Research about the covered river Senne in Brussels. This former river seems to be invisible, but this research shows that this former industrial river still lives in the city (within the architecture and the urban structure). What can a revitalization of this covered river mean? And how does architecture relate to this revitalized space?

The site of the project is in Anderlecht, Brussels. The design proposal including two parts: urban proposal and architectural proposal. For the urban renewal, I re-allocated the arrangement considering the programs, the new buildings groups follow their counterpart one by one, several inner courtyards acting as the spine of the site, connecting those groups. The architectural proposal is a manifesto of how it is possible to treat old houses. The three adjacent industrial buildings become my design target. I keep most of the ordinary architecture elements we could found in this task as the spolia. The programs have transformed from industrial space to a community center including a local food market and a daycare center, in between would also be an inner courtyard enclosed by two small pavilions.

The productive complex is located in Anderlecht, Brussels, a city characterized by mix of living and working space ever since industrial revolution. On the one hand, the proposal will reshape the fragmentary site block in order to reinstate a well-organized and functional intermediate urban element. On the other hand, on the context of revitalization of productive industry in urban area, the complex is intended to provide flexible working spaces, common facilities and educational programs for ont only local industry but also the neighborhood community.

An urban architecture aims to redefine an environment through cross-scale design in which the public, collective and private realms are (re)shaped. It critically assesses and responds to urban sites by enhancing its qualities and addressing its shortcomings. New buildings should therefore aim to establish themselves as articulators of a broader intervention scheme. By doing so, both existing and new structures are bound together in mutual benefit. This relationship elevates the quality of what is found in our cities and is fostered by new buildings that have character and are not arbitrary. Spolia is made of what is found in our cities, both material and immaterial pieces of former sites and building cultures. These fragments can be recomposed and incorporated into new structures, providing meaning, adding value and stabilizing them into the existing.Bricolage can be described as a creative practice that uses a limited and heterogeneous repertoire of available resources. It promotes reuse and re-appropriation of both material and immaterial values. Such re-imagining of found objects often results in new and uncommon meanings, while also embracing a sense of practicality and ingenuity. Adopting bricolage means looking at design practice differently. It becomes important to start by investigating the existing, the heterogeneous repertoire of our buildings and cities, looking for signs and ideas. These will form the starting point of future interventions. New designs are to be developed in tandem with the creative reuse of existing structures, thus a position on reuse is also important. Through a creative reuse that imagines new possibilities, the existing is used as a starting point for a new design. The idea is to highlight what can be a complimentary relationship between renewed structures and the newly added, rather than to stage a clash between old and new. To piece together three modest buildings into one new building, in turn making them a valued asset on the site. I believe this project illustrates how, by working with what is already in place in our cities, we can add upon and improve urban sites. I advocate that this should happen by a creative reuse that pieces together old and new, generating new and meaningful structures. Through this practice, both ordinary and relevant buildings may have their lives extended, their qualities highlighted or their faults amended. Piecing together means slowly building towards something new, taking fragments of what one finds along the way and making the best use of them. Indeed, the pleasure is the act itself, and the satisfaction is in creating an harmonious whole out of such fragmentrs.

The project site in Anderlecht, Belgium exists a fragmented urban fabric in terms of morphological evolution in the post-industrial period, functional mix of the urban plot, connection with the immediate urban grains and the ephemeral state of ownership of spaces around the site. However, the nomadic site actors practise informal ‘urban mining’ which enables material flow despite physical distance of the urban fragments. The flow of resource becomes the immaterial spolia that gives experiential qualities and grants adaptability to the neighbourhood. The urban planning proposal thus endeavors to orchestrate the process of urban mining from collection, disassembly, extraction, recovery, consumption and reinvention within the site plot, challenging the status quo of recycling industry as infrastructure. The site is re-zoned into a production strip, mixed commercial and production public interior strip, and a cultural strip, forming a sprawling alley-yard internally that connects the major urban nodes of the plot at its periphery. The organization stitches the urban fragments thematically and functionally with narrating the process of urban mining. “Everyone is equipped by nature to receive and to assimilate sensory experiences,” (Lehmann, 2017). Recyclage is a hybrid that encompasses a material library, makerspace for material experiment , exposition space for new prototypes, auditorium, meeting rooms, office space for researchers and archive, providing a converge point for inhabitants, entrepreneurs, researchers and everyday makers. Being juxtaposed with teaching space of Le goujon and confronting the street of institutions, the recycle learning center serves as an extension of the educational cluster. The programmes are devised in zones that foster a pedagogical environment based on the observation of how a person understands and approaches material when I conducted the sensory experience mapping for the research. The spatial arrangement suggests exploratory and ascending movement with constant sightlines towards Le goujon which predominantly constitutes to the site context. The center interpreted materials as interlocutor between people from all walks of life, unleashing the inherent material literacy of individuals, reinventing architectural opportunities between traces of events, time as well as memories. The materiality of the project illustrates the boundless possibility of materials and the humanized facet of urban mining. Aluminium at different states and forms are harnessed to showcase the time and traces material afford particularly in this site with occupants constantly moving in and out. Aluminium is highly available, omnipresent in ever-changing commercial and residential buildings, and associated with domestic life and the remembrance of Anderlecht being a post-industrial city. The architecture ensemble is depicted as a living life account of aluminium that it is finished with mainly reused aluminium which undergoes a myriad of transformation strategies: reuse, repurpose, reconfigure and transform to take up different expressions. The ‘patchwork’ language presents an amateur character and recognizes the potential of anthropocene waste in elevating the design outcome, manifesting the envisioned position of Recyclage in empowering a home-grown community of nomads.

