Dimitri STASSIN - PORTFOLIO 2016 by Dimitri Stassin

II. Architecture Portfolio 2016

Dimitri STASSINâ&#x20AC;©

Cover image : J. M. William TURNER, The Fifth Plague of Egypt, 1800.

II. Architecture Portfolio 2016 —————————————

INTRODUCTION

[7]

IIa.

CORRIDORS

[13]

IIb.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE CITY

[19]

III.

CASTRUM

[45]

IVa.

CONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPES

[67]

IVb.

THE 3RD MACHINE AGE

[75]

Dimitri STASSIN 0032499/19.61.94 / dimitristassin@hotmail.com

I. Introduction "I have «city ache», «landscape ache» [...]"

Do we really need architects ? This question remained in my thoughts during the five years studies in architecture that I just finished. As a matter of fact, even if architects seem to be able to raise pertinent questions with their projects, their vast lack of concrete solutions relating to contemporary issues has been discrediting the profession — infected by the expression of individualities1 — for a while.

(1) Read also : Jacques LUCAN, Précisions sur un état présent de l’architecture, Lausanne : Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, 2015.

What is an architect ? A specialist about space — or simply construction ? A liberal profession governed by some code of ethics ? Someone that ‘safeguards essential values’2 in spatial plannings ? A courtier in the antechamber of the princes ? A kind of enlightened despot ? An artist ? The diversity of these answers illustrates for me the fact that architects actually do not seem to be able to propose one clear project for our contemporary cities and landscapes. They do not appear to have brought any eﬃcient corporative reaction to the brutal paradigm shift that our age is suﬀering on the ashes of the Modernity.

(2) Article one of the Belgian Order of Architects’s Code of ethics : Règlement de déontologie [29.12.2015].

1 Architecture is and has always been a political3 matter. Therefore, I think that — as designers of the conflictual interface that often raises people’s anger — we should oppose to the actual rise of populisms across the world a more democratic project for the city, transcending individualities. I have «city ache», «landscape ache», and personally think that solutions to the contemporary issues — whether sociopolitical or environmental — will necessarily pass through the conquest of new statutes by the architects, beyond the simple expression of their own tastes. This is why I pray for an architectural urbanism. As a matter of fact, the question of the public mission of the architect has been central in my work, during my studies and early practice in Brussels. In the 7 personal projects that follow, I have always tried to avoid the laconism of the contemporary dogmas by ideation. To the current democratic challenge that our societies face — i.e. a notable trend to be suspicious about politics (to which architecture is part as an element of the city) and capitalism (to which architecture is part as a financial product) —, I opposed a paradigm shift : to consider architecture as an infrastructure. Indeed, as an authoritarian act in its public dimension, I think that architecture has to become again that ‘basic physical and organizational structure needed for the operation of a society’.aaa 4

(3) See the Greek etymology of πόλις [pólis], πόλεως; which can be understood as the city, or the citizenship.

5. Colonisation of a Roman infrastructure in Evora (PT).

Consequently, my projects are definitely perennial structures, studied to be actively involved in their environnement. Indeed, I am convinced that architecture has much to gain by going beyond the art of making contemporary-styled boxes, and to find its own purpose in the interaction with other disciplines, whether political, environmental or territorial. 11 With this respect, CORRIDORS and THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE CITY are a political manifesto. Whereas CORRIDORS is a counter-utopian pamphlet over the future of Istanbul4 — denouncing the apparent incapability for the architect to be apolitical —, THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE CITY proposes, threw the installation of a rigid grid of corridors, to rediscover the power of the city as a self-organizing metabolism.

(4) Actual events in Istanbul make it sound quite prophetical.

On the other hand, CASTRUM is a project that focuses on water management at territorial scale, by proposing densification in rural areas threw the installation of dam-buildings helping natural clean-up of the rivers. The project seeks to develop at the same time a new poetical imagibility for those villages that pay a heavy price to urban sprawl. Also regarding the heavily deep destructuration of our landscapes by the phenomenon that is now called città diﬀusa, CONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPES and THE 3RD MACHINE AGE are two projects that aim to give a new hope to the suburbs of the industrial city of Charleroi. First, CONSTRUCTING LANDSCAPES is a masterplan proposing to build an absolute limit separating the city of Marchienne-au-Pont from its industrial valley and poetical heaps — in order to reinforce the existing landscape structure and reveal an unexpected beauty. Second, THE 3RD MACHINE AGE concretizes this limit by the construction of a linear shipyard, thereby contributing to the training of the unemployed youth, through new ways of learning and working. All these projects are ultimately synthesized in elementary structures — that may be considered as infrastructures in their environment — seeking to be appropriate in their context, and ready to face the test of time. Furthermore, I think that the act of edifiying, to reach a certain authenticity legitimating it, needs to be deeply conscious of its impact over time. The subject of my master thesis5 awarded with the highest honors — studying the hypothetical performativity of architectural utterances — definitely emphasizes my personal quest of an authentic and eﬀective architecture over time. 6

