PORTFOLIO BRECHT VERMEYLEN
VERMEYLEN BRECHT contact Vriesenhof 3 bus 00.01 3000 Leuven 0473 / 663 513 brecht.vermeylen@gmail.com
vaardigheden
OPLEIDING 2014 - 2016 MASTER BURGERLIJK INGENIEUR - ARCHITECT KULEUVEN, LEUVEN, BELGIE
AUTOCAD ARCHICAD VECTORWORKS SKETCH UP
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2011 - 2014 BACHELOR BURGERLIJK INGENIEUR - ARCHITECT KULEUVEN, LEUVEN, BELGIE
ILLUSTRATOR PHOTOSHOP INDESIGN
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2005 - 2011 WETENSCHAPPEN - WISKUNDE (8u) DON BOSCO, HAACHT, BELGIE
RHINO GRASHOPPER CINEMA 4D
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NEDERLANDS FRANS ENGELS
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ERVARING AUGUSTUS - SEPTEMBER 2014 ZOMERSTAGE LAVA-ARCHITECTEN AUGUSTUS - OKTOBER 2016 VELDWERK THESIS IN KAAPSTAD
EXTRACURRICULAIR 2011 - 2016 MONITOR BERGKAMP BUITENLANDS KAMP VOOR JONGEREN 2014 - 2016 AMBASSADOR SKIKOT SKIVAKANTIES VOOR JONGEREN 2010 - 2015 MONITOR CLIP TAALVAKANTIES FRANSE/ENGELE TAALKAMPEN VOOR JONGEREN 2014-2015 ACTIEF IN 4e JAARSWERKING EXISTENZ LOCATIE-VERANTWOORDELIJKE 2013-2014 ACTIEF IN 3e JAARSWERKING
PUBLICATIES & AWARDS 2016 WINNEND ONTWERP + PUBLICATIE ‘CHANGING PERSPECTIVES’ 12-URENCOMPETITIE EXISTENZ/BEST LEUVEN/A+ MAGAZINE VERMELDING VAN ONTWERP ‘WATERBAR’ IN ARTIKEL ONTWIKKELING KOLENSPOOR TE HOUTHALEN MASTERPROEF ‘CAPE TOWN FRICTIONS’ GENOMINEERD VOOR YTAA
Designing is finding the best possible solution for a given issue where you have to look beyond the obvious solution . Usually the first concepts answer the conditions, but these do not have the ‘extra’ dimension I’m always looking for. After reflection and critical evaluation, the first draft is adapted and improved and usually everything falls into place. This is the moment when you realize you’re on the right track. Usually the changes are not so drastic, but often it is the little. details or simple transformations that make or break the design.
CAPE TOWN F(R)ICTIONS This thesis is a project concluding my master’s program. It forms a reference document on the urban growth of African cities, more specifically in the case of Cape Town. The work seeks to explore and demonstrate the role of urban design and architecture in one of the most rapidly growing cities in sub Saharan Africa. PERIOD: 2nd master 2015-2016 - thesis LOCATION:
Cape Town - South Africa
PROMOTOR:
Bruno De Meulder, Viviana d’Auria, Yuri Gerrits
COLLABORATION: EXTRA:
Laurens Vanden Eynde, Bruno Stevens, Hannelore Fabri Elena Gogiberidze, Gertie van den Bosch, Joran Lombahe Nomination YTAA (young talent architecture award)
Cape Town, struggling with its current and future demographic growth has been characterized by its history, which has been one of separation, inequity and uncontrolled occupation of uninhabited land. A lot of effort has been put into trying to solve Cape Town’s problems, often in the perspective of post-Apartheid. Most attention was given to providing adequate housing, occupying and
CAPE TOWN F(R)ICTIONS
forgetting the landscape. There is an ongoing fight between the landscape and urbanity. Most of the time urbanity wins, but often also the landscape shows its presence by striking back. The occupation of this land happens in a very contained cellular way. Isolated settlements, what we call archipelagos or enclaves, are developed further and further away, instead of densifying the existing tissue. There are no hybrid islands, everything is one thing or
the other. We acknowledge that Cape Town is dealing with frictions between fast and slow, small and big, natural and organized. By using the landscape as a protagonist for urban growth, we will embrace these frictions by allying them. In our designs the border between landscape and urbanity will be broken open. Our story is not about one thing or the other, but about how these coexist together
mooie foto
and that is the point when they become interesting. Small scale initiatives take over the metropolitan space. This goes hand in hand with the bigger scale. Big and small, slow and fast, nature and city benefit from each other. The title of the book can also be read as Cape Town Fictions. It is not the intention to propose master plans, but ideas. We offer a new way to look at these frictions and make room for thought by fictions.
