ARTiculate Brussels

ARTIculate Brussels Acupuncture for a healthy cIty

ALEXANDRU IVAN GRECENIUC

DesIgn StudIo maIb24 -Team 6 F a c u l t y o f A r c h I t e c t u r e, K U L e u v e n, SInt– Lucas Brussels 2014

2 0. Introduction Considering health as one of the elements that define a qualitative place for living, the theme “Rethinking health as urban common in Brussels” proposes an interesting challenge on finding features or qualities that a developed city like Brussels misses in order to be called a “healthy city”, keeping in mind that “healthy” is taken in its broadest meaning. The first part of this paper presents a chronology of “healthy city” meaning since the end of the XIX century and how this idea is tackled today, also a short review over the late developments in Brussels. The second part of the paper is focused on a critical approach of the area and shortly describes the urban vision and the general strategy applied. The third part focuses on proposed project description, pointing out how the key factors, that were used to outline the general strategy, work in order to make the city of Brussels a healthier city. The final part of the paper presents the project phasing, potential future development and reactions of the surrounding areas, possible extension and limitations of the project.

1. Health concept in architecture My first approach on the qualitative - healthy place for living, while defining the features of Brussels as healthy city, was to define it as a need/lack of 3 main points: shared open sport areas, water presence at the street level and an increased policy of public transportation usage, because all these three factors contributes in rising the quality of urban life. Although the mentioned features seem to define a certain healthiness of the city, doing more analysis and research on “urban health” topic, I think it’s not sufficient for contemporary urban needs. If the concept of health in architecture1 switched from terms like hygene, light and air to social welfare, extensive ecotopes or sustainability over the time, the situation of the past 20 years, with major social and political changes in an extremely dynamic and sensitive environment, transformed “green” and “clean” in labels – keywords used by politicians in their political agendas, while the notion of sustainability – used in the global and national strategies it’s nothing else but a “banal energy balance in a defined system” (Wolfrum, 2008, p. 193), and if it is going to be promoted only as an elaborate word for political statements it’s in danger to lose it’s full, complex sense.

2. Urban vision – acupuncture procedure The timeline of various relations with ground, presented in the “Groundscapes – the rediscovery of the ground in contemporary architecture” article by Ilka and Andreas Ruby, is relevant now to see how the relation to the ground can shape another type of connection with the architectural object.2

Groundscapes timeline

As it can be observed, the urban development evolved to a strange inclusive infra-structure that outlines our current world characterized by intense mobility – mobility of people, goods, data, money and resources, often in the same space. A contemporary city lives like that – it’s a new need and a new adaption requirement. So, if we consider a city as a living organism we can see that, over time, it faces numerous changes and mutations. Due to these changes, some parts of the complex structure of the city are not able to function properly or function at all, because it wasn’t able to adapt itself to the new conditions and needs, forming “residual urban fragments” that are functioning in disadvantage of the whole system – “unhealthy spaces”. As developing city in the center of geopolitical transformations, Brussels experienced continuous changes. Planned and designed fragmentally, the central European political city is a mosaic of various urban tissues. After all it’s a mixture of new and old, of history and

3 modernity, of yesterday and today, symbiosis of changed and unchanged. So where is the unhealthy part?

Well, like in all organisms, if we consider the city a constant developing organism with its internal systems, there are some “residual fragments” – fragments of urban space in this case, perfectly meeting its function at some point, but lost in the continuous changing dynamic of the city, incapable to adapt to the current needs and urban scape. Such a residual space I would call the area along Pacheco Laan that seeks a “healing” to make it able to contribute to the healthiness of the city, both literally (see Wolfrum, 2008) and metaphorically. Literally, to be closer to the urban ecological demands expressed in the last century, and to share a potential level of cultural and spiritual healthiness. Stepping beyond “green” and “sustainable” labels the area can be reshaped according to the changing trends and contemporary needs for the city.