(5) Dimitri STASSIN, Le Verbe s’est fait ooo chair : P erformativité en architecture, Master thesis (dir. X. DE COSTER), Brussels : UCL Loci, 2016.

7. Città diﬀusa in Belgian countryside.

IIa. Corridors "[...] Then, is the idealist architect — even utopist — constrained to play the game of politico-economic power in order to ‘safeguard essential values related to the life in society’ ?"

Location : Istanbul, TK Status : Research Project Collaborators : Thibaut Pauwels Budget : / Program : Pamphlet Scale : Vision Date : November 2015 # : Politics, Democracy, Revolution, Counter-utopianism

[Resume] May architecture — as a political matter within our contemporary societies — still be a plausible revolutionary material ? The time of architectural revolutions seems to have ended with the Modernity, and the great orders are now only governed by the logic of profitability. Then, is the idealist architect — even utopist — constrained to play the game of politico-economic power in order to safeguard essential values related to the life in society ? This strategic vision introducing my final project questions the concept of public space at two distinct scales : the one of our societies — that we can without any hesitation qualify as pseudo-democratics1 —, and the one of Istanbul : a city built on Ottoman layers, where even the word public space — and its associated semantic — did not exist until Modernity.

(1) David VAN REYBROUCK, Contre les élections, Paris : Actes Sud, 2012.

Through the study of the corridor as an architectural element — that might without any hesitation be considered, from its appearance in the 18th century, as an archetype of power2 —, the project tends here to question the apparent impossibility for architecture, as a urban project, to rise against the political and economical power. Let’s understand that there is a kind of fatality — or absurdity — while talking about architecture as a way to change our contemporary hyperconnected and hypercomplex system. According to Engels, it seems to be impossible to change the current social question, that should be a leitmotiv inside the preoccupations of architects threw architecture, without changing first the system itself that produces architecture3.

(2) Marc JARZOMBEK, «Corridor Spaces», in : Critical Inquiry, n° 36, online : <http:// web.mit.edu> [29.12.2015].

My intention with this pamphlet — as a counter-utopian act of civil disobedience — was ultimately to raise a question : is there a public space in Istanbul that can be considered as a real democratic space ? I didn’t know how much recent events in Istanbul would confirm my apprehensions. *

(3) Friedrich ENGELS, Volkstaat, Leipzig, 1872.

20 Archetypes of power

IIb. The infrastructure of the city "[...] Through the grandioses corridors of a bazaar, I see rather an organizational founding act of a city; through the romantic complacency of a hani, I see rather a preserved area of freedom and a support for upcoming edification."

Location : Istanbul, TK Status : Research Project Collaborators : / Budget : / Program : 168 Housing units, 190 commercial units, urban infrastructure Scale : Urban Date : June 2016 # : Evolutive, Network, Politics, Infrastructure architecture

Do we really need architects ? Considering their incapability to change radically the current social and political question threw architecture, this project aims to rediscover the power of the city to be a self-organizing metabolism. Rather than aiming to change the system itself that produces architecture1 — politico-economical power —, this project intends to make use of it, in order to empower the inhabitants of the Galata neighborhood, by aiming to construct an authoritarian network of urban corridors. Here, the architectural work — a long living infrastructure of the city being used as a support for self-construction — is more considered as a matter of temporalities than as a pure formal work.

(1) See previous chapter.

1 The project, operating at an infrastructural scale, is a urban system of corridors — carrying housings, oﬃces or even schools in its superstructure — that aims to give an urban shape and political representation to the extremely high density of activities of the bubbly Galata neighborhood. Indeed, the long brownfield along the Golden Horn that the project proposes to occupe is bordered by a nearly uniform layer of buildings hosting housings and small commercial activities — that constitute what we can without any hesitation call ‘Istanbul’s true and greatest bazaar’, not the touristic one. Convinced that the lack of public spaces in Istanbul is to understand in the means of Jürgen Habermas, the project’s political answer is to fully occupy, with a grid of corridors, the brownfield that used to be considered as a coastal meydan before it was privatized by real estate — which means free space, both in a literal and metaphysical conception of the islamic city2 (see fig. 1).

