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

This book takes the IBA '87 in Berlin Kreuzberg as a lens to look at the adaptability and generosity of architecture to be appropriated for people from all kinds of (cultural) backgrounds.

This is a quesiton we are also dealing with in our design studios. One examplary project it 

 by Maurizio Mätzler, German Kiyyan, Angela Roth, which proposes to repurpose an abandoned tower in the middle of Piraeus for temporary residents.

Kader Konuk, Professor and Chair, Turkish Studies, University of Duisburg-Essen, writes the following about the book: "In this tour de force from one of architectureal history's leading lights, Esra Akcan narrates the contemporary architecture of Berlin via a series of strolls through the urban landscape. Her critical reflections on the status of the noncitizen residents and rare insights into the intimate spaces of the refugee residents, the book traverses multiple disciplines, making it an indispensable reference work for Architextural History, Urban Studies, Migration, Refugee and Critical Border Studies, and German, Turkish and European Studies."

“The book asks what would have happened if the architectural discipline and profession were shaped by a new ethics of hospitality toward the immigrant, and calls this open architecture. It [...] conceptualizes open architecture's various types with terms such as flexibility and adaptability of form, unfinished and unfinalizable design, collectivity and collaboration, participation and democracy, and multiplicity of meaning.” (From the preface)

“Open Architecture – Migration, Citizenship and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/87” by Esra Akcan

Open Architecture, by Esra Akcan

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