Brussels, a city built on a wet marshland, has a rich history of landscape design and engineering. Earth was removed and resettled to create higher ground while parks and avenues were built to patch the gaps among different infrastructures. Thus the network of green spaces and parks in Brussels has become an important topic of its modern and contemporary urban development. Recently, there is a massive abandoned trainyard around the north-east suburbs of Brussels, waiting to be urbanised and transformed into a new neighbourhood. This situation was chosen to be the brief of the graduation studio of the urban architecture studio 2023 at TU Delft.

Within the expanding and mutating city of Brussels, there exists a derelict piece of land, a friche that is contested by humans in the midst of a pressing housing shortage. The friche once operated as a marshalling yard but discontinued its operations in 1994. Owing to a lack of human appropriation and a lapse in policy making, this yard began to rewild itself, becoming a safe haven for non-human inhabitants. Development authorities found themselves at odds with locals and ecologists who advocated for the emergent landscape to be left to its own devices, eventually leaving the friche in a state of limbo and uncertainty.

And with this passage of time, a heterotopia was born.

The heterotopia is a counter space in the city, removed from traditional time and place, that demands a rite of passage and that, which begets several places at once.

As an ode to this last, heterotopic green in Brussels, this project becomes a balancing act and mediator between the friche and the city : a border of collective housing, an “alt"(ernate) house/community space and a bathhouse that would be nestled and hidden within these borders.

The bathhouse intends to serve as a vessel for the purification of the being (human and non
human) as one transitions from the surrounding city into the haven of the heterotopic friche,
purged from the weights of regular life and time. The “bathhouse of enchantments” is therefore, a physical and metaphorical place where not only people but also other migratory guests of the friche come to rest their weary minds and bodies. It is not only a spiritual vessel of wellness, but also performs a social function of synergizing communities and rekindling an intimate relationship with the nature of the friche that is so far missing.
In addition to this, the proposal also becomes a water collection and management system for the east side of the friche, where it can initiate and facilitate the growth of a constructed wetland as a habitat and resting place for the growing species of migratory birds, bees, dragonflies and others.
The design unravels in layers and tales - from the urban-ness of the housing, to the transitory nature of the collective alt-house and finally, to the heterotopia of the bathhouse and its temporal gardens. It narrates the complete journey of moving through the city, into a sublime and magical realm. Time becomes the essence of the project, where the bathhouse and alt-house shape shift, appear and disappear with a play of time on three scales - daily, seasonal and longue durée.

The proposed intervention perhaps serves as a precedent - a newfound narrative of brownfield and post-industrial plot development, which are so often the “last greens” in town. Peeling and delayering, dissecting and revealing the “as found”, it embraces the need for the heterotopia and its virtues in the city, which would otherwise be obscured in the tenacious and expanding urban realm.

This research and design proposal explores the tension between regulated and “wild” states in urban spaces, highlighting how the hyper-controlled nature of contemporary cities, particularly in Western Europe, diminishes the agency and participation of urban dwellers. Modern urban environments often prioritize efficiency and order, leaving little room for spontaneity or contest, and resulting in spaces that are disconnected from the inherent needs and desires of their users. Architects frequently design spaces to meet specific, pre-determined requirements, further reinforcing this lack of user influence and ownership. This disconnect contributes to a broader societal condition where individuals feel repressed and detached from their urban surroundings. By examining the potential for increased user agency and spontaneous interaction within urban spaces, the research advocates for a shift in design approaches to foster community, inclusivity, and a sense of belonging. The author reflects on personal experiences of urban alienation and draws inspiration from the site of La Friche, and surrounding Brussels to propose strategies for raising awareness about the importance of inclusive, diverse, urban design in contemporary Western cities.

This graduation projects aims to raise a discussion around the urgency of restoring connection between humans and nature, especially in our current day cities. Dealing with a post-industrial site in Brussels that turned into an accidental nature reserve, it tries to mediate between the need for housing and the importance of nature in cities. It proposes a program of nature education, where education becomes a missing link between the city and the landscape, adopting the landscape as a botanical garden of sorts. In a spatial sense, it tries to form a connection between the city and the landscape through a sequence of different defined garden spaces, transitioning from an urban architectural language into a more rural expression.

