This portfolio is a sample of the projects I have worked on during my studies. It tackles projects of highly diverse ranges and scales. Selecting them accordingly to the time I have spent developing them allows me to illustrate the various working methods I have been using. My universe has evolved significantly in the course of my studies. Having studied in two different universities has given me the opportunity to learn highly differentiated approaches to architecture, from which I could draw my personal vision. The references, working methods, desires and expectations that are part of my universe are in constant evolution, hence my interest for scale jumps. My final work on Charleroi gave me the opportunity to tackle macro and micro issues and further increased my will to diversify my subjects of reflection.
mobile phone : +32 486 445 321 email : hadrienderiemaecker@hotmail.fr
Studies
Experience
2008
Languages
2012
2013
French
Master diploma in architecture at I.S.A. La Cambre Bruxelles Belgium Distinction
Internship in FRES Architecture office - Geneva - Switzerland
Management of an 12 adults group during a participative travel to Bénin - Africa
2009
Internship in Suède 36 office Bruxelles - Belgium
Bac diploma in architecture at I.S.A St Luc Bruxelles - Belgium
2012
Mother tongue Deutch Good skills English
Evolo contest
Good skills
2005
Velux contest
Programs
General sencondary education diploma at St Albert of Jodoigne School - Belgium High Maths/High Science section
2010
Autocad +++ Sketchup +++ Adobe Photoshop + + + Adobe Indesign ++ Adobe Illustrator ++ Word pack +++ OpenOffice pack +++ 3DSMax + ...
1999 General primary education diploma at Instituut van Mariadal van Hoegaarden - Belgium (deutch immersion)
Zinneke Parade conteste, artistic mobil kitchen - First prize 2009 Co-fondator of Attention à la tête asbl. Organising of concerts, artists meetings, ....
“ Express the feelings the city awakes in you with the means of representation of your choice on a 70 x 100 cm sheet. Work in groups of three. You have 24 hours starting from now.” Right after a day spent visiting and attending conferences in Charleroi, we don’t even have the time to let the large amount of information settle down. We are immediately assigned to draw a picture of the city. With no hindsight, only a harsh, direct image full of clichés, but paradoxically very genuine, can strike the eye of the beholder. After concerting my colleagues, three features are stressed: raw materiality, the city’s marked topography and, finally, the sensation of confinement offered by the ring road that surrounds the city. The project consists in stressing these three characteristics. First, by choosing an appropriate location in which every material expresses itself in its genuine form: it shall be the school’s garage. Then we depict
the slope using a colour gradation. Finally, we decide to explode the format in order to give impact to the project. Thus, the projects results from a superposition of grillages and a colour gradation based not only on the various features that stood out during our visit, but also on some sort of aesthetic conveyed by the city we were yet not fully conscious of.
With and
ONE WEEK OBSOLESCENCE PROGRAMMEE MASTER II
“ Society critic” The subject at hand is vast. I opt for the consumary sociaty, and his programated absolescence
By transposing this question into our western society, a major question arose: what is most fragile in our society? It is the individual.
“ Contextless assignment. Requirements: 20 residences with a high level of flexibility in programming. Determine a highly specific programming. Minimum ground impact.” The absence of context allows to directing the architectural research towards questions not related to the site itself. Having no constraint actually proves itself to be quite constraining. The absence of a specified site, by allowing everything, makes it hard to define a guideline. Thus, I used the program as a starting point. I opted for a theme I was well acquainted with: climbing. Starting from this basic premise, I began to model a simple shape, a right-angled parallelepiped, in order to make it meet the requirements of a climbing centre (indoor and outdoor). The original concept implies that every object built must be exploitable for climbing according to the centre’s
temporalities. If an apartment is temporarily uninhabited, it must be exploitable as a training facility. But the apartment must keep a certain degree of intimacy when occupied. Starting from a constraintless project, I now have to face a highly constraining question: how to inhabit an object?
