo. The 

 contains visits to Le Rideau, a project of OUEST and Grand Hôpital in Charlerloi by Bas Smets. The three excursions will each treat a combination of the three themes of the exhibition (interdependence, maintenance and posthumanism), making this a variation of different insights on caring architecture.

For more infomation and to register, please follow these links:

– Date first excursion: 11.06.2022
– Start excursion: 11:00
– Price excursion*: €12
– Location excursion: Antwerp (exact location will be communicated after registration)
– Start debate: 17:00
– Entrance debate: free, but you need to book a free ticket
–  Location debate: VAi/De Singel, Desguinlei 25, 2018 Antwerpen
– Production: Flanders Architecture Institute, De Singel and NEWROPE
– With support of: the Flemish Community
– Other dates:


*If you cannot afford the ticket for the excursions please contact us with a short note of interest via email to Elise Verstraete: elise.verstraete@vai.be

 in Antwerp, Belgium, are focusing on the impact of care on the built environment with a double exhibition:

 Critical Care: Architecture for a Broken Planet

, an exhibition developed by the Architekturzentrum Wien, is a plea for greater care and collaboration in architecture. After stops in Vienna, Zürich, Dresden and Berlin 

will link the international case studies from 

 to projects from Flanders and Brussels. Interdependence, maintenance and posthumanism are the anchor points for the further exploration of care in architecture.


Visit the 

Focus on care

School of Transformation

Exhibition

Changing a Culture

Excursions and dialogues - Care for Space for Care: Scenes from Flanders and Brussels

Culture

Care

Collectivity

As an invitation for the fall 2020 design in dialogue studio students received the following letter from the Palace of Brigades in Tirana. The studio started in September and last until mid December. Click 

 to find more information about the studio and the students projects.

I am writing you with a request. It has to do with my situation. I know you too have been forced to not see anyone for a while, but my solitude started long before the arrival of the virus and still continues.

When I was younger, powerful people wanted to be in my company. I hosted kings and generals, judges and other high ranking officials. Now it’s mostly quiet. Only every now and then I receive guests, who are primarily interested in themselves, not in me. Time hasn’t been kind to me. The faded colors, the cracks, my dull expression… I’m nothing more than a vague shadow of my younger self.

Next year I’m turning eighty. Looking back on my long life I have come to realize that I have always been subordinated by others. From the royals who put me here, to the fences who keep people away from me, there is always someone or something preventing me from opening up to the world.

Stuck in solitary confinement, I spend my days scanning my surroundings for a sign of life. I see the cypresses waving in the wind. Clouds are drifting by, bringing rain and snow from the nearby sea and mountains. In recent years it has been increasingly dry. The sunlight scorches the grass, the soil becomes sandy, the fountain stopped running. I feel trapped, unable to change my own conditions.

Increasingly I wonder who has the imagination and power to unleash my potential and see the value of a more progressive preservation of my heritage? One that respects my integrity while allowing me to develop. Who or what can create the conditions for me to flourish and become a meeting place for people from near and far? How can my luscious garden be rejuvenated and connected to the larger natural environment?

Please help to unlock my golden cage! By listening to the people that take care of me everyday, and by helping me to discover the stories that reveal my hidden qualities, I can finally become part of the city that has gradually grown around me.

Even if you were allowed to travel to Tirana you would not be able to visit me, due to my fragility and state of seclusion. But you can get to know me from a distance by joining the NEWROPE Design Studio. They are inviting you to collectively imagine alternative futures for me and beyond myself – in dialogue with experts and leaders and by exploring digital and analogue means.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

 for more updates, photos and videos related to Studio Tirana - Pallati i Brigadave and the Design in Dialogue Lab

Announcing Studio Tirana – Pallati i Brigadave

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