(2) Read also Bilsel CANA, L’espace public existait-il dans la ville ottomane ? Des espaces libres au domaine public à Istanbul (XVIIe-XIXe siècles), Études balkaniques, 14, 2007.

Occupying the brownfield with this network of corridors and courtyards allowing — or not — self-construction is here considered as a political act. Indeed, if architecture in itself is unable to lead a revolution, this infrastructural project manifests by its monumental form, as a common good transcending individualities, also empowering the inhabitants of the neighborhood by maximizing interactions and preserving voids in a city that used to know no square place — with the exception of the mosques and the hani3.

(3) The traditional typology of the han : an inner courtyard surrounded by commercial entities. See for example Rustem Pasha Hani, 1561, Istanbul (Tk).

The aim of this project is thus to complete and give an urban shape to the dense amount of micro-scale activities of the neighborhood, by providing cts itself to the existing network of streets. 22

I. Implantation a (Plane view)

100 m

the necessary infrastructure for an organic development of the city, but at the same time to preserve essential values as public spaces. Therefore, the project reinvests the traditional typology of the bazaar4 — a covered gallery bordered by commercial nuclei — on a martial 30m x 30m grid, that connects itself to the existing network of streets (fig. 11).

(4) The traditional typology of the bazaar : a covered street bordered by commercial entities. See for example Mısır Çarşısı, 1664, Istanbul (Tk).

While the typology of the neighborhood consists of buildings hosting commercial activities on the ground floors and housings in the upper ones, the project — that aims to extend the actual urban network — proposes to split this typology : maintaining the commercial activities on the lower floors but sheltering the housing cells in the superstructure of covered streets (see fig. 111), thus allowing maximal enlightenment for each one of the inhabitants. As an infrastructure, the project simply aims to provide minimal accommodation for those housings on top of the galeries — that are delivered CASCO — (see fig. 1v; 1x) and for the commercial activities on the lower floors — a small volume for each unit, with the possibility of building on top of it according to the growth of the activity (fig. v1; v11; v111). 2 This infrastructural system of corridors — crossing on a 30 x 30m grid induced by the existing urban network to which the project connects itself — also generates another parameter : a series of courtyards, allowing additional self-constructions inside the guidelines provided by the perennial structure. This voluntarily additional layer marks my ambition in this project, by the reasoned installation of a secondary support (see fig. 11.8), to guide the impact of development over time — by preserving voids — and to oﬀer an opportunity of ulterior controlled densification. In eﬀect, if the existenzminimum cell — the one’s commercial (fig. v11, v111) or housing (fig. 1x) unit — is the basis of this whole system, the bazaar infrastructure on the lower floors also allows the merchants, at a courtyard’s scale, to make a cultural common choice, independently of their own edifice. Whether the center of a courtyard becomes a multi-storey hani over time or just a covered square is then only a matter of smallscaled democracy. The systemical approach on this project (fig. 11) — reasoning the implantation of an elementary infrastructure of the city — comes as a result of the ostensible complexity for architecture to address large-scale design. Indeed, the project, that combines both modern and postmodern standcts itself to the existing network of streets. 24

II. Diagrams iiiiii (Lower floors) 1. 30 x 30 m grid 2. Perspectives 3. A strong limit 4. Ottoman traces 5. Corridors 6. Tartan grid 7. Inhabited pillars 8. Infrastructure 9. Time = 0 + x. III.Roofs aaaaaaa (Level 5). IV. Upper floors iiiiii (Level 3) 1. One-level seafront apartments [Transit flats/ Rental] 2. Two-strorey CASCO houses [Access to ownership] 3. Liberal profession(s) 4. School(s) 5. Oﬃce space(s) 6. Passageways 7. Lifters & stairs. V. Urban transects.

100 m

111

B 2.

6. 4. 2.

1. B

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30 m

points, is to me a ‘culturally contextualized urban system’. Let’s hear that as a rebpetitible system, it has been studied out of context5, but that the compositional axiom of it (see fig. x) — an elementary combination of courtyards and corridors — is linked to the local culture6, and that the very reason why it has been studied is for further implementation in the urban network of Galata7.