Defining Pachecolaan as a “residual urban fragment”, and focusing on the parking platform that resembles more to a super-scaled Mies’s plinth, but drawn in its mono-functionality, in the context of a dynamic society, makes the chosen area unhealthy for the city. In order to reactivate it and to bring the “healthiness” I propose an adaption that follows the idea and principle of acupuncture – small local interventions in different places of the area, but which will have a broader effect. The meaning of the acupuncture is to generate a web-like intervention, which works like a huge urban net instead of having a traditional intervention. The approach of not building is based on the rationality of urban space usage and sustainability. Since Brussels deals with an “overdose” of office space, 10% of office spaces are unused or office buildings are underused, it means that there is no necessity to build something new, especially if the existing can be converted and adapted for a new function. But choosing the new function has to satisfy several items, such as: to be accessible, to be visible, to offer social control, to become a destination for people, to work properly even if it’s spread in different spaces, to add value for the area, to offer a certain diversity, to become a pole of dynamicity in the area and to have the possibility of being connected to other similar spaces. All these features were translated in formal and functional qualities and outlined the general strategy (the urban vision).

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3. The project - healthy solution for a healthy city The proposed project – Brussels Art Center – follows the key factors of the strategy, being improved the visibility and accessibility as a first step, which means more accessibility points and nodes (ground floor Finance Tower, ground floor RAC, Pacheco parking platform). Applying transparent materials and minimum of opacity on the platform level (ground floor) for a better social control and safe convergent and divergent movements in the area. Horizontal and vertical façade chances to make the Art Center more visible, using Finance Tower as a landmark with open balconies and a thin, vertical, green wall that is changing its color every season, being a statement for changes not only for the art, architecture and city but also for nature and its cyclical beauty. In the open area of the platform, a few more steps were done to improve the area. Firstly, its function was enriched from a public open space to a space that encourages and offers the setting for open performances (concerts, theatres, open air cinema…).

Secondly, a certain “dialogue” was establish between interior programmed functions and exterior, following a hierarchy so the interior functions in the ground floor (library, auditorium, restaurant, passage) can be extended on the outside platform (with visual and/or level limits). Thirdly, a visual fragmentation of the space was used to bring the enormous space closer to the pedestrian scale and proportion. For this were used different types of pavement stone, benches, trees and green stripes and in the case of level fragmentation 3-5 stair differentiation.

Combining this all with the diversity that art can offer, we get the result of multiple spread interventions that are using existing buildings but form a new, improved urban set-up, that brings dynamicity, movement, healthiness (in urban understanding here) and safety to the area and is making a new

5 destination in the city. Therefore the title of the project contains the core concept of the project – ARTiculating Brussels – as a word play of “articulating” – dynamism and “art” – diversity in the proposed city – Brussels, using a medical approach of acupuncture as a concept for intervention type.

But the overall space configuration was developed not only on horizontal direction or vertical direction, but also creates a frame space that allows metaphorically to go beyond spatial dimension, traveling in time, through music or other visual arts. Walled and protected area, by existing buildings, with which interacts and which are articulated by insertions that act as catalyst through the new functions. Regarding the functions, art, in its multiple shapes (paintings – exhibition, workshop, open-air cinema, theatre,…) can contribute with its diversity to disrupt the mono-functional context of Pachecolaan and parking platform, articulating the space in different key points, but also on the vertical ax, by introducing different function on certain level in the surrounding buildings (Finance Tower and RAC). Once the mono-functionality is broken and space is reconfigured the city can work properly again and these now-adapted fragment can add value to the quality of the city.

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4. Phasing the project

In order to implement the project, I considered useful to divide the intervention into three different phases which can work consecutively or even overlapped. Therefore, phase one would improve the accessibility to the platform above the parking by adding a better connection (stairs) from the street level to platform, switching the main entrance of Finance Tower from the platform and clearing the ground floor of FT for a better social control. Also first phase would deal with accessibility and add entrances and passing through connections in the RAC building, particularly a bridge connecting first floor of RAC with the elevators that connect platform (ground floor), Pacheco Street and Congress Train station (underground), but also cable cars on top of the buildings providing a network of similar urban fragments. In the second phase is added the structure and special design for open-air events (concerts, cinema, theatre), temporary functions that can activate the space from time to time, up-cycling the potential of the new created urban set-up. Phase three goes more on the vertical ax by disrupting the mono-functionality and adds symbiotic art-related functions on different floors of Finance Tower and RAC, functions that bring the missing mixture and diversity of people and movements.

