Along the Ring's Conditions

Abstract

The thesis has been developed within and upon the context of the ‘Dorsal Wallonne’, which is an urbanized spine located in the southern side of Belgium. This spine spans from Mons to Liege and it can be described as a territorial artifact of great diversity, where urbanization has followed the vicissitudes of the machine-age. The region not only represent many challenges in a post-industrial realty, but as well an opportunity to inscribe a series of architectural projects into this territory and in its splendid tradition of man-made modification of the landscape. Framing the problem statement of architecturally reconsider a postindustrial city-region: the aim of the thesis is, to go beyond a project of preservation, leisure landscapes and brown-field reclamation. In order to achieve that, the thesis intention has been to bridge a possible economical re-development and social rehabilitation by means of a strategic decentralization of the interventions, which are three large scale and typologically diverse projects situated along the Ring R3 of Charleroi. The three interventions are a critical attempt to establish new attractor sites in Charleroi, being aware that the downtown is no longer able to provide a public domain that can satisfy the unstable, variegate and complex social condition of the city. Each one of the three interventions embeds three themes (program, site specificities, itinerary); these articulate and characterize the project as a whole.