(5) "A city in nowhere". (6) "An istanbulish city in nowhere". (7) "An istanbulish city in the Galata neighborhood ».

3 This contemporary systematization of fundamental architectural elements, whose principles are linked to the local culture, agrees with my personal pursuit of the authentic — not to be confused with the similar or the copy — in architecture. I am indeed deeply interested by the sociopolitical values attached by the wisdom of time to some old fundamental space devices . Thus, through the grandioses corridors of a bazaar, I see rather an organizational founding act of a city. Through the romantic complacency of a hani, I see rather a preserved area of freedom and a support for upcoming edification. The project then not only reinterprets the form of those architectural typologies, but rather reinvests the political values attached to those. As an extreme metaphor of any urban fabric, this bazaar8 infrastructure for the neighborhood of Galata is, according to me, far much than the simple expression of a will for more political laxity. Indeed, it explicits rather that the genuineness — as a condition for its sustainability — of such a city model is directly proportional to the trust that is placed in its inhabitants over the years. I am not an anarchist, quite the contrary. But I think that to address the contemporary challenges that our societies actually face, the architectural work — in its most ethical dimension — has to encourage more people’s involvement in their own living environnement, and to focus on the preservation of essential values — transcending individualities — in the perennial layers that it definitively adds to the city. 4 Regarding the contemporary dogma of ‘all-disposable’, we can in my opinion understand this perenniality according to two points of view, not antagonistic but complementary : a durability being interested in the sociopolitical dimension of the act of edification — which values will the cts itself to the existing network of streets. 32

(8) Bazaar in French ‘slang’ translation means «messy».

VI. Lower floors iiiiii (Level 0). VII.Evolutive commercial units for the bazaar : typical plans according to relative position and orientation iiiiii (Level 0). VIII.Evolutive commercial units for the bazaar : Axonometric.

10 m

v11

v111

urban system always preserve in the course of time ? —and a durability heard like longevity vis-a-vis the onslaughts of time — what will the edifice look like in thirty years ? In this direction, the infrastructure of inhabited pillars of the project is conceived like a real engineering structure — by a succession of bleached concrete casings (see fig. x11) — ready to grow rich by the attacks of time. So far from some kind of excessive romanticism, this monumental building then simply prefers to accept the idea of its future ruin with its head high than to come in terms with an unwilled slow and macabre deterioration. *

IX. ‘CASCO’ housings + accomodations iiiiii (Levels 3, 4). 1. Two-strorey CASCO houses [Access to ownership] 2. One-level seafront apartments [Transit flats/ Rental] 3. Liberal profession(s) 4. School(s) 5. Oﬃce space(s) 6. Lifters & stairs. X. Elemantary infrastructure (Axonometric) 1. Two-strorey CASCO houses [Access to ownership] 2. Oﬃce space(s) 3. Commercial units [Existenzminimum] 4. Parkings. XI.Evolutive commercial units for the bazaar : Axonometric. XII.Materiality

10 m

5 10

x11

III. Castrum "[...] The suggested constructions find their own purpose in the aim, not to disfigure, but to transfigure the places that accommodate them by their imposing mineral silence."

Location : Chastre/Perbais, BE Status : Research Project Collaborators : 1/2 (L. del Marmol, B. Colcomb, L. Lersch, E. Lam) Budget : / Program : 100 Housing units Scale : Rural/Territorial Date : June 2014 # : Water management, Rural densification, Infrastructure architecture

Vis-a-vis the uncontrolled urban sprawl of the villages from Brabant in Belgium, this project aims to increase the density of the rural areas while providing a solution for water management at territorial scale. By the installation of a succession of dam-buildings on the rivers, the project intends at the same time to restructure the wounded landscapes as well as to provide an unusual model of habitat adressing the territory. In a context where policy of public architecture too often means conservatism or catastrophes, is it not necessary to dare to seek new avenues for reflection, concerning the future of these wounded villages and landscapes, out of the beaten paths ? The case presented here, whose fundations rest upon the fundamental question of the healthiness of water, proceeds of a simple child-hood dream : “Dad, I want to live near a river!” 1 The study of villages like Chastre and Perbais cannot aﬀord to dispense with a comparative reading with their neighbors with similar morphology. The villages from Brabant are indeed, in major part, crossed by a hydrographic network — preexisting to the human establishment — being added to the pedestrian and roadway ones. These villages, with some exceptions, are crossed right through by watercourses, said rus, rys, brooks or rivers, flowing out peacefully inside the rural areas built by men. One frequently meets in those rural landscapes the following paradox : water, vital condition for the human establishment, is rejected at the back of the built parcels by hygienic needs. Historically, the nuisances caused by the rejection of waste waters and the risk of floods constrained the builders to protect themselves from the potential dangers that this hydrographic network could represent for them and their families — however essential (fig. 1 ; fig. 111). Brooks — known as rus or rys, like the ‘Ry de Perbais’1 which slowly descends from the heights of the village — are particularly aﬀected by human pollution. At the present time, a lot of them can indeed be considered more of open sewers than healthy ecosystems : the accumulation of residual muds, the enclavement of the banks preventing the contribution of natural light and the absence of vegetation with strong evaporation do not enable them —sadly — to naturally digest the mass of a 48

