Carescapes

Abstract

This thesis explores how the built environment can be designed to offer the potential to be activated by young, fluidly housed adults in Brussels—a group that continuously navigates unstable living conditions, from temporarily staying with friends or family, to occupying squats, to occasionally sleeping on the streets.

The project adopts a mixed-method approach, placing active processes of care and collective agency at its core.

It begins by contextualizing the broader issue of ‘homelessness’ and the specific urban conditions in Brussels. Building on this, the thesis uncovers the socio-spatial realities of young fluidly housed adults through a needs-based approach. Using literature review, ethnographic mapping, and informal conversations, it identifies eight key satisfiers and four interconnected systems that have the potential to improve liveability for this demographic.

These socio-spatial needs are then spatialised using three methods. First, ethnographic mapping in Schaerbeek West and the broader ‘Poverty Crescent’ identifies existing socio-spatial conditions with potential for bottom-up activation. Second, pattern language is applied to connect observed patterns of care and resistance with the previously defined satisfiers, enabling these insights to be scaled across multiple levels while highlighting the top-down actions needed to support grassroots initiatives. Third, environment-behaviour studies—specifically angular choice and angular integration analysis—are used to identify five key intervention sites within Schaerbeek West and to operationalize this process that can be applied in other contexts.

In the final phase, design explorations are carried out in the five identified locations to test how the previously defined patterns can be applied to shape the urban fabric through careful interventions. These explorations aim to create environments that young, fluidly housed adults can actively engage with and adapt to meet their needs—demonstrating how the built environment can foster more just and adaptable spaces that form an infrastructure of collective care and agency, ultimately improving the liveability of young, fluidly housed adults in a tangible way.

Addressing the housing crisis requires both long-term, top-down reform and immediate, ground-level action. While this approach does not resolve the systemic challenges of the housing crisis, it enables urgent, bottom-up improvements in liveability by placing young, fluidly housed adults at the center—as agents of care driving this transition. Both pathways are essential: one demands time, while the other can begin right now.