As part of the Urban Architecture Graduation Studio, this project explores the transition and its sequences when moving from inner-city Brussels to urban greenery, focusing on Josaphat Friche—"the last green in town." In response, Le Nouveau Blue was designed. Using water as both a thematic and spatial medium, an old warehouse was transformed into a spa and Olympic pool, embodying the interplay and transition between contrasting elements: urban & natural, dry & wet, warm & cold, and old & new. The adaptive reuse approach preserves the existing concrete structure while integrating new structural elements, creating a dynamic architectural dialogue. The design and research balance preservation and innovation, ultimately connecting the neighborhood’s new development to its biodiverse landscape.

The site of this year’s Urban Architecture graduation studio was the Friche Josaphat. This is a terrain vague of 24 hectares in the northeast of Brussels, in the neighbourhood of Schaerbeek. In the 1920’s a marshalling yard was built on the site, however when marshalling yards were not needed anymore in the 1990s, it closed. It was cleaned and covered with sand and is now overgrown with vegetation. The program I proposed is located on the northwestern border of the Friche where it is bordered by a stretch of trees, behind which lays a long row of houses.
At one point this row of buildings leaves a gap which opens up the border of the Friche. Because of this gap and the big unused space, this site has the potential for a sequence of spaces connecting the neighbourhood and the Friche with a small public square and a front square.
The motion of the sequence and the sequence of spaces sparked my interest early this year. Therefore the research that I did throughout the year focused on understanding sequences, not only in architecture, but also in other art disciplines. To understand what makes existing urban spaces with sequences work well and liveable, I explored the sequence of spaces of four sites that illustrate a sequence. These are often spaces that have evolved over time and have gradually developed into comfortable spaces to be in.
Furthermore, I researched art disciplines that use sequences such as music, dance, film and animation. In these disciplines anticipation and suspense are often created to evoke a certain feeling in the spectator. Through this research, I wanted to explore how this could be translated into architecture. This resulted in the choreography of a new sequence of spaces made of the features that I found in the different sites I analysed, as well as the findings into the creation of anticipation and suspense in other art disciplines.
This choreography ultimately resulted in the composition of a sequence of spaces in my design, which consists of a connecting street, a small public square, a front square, an entrance with a sightline, a garden on the hill and the Friche.

As Brussels is struggling with a housing crisis and many eviction problems, I chose a program that provides home and purpose for homeless people and brings the community together through gardening and farming activities. By choreographing this sequence of spaces and creating anticipation and suspense, people in need of a home and others from the neighbourhood can be attracted to the site and brought together. In that way, an intimate, human-scale, and safe space can offer comfort to diverse groups of people.

Cities have never belonged only to humans, non-humans have always been city dwellers, too. However, the ongoing urbanization and significant usage of natural resources have led to a major impact on climate change and species decay. In the world of the Anthropocene, it becomes essential to engage in a critical re-evaluation of our position as architects, wherein we contemplate the manner in which we design environments to be inherently accessible for all – humans and non-human actors. The increasing belief among city dwellers that humans and non-human entities share a mutually interconnected moral, physical, and spiritual realm indicates a novel aspect in our relationship with non-human beings and life in general.

To engage other-than-humans in the city life, it requires not only spatial change, but a major shift in the way of thinking of to whom the space belongs to. It is a complex task that involve different individuals together by engaging in a dialog and interactive actions. Richard Sennett highlight the challenge that togetherness faces today, when modern politics emphasizes unity and similarity, which often leads to a preference for simple and easily identifiable groups, rather than embracing diversity and complexity.

The Common Ground calls for a space in the city, where humans can reconnect with nature, where embracing diversity is be possible. How to shift the purpose of architecture from being a border for humans and non-human actors to connect them together, while preserving a rich biodiversity existing on the site? The research explores what we all have in common, how we can share the ground, how to create a city of Empathy.

In an abandoned field in Brussels, where different species of plants and animals took over, wasteland ‘Friche Josaphat’ stirs the imagination and opens up many possibilities for the future of this land. This vacant lot is like a ‘hetero-topia’, a place that is extra-ordinary, outside the everyday, an ‘other space’ where things become possible.