(1) First case study. See fig. 11. I. Implantation a (Plane view) II. First case study, a proposition for the construction of three housing blocks over the Ry the Perbais).

200 m

50 m

pollutants wich theirs are daily spilled (see fig. 11 : First case study, a proposal for the construction of three housing blocks over the Ry the Perbais). The rivers presenting a more substantial flow, as ‘l’Orne’2 wich crosses the plain of Chastre languorously, are a little more able to absorb the concentration of pollutants which are poured in their courses by their aﬄuents. Their pollution is indeed known as ‘average’ — a survival of the riparian vegetation is there observed —, but they present on the other hand a higher risk of inundations, preventing any traditional construction directly at their side (see fig. 1v : Second case study case study, a proposal for the construction of three housing blocks over l’Orne).

(1) Second case study. See fig. 1v.

2 The project aims here to answer the following question : ‘how to densify a rural village in the grip of an uncontrolled urban sprawl ?’ This project suggests to revalorize those a priori unhealthy or inconstructible land parcels bordering the rivers, by installing there a network of lakes formed by dams. As a matter of fact, the ‘flattening’ of water and the deceleration of its course favorises the reconquest of the banks by the indigenous vegetation — macrophyte with high abilities of evaporation —, and in this way the reduction of the pollutants concentration. The simple creation of a succession of dams in the topography of Chastre and Perbais thus gives an answer to three scales: the territory, via the purification of the water and the notable plug formed against the flows poured in by the storms; the density, via the establishment of dwellings on these newly reactivated grounds; and the landscape, refashioned by inhabited dams, inducing a famous and poetic contrast of scale between water and the built — not-without recalling, indeed, the inhabited bridges and other aqueducts. 3 Each of the proposed housing blocks (fig. v1) — providing small appartments whose size is counterbalanced by their idyllic context — is thus a real engineering structure, whose construction proceeds of walls. Facing upstream : partitions walls, supporting architectonic loggias in the upper floors — out of interior isolated spaces —, pierced by a bridge forming the access to the residences. Facing downstream : a wall acting as a dam, perpendicular to the course of the water (fig. v). a 52

III.Inundable Zones a (SPW Wallonie Groupe Transversal Inondations). IV.Second case study : a proposition for the construction of three housing blocks over l’Orne.

111

50 m

This Northern frontage â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a wall â&#x20AC;&#x201D; forms a barrage stopping the water, and is pierced of a screen of windows imposing a contemporary neutrality on the landscape. Within those, a fish pass distinguishes itself, welcoming with true poetry the actual re-emergence of the migration of salmonids (fig. v111).

V. Plan a a a a a a (Level 0) VI.Plan aaaaaaaa (Level 2). VII.Plan aaaaaaaa (Levels 1 ; 3)). VIII.Elevation (Downstream).

4 Water is literally combed by these rough concrete works with mannerist workmanships, built by a succession of recycled retaining concrete blocks, so as to grow rich by the attacks of time (fig. 1x ; x). A reduced volume of accommodations, discreetly teaming up with these imposing works, will polish the scale progression between the village and its new monuments. One will imaginarily find them sometimes resonating with the works of another above mentioned time, vectors of a certain imagibility; sometimes dialoguing with the rural mammoths, which are farms, manors and industries; sometimes burying themselves in the transect of the small rural areas. Proceeding of a rational will, the suggested constructions find their own purpose in the aim, not to disfigure, but to transfigure the places which accommodates them by their imposing mineral silence. *

IX.Sectionaa (Detailed). X. Elevation aa (Detailed).

v11

v111

IVa. Constructing landscapes "[...] Materializes the transition between the two […] landscape systems, while sending […] the strong signal of a socioeconomic take-over."