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CAPE TOWN F(R)ICTIONS
Khayelitsha has been the subject of domestication by humans. Before the township was built, the area consisted of a dunal landscape, naturally evolved throughout its history. When the township was created, Apartheidsplanners used the dunal landscape as a tool for separation. The dunes seperate the township from its sourroundings, while the few roads to the township were easy to lock down when protests would occur. The dunal landscape was altered for the people’s needs: flattened, which makes it easier to build houses in mass, with some centralised open spaces lying lower for rainwater catchment, the urban crevices. Currently, the open spaces that are left open for rainwater collection, have a pipeline system running underneath. These pipelines collect the rainwater from the surrounding houses. The tissue of Khayelitsha is a homogenous one-storey high mass. Most of the houses in the township are RDP-houses, 40 m2 houses provided by the government. The houses are often accompanied by shacks surrounding it, ‘backyards’, rented for an extra income or to provide shelter for family members.
Tissue
Crevice
Tissue
The strategy results in a transformed crevice that is no longer a underused empty space, but slowly transforms into a strong value for the neighborhood. An analysis of the site, with its current relation or non-relation with the crevice, allowed us to implement a strategical sequence of three urban typologies; the new big pixel, nature and public open space. The sequence as a whole creates (new) relations adapted to the surrounding tissue and maximizes the potential of existing edges. Each typology carries in itself a main characteristic but can differentiate in the elaboration and its appearance. Appearance changes overtime due to different climate- and weather conditions and different ways of using the public space. This ensures the proposed design is not rigidly dictated but rather an ever fluctuating and semi-adaptabel development in the neighborhood. To show how these ideas are implemented, we focus on one part of the crevice, at the end of Khayelitsha.
CAPE TOWN F(R)ICTIONS
Big Pixel The big pixel is characterised by three elements: housing, economy and productivity. Economic units at the level of the tissue connect the building with the surrounding houses. These units can be hired by inhabitants of the block to sell vegetables, open a barber shop, sell construction materials etc. The rent for these units goes directly into the fund.
Where the building and thus the economic units stop, a gallery at the street side visually defines the border of the big pixel. The gallery serves as a structuring element next to the tissue.
Nature The nature typology is a way to protect the natural parts of the crevice from future urban pressure. By redefining the edges, we let the nature evolve and breath at seasonal paces. In winter, the water level will be higher, giving the natural elements more possibilities to grow.
When houses are directed towards the crevice, we use an extended retaining wall as a pathway to connect the frontsides to the different typologies in the crevice.
Open space Some spaces are left open for the people to go into the crevice and have direct contact with the nature. In this way, a connection is made between crevice and tissue, and bridges may be formed between the tissues at either side of the crevice.
CAPE TOWN F(R)ICTIONS
The people use this open spaces for public activities like sport fields, meeting spaces or just as a place to hang out.
The housing units provided for each houshold consists of two parts. One part is built, while the other is left open for the people to fill in to their own needs and wishes. Sometimes, a terrace is implemented, while other families need an extra shack to live, to shelter family members or to rent on the market. The facade will evolve gradually over
CAPE TOWN F(R)ICTIONS
time, shifting with demographics. By the use of this incremental system, elements from shacks, braais and so on will characterise the building, causing the housing block to blend into the tissue of Khayelitsha.
In addition to the new typology a process is introduced that will gradually transform the existing tissue in Khayelitsha. Using the big pixel as a catalyst, the process will densify the monotonous one-story high tissue while at the same time creating higher quality open spaces.
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WATERBAR MYNROUTE The MYNROUTE in Limburg will be a new addition to there bike netwerk where cyclists can experience the old industrial heritage in combination with a qualitative bike path. With a number of interventions alongside the path.
PERIOD: 2nd master 2015-2016 LOCATION:
Centrum Zuid - Houthalen
MENTOR:
Ward Verbakel, Wim Wambecq
COLLABORATION:
Laurens Vanden Eynde
EXTRA:
Vermelding ontwerp in krantenartikel in interview met Ward Verbakel Belang van Limburg Juni 2016
This design proposal wants to investigate the connection between three domains: landscape, public space and industrial heritage. By combining these into one design we aim to create an added value on multiple levels and so making the design more than a ‘nice’ intervention. It should be something that attracts people but also serves a functional purpose without loosing its estethic value. The WATERBAR does exactly this. People purifying there own water with the use of active coal in a building that was used in the past as a wash-plant for coal. New technology of active coal
WATERBAR
enables the users to actually transvers the proces and ‘making’ their own clean water. By experiencing the past in an entire different way gives this proposal an innovative dimension and adds a useful functional aspect to the design.