The studio theme of ‘Last Green in Town’ encouraged us to engage with La Friche Josaphat, an urban wasteland that has grown into a greenfield in the middle of the city. The lack of human engagement has allowed biodiversity to naturally take over the wasteland, creating a wilderness, unknown to the city beyond its borders. Around the Friche, nature exists mostly in conventional forms (parks, gardens, sports fields etc.) which are products of narrow utilitarian approaches, with few exceptions of human-nature synergies. These make it evident that different perceptions of urban nature have produced diverse urban cultures of nature, few of which validate the interdependence of nature and humans while most treat nature as a distinct entity needing a functional purpose.
The thesis roots itself firmly in the ‘as found’ conditions and delves into site-specific research, in an attempt to understand the evolution of the existing urban culture of nature over time. Using this research, the thesis attempts to develop a project that validates the past, sensitively deals with the present 'as found' conditions and situates itself within the site for a symbiotic evolution of humans and nature in the future. The programs evolve from the site, responding to the urban conditions and mediating between the urban and the wild. The community centre brings the urban closer to the wild friche, while the research and education centre undertakes the task of creating and imparting knowledge of the biodiversity within the friche to the people beyond the borders. The programs work in tandem to create a flow of energies between the friche and the city, while carefully allowing sensitive accidental and incidental micro engagements between humans and nature.

“From Humus to Human: A Repository of Remembrance” explores the profound and intricate connection between humans and soil, delving into the fundamental aspects of human identity, belonging, and the cycle of life. It highlights the natural process through which we emerge from the earth, only to ultimately return to it, symbolizing the unity, continuity of life.

The project is situated in “La Friche Josaphat,” a former marshalling yard in Brussels that, over time, has been gradually reclaimed by nature. Inspired by this unique and evolving setting, the design proposal emphasizes the preservation of a patch of tall spruce trees, which stand as a powerful symbol of growth, resilience, and the enduring flow of life. These trees are surrounded by the ‘repository,’ a gallery of niches where visitors can retreat in solitude, reflect, and engage in personal acts of remembrance. These niches offer a view leading toward a memorial garden, creating a tranquil and serene atmosphere for honoring memories, fostering reflection, and experiencing quiet contemplation.

The ‘Repository of Remembrance’ is embraced and protected by a ring of dwellings. These clusters of housing units serve as both a physical and symbolic mediator, between the rhythms of everyday urban life and the sacred, reflective realm of remembrance.

The premise from the book:

"As said before this project is not a typical research. Although many sources are used, no data is collected and no hypotheses are proven. It is an active research, an artistic research one
might say, which is ongoing and really never finished.
Instead of proving arguments it is more about the practice of doing. While it starts out more analytical, which can be seen in the following pages. At a certain point the project turned more intuitive. There was a realisation that this approach would gain me more, just as the potential reader.
That is why the project is structured around three made films. All three completely different in subject, media and technology. But together in the end they might complement eachother
and reveal a greater value.
The order is one: “Terrain vague”, the film for P1, almost like a stop-motion. This mainly focuses on the Friche, and is a kind of site analysis. Two, :”Walk like me”. A camera verité style street documentary. With a combination of fiction and reality giving a glimpse of (Brussels) urban life. And lastly a film where all media are techniques are blend, and hopefully, everything from the year comes together, in one final film presenting the design of the storyhouse “A window to the world.”

Brussels breathes the football atmosphere, and simultaneously deals with issues of tension. Communities of football fans are encountering difficulties to place themselves in the city. The interplay of containing and relieving forces constantly generates dilemmas. Over time, these dilemmas reveal themselves as revolving around the universal values of freedom versus security in the city. This turned out to be the playing field of architectural exploration.

The project intents to understand which borders are present in Brussels football spheres. To understand systems of behavior in order to examine how large supporter groups interact with the concept of the border within Brussels’ football networks. A repeating element in this research is that of the reinvented use of space, where extensions are made, functions are changed, and unique performances are displayed.

In all of this research, the author did not impose himself. He stood, took pictures, observed, and recorded. He left it alone and did not intervene. This is the main characteristic of the site - a coexistence of borders, and a state of nothingness. The project intends to maintain this, respect it, without directly solving issues. To create a space where it can happen.