Our society is expanding and in response to this, cities are undergoing transformations. The pluralism of an individualized society, relating to one’s own needs and desires, is perceptible in the way we dwell in the city. However, this doesn’t mean that a larger cohesive (social) structure isn’t essential. Indeed, Brussels, the capital of the European Union that carries the motto ‘In Varietate Concordia,’ consists of several fragmentations on an institutional level aside from an archipelago of urban fields. Therefore, pursuing an architectural solution that ensures harmony between the varied wishes of society becomes more relevant. As a respond to the individualized society and an approach against the fragmentation on different scales, the design project aims to reconcile the existing amorphous urban tissue. In other words: it encourages the characters of the site do justice to their own identity and subsequently engages in dialogue with them in order to achieve a stronger unity. While keeping in mind that the neighbourhood is characterized by its below-average median income and high population diversity, fragmentation can be transposed into rich stratification only when pluralism will be embraced. The design proposes a new social housing block and an extended structure that holds a Martial Arts school. Adjacent to this, the Les Goujons is a remnant of the 1970s modernist social housing in which social carries different connotations. The proposed design includes shared amenities, which normally are not self-evident in affordable housing. These amenities are designed to be communal spaces that ought to bring the residents together. Besides that, a fixed spine through the building with perpendicular flexible walls allow the housing units to be diverse and have their own unique features. How the building is situated between three fragments and exposed to different border conditions, is decisive for the placement of the units within the building contributing to these features. The variation in housing units also plays an important role to the aforementioned pluralism of an individualized society. The design project suggests the theme of mirroring: it questions what to keep and what not, which then initiates a dialogue between the characters. In the context of the studio’s topic, spolia in re is primarily noticeable on the urban scale: higher residentials on the front side and industrial-sized structures on the rear side with a connecting courtyard shared by many. In materialism, the spolia in se points out the collective amenities. This is captured in a curated collection of the exterior as well as interior elements. From reused pavements and an imposing portal for the courtyard, wooden flooring for the winter garden to sanitary elements, tiles, fittings and non-generic doors to indicate these communal spaces.

The graduation project wants to define some activity points and events capable of creating social integration. The key to their meaning and success will be the use and the appropriation that the communi¬ty itself will make of them. According to Jane Jacobs the ‘everyday life’ space is ba¬nal and repetitive; however, its dynamism is determined by its mixture of uses and public contacts. The creation of a square, a space of public domain, will have a direct impact on the Anderlecht’s societal sphe¬re. The strategy is to build a ‘city inside the city’ to improve the neighborhood by its differences, its functional and social mix, its places to form relationships and com¬munitarian feelings.

The director Andrei Tarkovsky once said, “The image is not a certain meaning, expressed by director, but an entire world reflected in a drop of water.” Different memories, experiences, and imaginary worlds influence perception. Therefore, interpretations of a drop of water can differ significantly. The project is a finite work, which left the space for its interpretation; experiencing liminality in various individual ways due to one’s movement through the building and the site. The presented research was focused on materiality (material culture) in connection to practice, time, and embodiment. An extensive survey about the Belgian Blue Limestone helped to understand the material prevailing in Belgium more. Then, the knowledge gained in the research was transformed into the project; incorporation of limestone building technique and spolias was to ensure the cultural continuity. The theme of the studio, spolia, has been introduced to the design on a few different levels that can be qualified in the tripartite division; re-use elements, recycled materials, and materials that are taking material from nature. Actor of water introduced to the project emphasises a passing time, reflects the space, atmospheres, thoughts; tectonics empowers the experiencing reconnecting materiality and embodiment.