5. Conclusion Consequently, the proposed intervention has the aim to eradicate “unhealthy” part of the city, an urban fragment that is lost (as urban design and function) in the past and weren’t able to adapt to the nowadays city life rhythm, but has a great potential in becoming a great public space that would increase the urban healthiness. Therefore, in this case, “rethinking health as urban common in Brussels” theme is interpreted as health for the city (where the city is an organism) affecting afterwards, in a positive way, its users, and not as an intervention addressed to the general public. The meaning is more global, the effect is broader even if the proposed intervention is small and local. Moreover, doesn’t bring a new enclosed volume in the city, but it makes more transparent, light, safe and friendly, improving the quality of the place and walkability (Pak and Verbeke, 2013) with a minimum of costs.

7 Bibliography:   

Ruby, I. and A., “Groundscapes – the rediscovery of the ground in contemporary architecture” Wolfrum S. (2008). “Healthy city – Sustainable city” Pak, B. and Verbeke, J. (2013) ‘Walkability as a Performance Indicator for Urban Spaces Strategies and Tools for the Social Construction of Experiences’, Crowdsourcing and Sensing: Computation and Performance, Delft Technical University, 18-20 September. Delft, pp. 423-432.

Notes: 1.

To explain the changing concept of healthy city I will use a short timeline basing on Sophie Wolfrum’s (2008) article “Healthy city – Sustainable city”. The concept of healthy city takes birth by including, at the end of the nineteenth century, notions such as “hygiene”, “light and air”, and “social welfare” as key words in building regulations and municipal engineering. These notions, directly connected to the health have been pursued, more or less, in the process of outlining the urban sprawl. Modern age shifts a bit the concept towards the issue of natural light and building orientation, and also open space – public parks, defining the healthy city trough “light, air, and opening”. Although the twentieth century dealt with those notions it was seen only as insertions in the city and the regulations were stopped at the city border, but the real idea of clean rivers, clean air and waste disposal, as a continuous matter that travels from point A to point B carrying the previous residues to the next city/area was missing. Therefore, the shift to a wider, global approach in what concerns healthy city concept, was done only in the 1970’s in form of urban ecology. But, progressive understanding of the ecological systems and its mechanisms proved that nature is much more complex than it seems, and the cities were seen as “extensive ecotopes” (Wolfrum, 2008, p.

193) in a large global network, so in the 1990’s the term sustainability is extended to the social, economic and ecologic themes.

2.

The authors consider the ground an “ecology of architecture (in Banham’s sense)” – claiming the specific relation between architecture and landscape. A characteristic relation is reflected in projects of Le Corbusier, who chooses to free the ground level – “Liberation du sol”, lifting designed building on pilotis, detaching it from the ground – “emancipation from the ground” – leaving the ground floor for service functions and first floor for living. Mies van der Rohe takes another approach by creating a special microcontext, a podium – “comparable to the stylobate in Greek temple”. This way Mies defines a special relation of the building with the ground, its own ground – the massive plinth, suggesting a “weightless architecture”. In the 60’s P. Virilio and C. Parent have a critical approach towards horizontal developments and absolutist verticality by introducing the concept of “function oblique”. The new form of urban continuity is translated into an emerging of new and old city “at an incline”, a continuous space (inside – outside) on both, horizontal and vertical directions. Moving forward on the unclear relation of outside – inside, over/underground, Oscar Niemeyer introduces “an invisible architecture without a horizon”. The presence of proposed building for FCP is sensitive, having firstly a tangible connection, disorienting on purpose, and only by approaching closely one can have a visual connection through a smooth transition into a “veritable underworld”. Architectural “underworld” is taken further by architect Emilio Ambasz, who covers the building with a new topography, making the building “an undercover agent of the landscape”, ground, in this case, is a tool. But, Peter Eisenman refines the concept and relation of underground architecture and landscape by creating a topo-architecture, that seems perfectly normal, true and sincere. An overlap of built and unbuilt, a palimpsest where “the ground as an archaeological archive becomes a figure”. A total opposite concept is presented by the projects of Zaha Hadid, who seems to “deny the very notion of the ground”. A cosmic architecture, “hovering above the ground” that reacts with the ground in a tensioned way. On the other hand, OMA is trying to combine, in a way, the idea of continuous space developed by Virilio, Parent and Niemeyer, extending it on vertical and adding the infrastructure through the building - infrastructuralism. The era of mobility translated in a functionalist architecture. The desire to break the mono-functionality is fulfilled by “incorporating the surrounding world of events”, a concept which Koolhas pushed forward through the “folding surface”, transforming the buildings into “an infra-structural urban landscape” that multiplies the ground artificially.