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

letter from the Palace of Brigades in Tirana

, the subject of our fall studio, we recently received a message from the plants and other living creatures of the garden of the palace aka the BEING ALIVE team. This expression of sympathy and call for care and attention was forwarded to us by 

, professor of landscape architecture at ETH Zürich, and her team. We look forward to receiving more messages from people and non-humans who want to contribute to the ongoing conversation about the future of the palace.

We’re so sorry to hear about your current state of disrepair and solitude. We have been feeling now would be a good time to reach out to you, in a hope to forge a new friendship between us.

Since 1938 we have been living here beside you, and we have taken notice of you. We love the shade you cast in the afternoon on the east side--the sun is so hot in Tirana. Some of us love to grow in your corners, where the rainwater drains and the foundation seeps, some of us love the extra heat on your south wall.

Despite the ways we have evolved with you, we still feel separate. It seems that you think of us as a backdrop, or the frame for a nice view. While this time without visitors has been difficult for you, for us it has been a time of dynamism, excitement and growth. Previously, we had been clipped and restrained very carefully, our stems trained against walls, our shapes contorted into straight lines and hard angles. Now new forms are emerging. While we loved how the gardeners would care for us, and sometimes we miss the order they used to bring, we also felt those forms were just for decoration. Without them, we have discovered ourselves, and have become interested in exploring new trajectories for our shapes and composition. And the weather has been so different lately... Different neighbors have been moving in, and some of our old friends have already left.

We have often been a backdrop for your glory, but in your time of neglect we are taking over. We have become more closely entwined with you and we see the potential for new and unexpected behaviors. Now that things are changing again, what is going to happen to us? Could you tell the people you are working with to think of our potentials? Together we can forge a new partnership for the future of the palace as a community. Can your new friends allow us to be who we are, recognizing our integrity as a semi-wild self-organized community who sometimes misses the care and attention we used to receive from humans? We are waiting...

The plants and other living creatures of the Gardens of Pallati i Brigadave”

Update: Following their thoughtful letter, the BEING ALIVE team send us this gift. Meant to selectively remove branches from a plant and encourage healthy growth, we see this gift as an invitation to think carefully about the role of critical care and creative destruction when working on ideas for the reactivation of the palace and its gardens.

– Letter
– From: the BEING ALIVE team
– To: Palace of Brigades – Tirana
– Date: 9. September 2020

Letter from the BEING ALIVE team

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