Location : Marchienne-au-Pont, BE Status : Research Project Collaborators : Q. Weber, S. Massaut Budget : / Program : Masterplan Scale : Territorial Date : December 2014 # : Città diﬀusa, Architecture & the territory

[Resume] Similarly to other cities with a heavy industrial past, the countryside of Marchienne-au-Pont — an industrial suburb of Charleroi, in Belgium — presents at first site a ravaged face. An absence of territorial planning leading to an uncontrolled urban sprawl gives the city much more the look of a diffuse nebula than the one of a structured landscape. In contrast with this painful urban context, the penetration formed by the valley of La Sambre, which joins the city by the West, proves to be a real wealth, offering a powerful imagibility to the concerned territory. This ensemble of industrial castles emerging here and there from the poetical heaps and woodlands (fig. 1) is an absolute contrast with the allgrey città diffusà of Marchienne-au-Pont bordering it. This landscape structure presents indeed the noticeable effect of offering a certain resistance to the human settlements, that spread everywhere possible in this portion of the Pays Noir2. Indeed, however this landscape — in an actual phase of natural decontamination — can be considered quite poetical, its soils are dirtied by years of industrial past. One can besides proceed by analogy and compare the scale report induced by the heap bordering the masterplan with the one of the plateau of Gizeh, to note an astonishing analogy (see fig. 11).

(2) Wich means Black Country — a reference to the industrial past of the province of Hainaut.

Considering the lack of eﬃcient urban — and landscape — planning in this wounded portion of the Pays Noir, this masterplan intends to build an absolute limit separating the city of Marchienne-au-Pont from its industrial valley, in order to enlighten an existing landscape structure. While valorizing a strongly borrowed old canal towpath connecting Liege to Charleroi, the masterplan also suggests to reassign the circumference of a turnover basin to its rightful claimants — boatmen — by the creation a linear shipyard providing employment to the jobless youth. While forming the foreground of a landscape painting, the proposed intention1 — answering the scale of the infrastructures bordering it — thus materializes the transition between the two above mentioned landscape systems, while sending to the inhabitants of Marchienne-au-Pont the strong signal of a socioeconomic take-over.

(3) See next chapter : IVb. THE 3RD MACHINE AGE

I. Implantation a (Plan / Section) II. Sections aa (Analogies)

III.Elevation (intention)

200 m

50 m

111

IVb. The 3rd machine age "This industrial program, dealing with the muddied but grandiose landscape that it seems to protect, dominates the architecture, which is constrained by the confrontation of scales between men and machines [â&#x20AC;Ś]"

Location : Marchienne-au-Pont, BE Status : Research Project Collaborators : D. WarzĂŠe, C. Garbelotto Budget : / Program : Shipyard/Learning center Scale : Territorial Date : June 2015 # : Architecture & the territory, Infrastructure architecture

Due to the extinguishment of the chimneys a few decades ago, the city of Marchienne-au-Pont accompanied the Pays Noir1 in its wetsuit-free diving towards a deep identity crisis. Diseased by the deleterious whiﬀs of its carbonaceous atmosphere, the city seems deadened; as resigned to taking care alone of what’s going on behind the scenes of a globalization, which did not expect it to advance.

(1) See previous chapter

In the inhabitants eyes bordered of ashes, whose daily routine sadly unfolds from the bar to the mortuary, a gleam seems to have disappeared. Where has the sense of pride of this country, which used to be one of the few Belgian industrial flagships gone ; a Black Land whose factories and spoil heaps proudly decorated the postcards that hords of stupefied visitors pleased to adress at their peers ? The industrial policies seem to have abandonned this proud ogre resigned in a deep torpor. In this land where ‘working’ versifies with ‘unemployment’, ‘industry’ with ‘past’, and ‘corproration’ with ‘delocalization’, any intervention seems unrelentingly doomed to failure. Can architecture help this contaminated portion of Hainaut’s province ? Not. The future seems as black as the ground under the heaps, as dubious as the future of the young people. The evidence has become irrefutable, undeniable, cutting-edge and mercyless : nothing is possible in Marchienne-au-Pont. 1 The socioeconomic drama happening is not a result of the absence of housings or fitness-centers; but rather from the deliquescence of industrial infrastructures, made obsolete by the course of time and the absence of investments, as a consequence of the 1979 seism. The strong discredit which since then ashamed — to the eyes of the public opinion — the manufacturing sectors is only one of the intellectual dishonesties of our society, which indulges much more in seeing the color of a facade than the origin of the pigments which compose its painting — or in sourcing the metal enclosing the hairs of the brush that painted it. The laissez-faire intelligentsia decided to avoid the annoying topics, by directing the public opinion towards a pathetic romanticism, whose principal eﬀects are an increasing lack of interest in productive activities, and a massive industrial relocation in other countries — helas less picky about human values. The death of Marchienne-au-Pont is announced, hurried by the lack of financial resources and long-term views. 78