“The most charming idea to ‘pimp’ the bike path is a waterbar in Houthalen. We could pump the water and purify it to potable water with the help of carbonfilters”. Ward Verbakel Belang van Limburg June 2016
CHANGING PERSPECTIVES The refugee crisis is often labeled as a political problem, but architecture and spatial planning do have a much larger share in finding a solution than someone might expect. How can refugees be sheltered and integrated in a city like Leuven?
PERIOD: 2nd master 2015-2016 LOCATION:
Leuven
COLLABORATION:
Laurens Vanden Eynde, Bruno Stevens, Willem Vandervoort
JURY: Ward Verbakel, Els Vervloesem, Lise de Visscher, Pieter Walraet, Yuri Gerrits EXTRA: Winner of design competition by Existenz-BEST Leuven Publication in A+ architecture magazine
The debate about the refugee crisis is topical but specific solutions are hardly found or difficult to implement. In our proposal we change the perspective from temporary asylum shelters towards an approach of integrating refugees in society and simultaneously strengthening the urban fabric. While the logical move is to provide shelter for incoming refugees, we change perspective and invite students to move in these new shelters. Their rooms that become available are allocated to refugees. We do this by implementing student housing in existing empty buildings.
CHANGING PERSPECTIVES
At the same time, every student house owner will be obliged to give a room to an asylum seeker. The students move to the government financed reallocated buildings. They keep paying rent to their landlord thus providing free rooms for refugees. This new system of student housing creates the opportunity for refugees to integrate in the urban tissue which leads to a multicultural society where solidarity can be one of the cornerstones.
Number of new buildings Urban expansion Public spaces sacrificed Integration
0 0 0
∞
general public
empty buildings
student housing
minorities
10
9
8 1
7 6
existing empty buildings
2 5
3 4
1
oude ACCO drukkerij
2
oude zusterschool
3
aardwetenschappen inst.
4
oude wasserij OCMW
5
stedelijk zwembad
6
stadsbibliotheek
7
Luxemburg college
8
bacteriologisch inst.
9
bottelarij
10
directiegebouw Artois
empty student housing
CHARLEROI CITY-REDEVELOPMENT Charleroi flourished in the past due to its large industrial activity. Lots of these activities are now much smaller or just do not longer exist. New ideas are necessary to make Charleroi flourish again. New urban development could be what the city needs. PERIOD: 1st master 2014-2015 LOCATION:
Vally Eau d’Heure - Charleroi
COLLABORATION:
Laurens Vanden Eynde
MENTOR:
Yuri Gerrits, Jan Vermeulen, Guide Geenen
In our investigation on Charleroi, we looked closer into a side-valley of the Sambre, the one of the Eau d’Heure. We noticed that the valley holds great potential but is not used to actively benefit from it. The places inside are characterised by their industrial past and the topography of the valley which makes each of them unique. By defining a bike path as a backbone, we would like to reveal their unseen qualities. A unique bar carved into the walls of the old quarry with a magnificent view over the water, a large patch of greenery with orchards and community gardens and hidden places or ice skating on the frozen lake in winter.
CHARLEROI CITY-REDEVELOPMENT
All of these interventions makes the people discover Charleroi in different way and makes them start seeing the potential of Charleroi with their own eyes. It is effort that could grow in the future and be the start of bigger (re)developments alongside this bike path.
CHARLEROI CITY-REDEVELOPMENT
CHARLEROI CITY-REDEVELOPMENT
REFLECTION ROOM A place where someone can retreat for a day, relax, think or just enjoy being alone.
PERIOD: 1st bachelor 2011-2012 LOCATION:
park van Arenberg - Leuven
MENTOR:
Geert De Neuter
How do you deal with the different needs and wishes of the different users? Should the buillding be closed or should it be very open?
Users can choose at any time whether they want to be more locked in the ‘reflection room’ or want to enjoy the vast open landscape in the ‘ iving space’ .
With my design I tried to respond to this questions. The duality the building needs is very visible in design. Two hollow tubes arranged in such a way one of them generates a very open and transparent feeling while the other gives a more closed feeling . Both spaces have their quality and contribute to the overall experience.
The concept where two extremes are combined harmoniously is what makes the design proposal so powerful.
REFLECTION ROOM