Three design principles emerged. The first: dealing with boundaries - a search for “soft where you can, harsh where you must.” The second: dealing with ritual - the sequence of events in time. A quest to give space to the natural course and growth of things by providing a base for it. The third: dealing with agency - a search for what agency of actors means for design.

The proposal follows, as it is called, ‘a ritual journey’ along the railway in the Friche: rethinking forms of experience, tension, and therefore interrelations - not only within rival supporter groups but also their harmonious coexistence with public life.

The project responds to the human need to escape and connect the hectic urban rhythms of Schaerbeek’ residents with those of nature and pastoral life. It seeks these spaces of escape within the fabric of the ever-evolving city. Walking is the means of exploration, linking the different patches of our cities and helping us to both escape and discover more.
The overwhelming and relentless pace of urban life causes stress and harms mental health, taking away any sense of comfort in daily life. Our cities have large gaps and leftover areas that create divisions between different patches, depriving residents of their use and enjoy-ment. The "Josaphat Commons" and the theater "Les Nouveaux Disparus" act as catalysts, entities that, despite the wall and territorial divisions, see the potential of these spaces and open the way for exploration of the wasteland, making it accessible to the surrounding com-munity.
These two catalysts are given a place in the project, along with an organization that facilitates walking therapy within the urban green space of the Friche. This collaboration helps bridge the gap between the city and leftover green areas, encouraging people to enter and explore previously inaccessible territory and escape the chaos of the city. Bridge and Square.

Everything ages, and everything ends. Borders blur, and definition collapse. Inspired by Robert Smithson's work on landscape and entropy, this project explores the process of aging - time becomes a medium to strengthen the connection between building and people. Buildings cannot avoid time nor are they sand static. They are affected by their environment and they affect us. There is a special connection which forms when a building ages/ patina, as we see it grow we start to form a connection with it - in a sense the building transforms from a space which we live in to a space where we lived with. To wrap all those ideas together, mostly bio-base materials were used. The affect of the environment creates an aesthetic for the bio-base materials which conveys its sustainable vritues. Furthermore the affect of the environment also highlights the fragility of the skin of the building which hence encourages people to care for it and extend its life.

An architectural project on Care, uncovering the mysteries and strengths behind the softness that Care brings. This project has been about both questioning and writing the role of Care in Architecture, and Architecture in Care. The project is situated on one street in the city center of Madrid. The street functioned as a sequence of stories, as a site of investigation of care, as a site for design intervention, as a connection between actors and building. In order to translate signs of Care into a building, five topologies were chosen. Each with different signs and scales of Care in an Urban context: Parish, Muur, Kitchen, Balcony, Props. The research of the one street and its five topologies is conducted using a mixed methods consisting of sampling, mapping, photography, writing, participatory observations. The results were translated into both a toolbox for Caring Architecture and a Caring building. The building itself showcases Care as affordances, Care as a choice, Care as a shield, Care as a wall, Care as a network. Because Caring Architecture allows, it should not shout.

Places with high densities of people are characterized by an urban infrastructure dependent on the economically efficient movement of people and matter. Moving from one place to another as quickly as possible. In the history of Liège, economic material transfers have led to social transfers. The results are a rearrangement of the social composition & properties, and stress and exhaustion of the people and the earth.

I am of the city but somehow not in it. I am of the earth but somehow not on it.

This design project is reacting to the movements of the place (and its history) and is offering a transitional path leading to a moment of standstill. Preventing exhaustion of both human and earth. The path leads a movement from the time-ruled urban landscape to an open space, where freedom of movement and a different perception of time can be experienced. The composed walk and turning point embody a tension between hovering and grasping, lightness and weight, movement and stillness. The turning point of the path is represented by a light and bright interior space where the physical activity temporarily comes to rest.

The escape from the efficient urban infrastructure creates the possibility of reorientation. This can create awareness to change the relationship between people, and between people and their topographical position. A shift from creating and claiming properties and territories to maintaining a reciprocal relationship.

We live in a world of constant change, driven by human activities that have had an unprecedented impact on our planet’s geology and ecosystems, fundamentally reshaping environments worldwide. Coastal environments, with their complex land-sea, human-nature interactions, are among the most fragile and are constantly under the influence of natural and human processes. For decades, these processes moved in harmony, but as populations grew, so did the demand for resources, land and the development of infrastructure, such as dams, dikes, transport networks and coastal management interventions. The fixation of coastlines and inland systems, driven by contemporary artificial human activity, is an often unintended consequence.