I. Implantation a (Plane view)

200 m

In the global race for growth, the disqualified factories versify well more in investors eyes with opportunities for gentrification than with sector to encourage; as a metaphor of the gradual decline in which the city is mired — a reflection of the inconsistancies of our society. So far, the industrial memory is mantained in the heart of the locals. The remembrance of the lighted chimneys reminding a time of economic health outweigh intra muros the opprobrium strucked by outside opinions. The city, condemned to bow down to its destiny, claims for jobs that the current conjuncture is diﬃcultly able to provide it, to bandage its wounds. As incapable as it is to escape alone the deadening situation of years of resignation in which it is maintained; it tacitly invokes a powerful symbol of the announcement of a new time; a Third Machine Age. Still much more than work, Marchienne-au-Pont needs hope. 2 The architectural project is here envisioned as a symbolic act, finishing the city and bowing up with deference to reveal the existing landscape structure of the Sambre valley2 — poetically punctuated by industries and heaps —, encouraging on its own the installation of a production activity : an eﬃcient shipyard, metaphoring any industry (figs 11 ; 111).

(2) See previous chapter

Well far from a museum to a past glory, the taken act overtly defends the belief in a brighter future for the inhabitants of the country — a future less black than the ground which saw them being born —, in a vibrant economic sector under the leadership of industrial ecology. This industrial program, dealing with the muddied but grandiose landscape that it seems to protect, dominates the architecture, which is constrained by the confrontation of scales between men and machines; by the rational operation (see fig. 11) of this benevolent matrix for ships where origins and generations amalgamate, where working and training fusion. The edifices, obeying the logic of production whose function makes illusory and sterile any considerations on beauty, moult in a conform entity by the horizontal foyer (fig. 111), silently dialoguing with the landscape that it emphasizes. By deploying itself on the horizon all along of this industrial process; this foyer partitions (fig. 1v) in its path the various spaces of production and aan 80

I. Implantation a (Plane view) II. Rational operation of a shipyard a (Dimensionning) III.Plan a (Foyer - Level 2) IV.Section a (Longitudinal)

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25 m

111

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training (fig. v) that under it disseminate; where the training is no longer understood as an aﬀair exterior to any logic of production, but well as an initiatory first step of a life course, directly battling against the reality. Still much more than a breath of fresh air between massive working volumes centered on their own activity, this foyer aims to become, at first, the symbol of a link between the industrial memory — still alive in people’s mind — and a vibrant industry; and on the other hand a factual connection, out of stainless steel (fig. v1, v11), between today’s working world and the training of the future young people hopes of river industry. 3 But if nothing is definitively possible in Marchienne-au-Pont, then this proud production entity will not symbolize this first stake of a takeover by the town of its future. It will remain silent and lonely in its morbid torpor, ravaged by its open wounds. Then, the young people’s future will indeed be as black as the grounds that surrounds them, and the disdainful glances will continue ta ashame this city that once used to be a subject of national pride in the Black Country. The lid will be closed with decency, and the time will continue going as if nothing had ever happened. *

V. Plans 1. River cafetaria [ Level 1] 2. River cafetaria [ Level 0] 3. Mecanical / Motors [ Level 1] 4. Mecanical / Motors [ Level 0] 5. Oﬃces / Dir. / Tracing / Planning [ Level 1] 6. Oﬃces / Dir. / Hall [ Level 0] 7. Steel / Boiler making[ Level 1] 8. Steel / Boiler making[ Level 0] 9. Woodwork a [Level 1] 10.Woodwork a [Level 0] 11.Classrooms a [Level 1] 12.Classrooms a [Level 2]. VI.Detailed Section (Boilermaking) VII.Structure (Axonometric)

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10.

11.

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v11