The project is set in a fragmented neighbourhood called Cureghem in the south-west of Brussels. The newspapers often portray the neighbourhood as poorly developed with low living standards. The project considers that spatial transformation is only acceptable if it responds to current-day social and spatial issues. In the urban design of the project in Cureghem, the Senne is used to shape the park in the urban plan, not because the Senne is spolia, but because of the need for readable and climate-responsive exterior spaces. The smaller scale of the architecture aims to stimulate peoples feeling of belonging and ability to develop their crafts. In the design, the spolia of local craft and economic activity of textiles, ceramics and building materials is used as an inspiration for the program. Both in the urban plan and architecture, the spatial fragmentation is explained by zooming into the border conditions of the fragmented urban block. These conditions explain the current problems that are present. One of the theoretical explorations was to answer the question: What can be defined as a border or edge, what do they consist of, and are they culturally defined? To answer this question a lot of disciplines had to be addressed, from geology and archaeology to anthropology and the body. The research on this started with a very abstract approach to understanding borders, by zooming in on existing theories on borders in fields ranging from archaeology to performance art.

The graduation project wants to define some activity points and events capable of creating social integration. The key to their meaning and success will be the use and the appropriation that the communi¬ty itself will make of them. According to Jane Jacobs the ‘everyday life’ space is ba¬nal and repetitive; however, its dynamism is determined by its mixture of uses and public contacts. The creation of a square, a space of public domain, will have a direct impact on the Anderlecht’s societal sphe¬re. The strategy is to build a ‘city inside the city’ to improve the neighborhood by its differences, its functional and social mix, its places to form relationships and com¬munitarian feelings.

The project developed as a continuous effort to define the idea of spolia. A term that surpasses the re-appropriation of material becoming an active approach to architecture becoming an attitude towards the city and the landscape in the consciousness that a deep relation is established between the forms and the culture that generate these forms. The project developed a Sport Hall in Brussels as a social condenser.

The studio theme is spolia/bricolage, which means re-using old materials or ideas (spolia) and working spontaneously with what is found at hand (bricolage). The research leading to the collective memory and its architectural application was about Alvaro Siza’s way of working with context, local community and ‘as-found’ elements on the site. The collective memory – especially as described by Aldo Rossi – is something that architects has to find on site and interpret through his culture and knowledge to provide the architectural design settled in the context. This way of approaching to the given place allows better understanding of local way of living, the needs and architectural solutions responding to it. On another hand, it deals very much with the identity crisis in modern cities, which are dominated by placeless architecture, which was promoted by modernism. All those issues raised in the projects are also the concern of the studio, which focuses on medium-sized areas, which problems need to be understood in detail, so they are too small for tools of urbanism to provide the accurate solutions.
The idea of memory is an important part of the approach, allowing to find cultural importance of certain elements in space. The site is located in Anderlecht district and plot for the intervention is a collage of everything both in form and function. Traditional row-houses, post-industrial buildings, modernist housing block and 16-storey high slab social housing in one place together with a park and a lot of undefined space occupied by ruins or outdoor storages. The place, however, has a certain history of the Senne river, which once flew through Brussels and at some point in time was covered and left traces within the whole city or industrial character of the neighbourhood which is still visible and now is the topic of many projects which consider bringing back the character of productive metropolis to Brussels. Nevertheless, the plot is complicated in its present state and challenges students to think between the urban and architectural scale in order to improve the spatial quality on the site by using tools and precision, which would not be accessible on an only urban scale.

Since the post-war modernist times, architects regularly raised the critical concern on the technology dominance, standardization and commodification of the architecture. Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre wrote the theory of Critical Regionalism, which was later cited and expanded by Kenneth Frampton. Previously mentioned Aldo Rossi and Christine Boyer wrote about collective memory where they criticised and tried to refer to the context made by modernist architecture in cities. As it appeared, post-modernism with its contextual movement also did not solve the problems of disappearing identity within modern cities.
Today, the effects of globalization are much more visible than back in the 1970s and therefore the role of an architect is also about understanding different issues appearing in various areas of one’s work. Moreover, in the time of rapid development of technology, changing societal habits, architecture also has to keep that pace. It is an architect’s role to keep up with the innovative research methodologies and knowledge to provide a better response to the dynamic environment of constant change. Important thing is that the theory does not promote coming back to vernacular roots, but creates a room for interpretation of these values in a critical way. The problems outlined by mentioned architects, philosophers and sociologists can still be found as an important issues of modern architecture which has to deal with the fast-growing of the cities, sustainability issues and therefore the development of technology – especially in the time when international submissions for architects are not exceptions, but in most cases everydayness. This pace of growing demands and shrinking deadlines makes it difficult for proper studying of context and ends up in standardized structures optimized to meet all demands. The most common concern cited in mentioned works is placeless architecture, which cuts off itself from the context.
Studying those phenomena, reasons why they appear and how are the possible solutions to them can give me a proper awareness for my professional future as an architect to implement this knowledge during the real projects.