The Wadden Sea Region, known for its extensive mudflats, salt marshes and diverse flora and fauna, is an example of how human intervention has had a significant impact on the form and systems of the transition zone between sea and land, or the coastal interface. Over thousands of years, the region has been shaped by the interaction of sea, land and human influences, resulting in a gradient of vital coastal habitats for numerous species and providing many ecosystem services for local and (inter)national economic prosperity. In recent decades, however, human interventions have increasingly altered the region’s coastal interface, largely disrupting the dynamic exchange of energy and materials through land reclamation and infrastructure development. The separation of land and sea has resulted in the loss of the gradual gradients that were once a defining feature of the Wadden Sea Region, along with the region’s identity of ‘living with water’. This has meant the additional loss of vital habitats and ecosystem services provided by the sea for decades, and the overall loss of socio-ecological resilience of the interface system. Now, with the increasing pressures of climate change and human needs on the complex system of the Wadden Sea region, its landscape faces serious challenges now and in the future. A new balance needs to be found between human activities and the conservation and restoration of the unique natural and cultural values of the Wadden Sea Region.

The research aims to explore the potential of a new interface framework that restores the landscape gradient between land and sea in harmony with natural processes and cultural values. The intention is to increase the overall social and ecological resilience of the interface system through the development of landscape-based design principles and design interventions, which will be tested at different temporal and spatial scales. The northern Netherlands will serve as a regional test-bed for innovative forms of production and living along the future interface, where the proposed design layout is based on analysis of coastal geomorphological processes, historical practices, landscape structures and existing water structures.

The Bananeira Garden (Horta da Bananeira) is a guerrilla garden in the escarpments of Porto that has collectively been created by a group of people with no claim of ownership or fixed identity. These gardeners explicitly refuse to recognize the state’s authority over the forgotten urban spaces in the city. Gardening turns into a political act, a quiet but constant form of spatial activism addressing climate change, social inequality, and real estate speculation. Porto’s administration is solely focused on expanding the city’s brand as a tourist destination, with tourist accommodations and rising prices forcing the local population to the margins. This could have consequences for the Horta da Bananeira, as it does not have any legal protection.

This project is an attempt to support the Horta da Bananeira in its struggle for emancipation. ‘Garden as Protest’ acknowledges the garden’s complexity and its value beyond the garden’s borders. A network of acupunctures makes sure that the border conditions of the garden are secured, fulfilling their social purpose and catering to the actual needs of the neighbourhood.
The project follows an eco-feminist approach, demonstrating a new role for the architect.

This research is rooted in defining the marginlands of Istanbul; comprised of the city’s backstages, cracks, and fissures. It proposes an intervention along the historic margins of the city’s Land Walls, now swallowed by urban sprawl and existing as an interstitial inner-city threshold. The lands of such margins harbour an air of latency, having recently been razed to the ground, or earmarked for oncoming ‘urban transformation’; one that can only be described as ‘hyper-commodification’. Local planning authorities commercialise lands historically hosting informal practice under the guise of creating common public space. However, the resulting parks, playgrounds or sports fields simultaneously erase the material and cultural fabric of such margins.
Through ethnographic research, the project documents and celebrates the hidden spaces carved out of the marginlands for marginal actors to co-exist in the relentlessly commodified city. I will introduce three Custodians doing so within the framework available to them: the Street Gleaner, the Moat Gardener, and the Last Inhabitant. The proposed intervention provides a physical and social framework to host such custodians, their practices, and the materials that have already seeped into the city’s fissures. This design proposes a toolbox of affordances at three scales: Territorial, Structural and Habitual, to foster a Contemporary Commons in this context. Enabled by the toolkit, it begins the transition away from the more precarious occupations of the Custodians towards more productive practices engaging a wider and more diverse network of actors associated with the chosen sites. The resulting Commons acts as a platform for enrichment of involved actors’ roles: master, teacher, pro-sumer, maker, activist, learner, apprentice - diversifying and strengthening the former margins.