Basic parallelipedic rectangle’s deformation Collective spaces hollow / Adjacent programs : sport shop - changing room - restaurant, bar -polyvalent space - panoramic view room / Vertical circulation Horizontal circulation / Hollowed object / Interns climbing walls
Once the project has been drawn, I had to insert the program. First, I dug the object in order to allow the alpinist to pass from one side of the tacking to the other without being forced to go around it. These hollows also provide common spaces for the inhabitants.
Intern views of the hollowed spaces when the appartements are used and when some of them are transformed in training rooms
Intern views of an appartement when it’s used and when it’s transformed in training rooms
Then I determined the exact site of the adjoining programs such as a restaurant, a sports shop, lockerrooms and a panoramic sight point. These are situated around the hollows so a maximum number of people can benefit from the common spaces. Given the shape of the object, every apartment is unique. The housing environment had to be completely retought and new solutions had to be found in order to offer a pleasant living environment whether for one-room, two-room or three-room apartments.
To preserve intimity, the windows are extruded. When the appartement is empty, the frame is folded to permit the acces
In this project, every space is questioned. I thus had to call the basic assumptions I had concerning housing environment in question in order to bring an object to life.
The project in his context or the alpinist fantasm
Explosed axonometry illustratingthe different appartement’s typologies. Adjacent programsare in red
Duplex’s deformation wich defined the living spaces and give more different hights propicefor the climbing training.
Plans level 5,6,7,8
Section
Observation : - dense city center / tertiary - industry and housing estate at the city border/ secondary - outskirts agricultural production / primary
“Europan Competition” A 5 ha. fallow land on the banks of the Sambre River in a wooded landscape – an idyllic site at first glare. The city’s ambition is to lay out the rough terrain in order to favour housing and economic activities. The question at hand relates to the status that should be given to the site: is it part of the urban fabric or is it fully autonomous?
In fact, on the opposite bank, the town of Sambreville turns completely its back to the river. Furthermore, the dominant buildings located on the river’s bank are essentially isolated large farms or factories that are part of the urban fabric.
Evolution, territoy and green spaces saturation : - Developement of the individual and estate housings - Production moving away - Territory zoning
Big size’s cartography
- Study of a new typology mixing housing, primary,secondary and tertiary sectors - Territory economy and fonctionnal mixity
During the preliminary analysis, a series of points are picked out to give a clear structure to the project: the height must match those of the farms and factories already located on the Sambre’s banks; the program must combine housing, educational and commercial facilities and production sites; the question surrounding water supply must be emphasised; finally, the site must
remain accessible to everyone. The chosen programing is highly specific: breading and transformation of local fish for food production. This program allows for the investigation of a new peri-urban typology that aims to combine housing an industrial activity – two usually distinct dimensions.
Once the template is established, its shape is modified in order to optimise sights by taking distance from the railway that runs along the site, taking the need for an access to the road for trucks into account, as well as the need for a connection to the river’s bank. The connection to the river’s bank can be achieved in various ways. First, big stairs connect the access to the bridge leading to the city centre and the embankment. The stairs diminish the site’s striking level gaps and can also be used as terraces for the embankment that can occasionally be transformed into a stage, with the Sambre as background scenery. Furthermore, a restaurant set in the embankment slope gives peasants who take a walk the opportunity to rest and enjoy products from the factory. Finally, a series of slopes connect the frame to the embankment. Volume Views Ancrage Imbrication Light Explosed axonometry of the different fonctions and housing typologies
There is about a dozen of different apartment typologies. Be it crossing apartments or sometimes duplexes, the various housing facilities are destined to match the needs of the largest possible number of family types, resulting in greater mixing. Each apartment
has a double relation to water: in the foreground, with the basins and their colours reflecting on the buildings’ fronts, at the site’s scale, and in the background, with the Sambre, at the scale of larger surroundings.
Finally, the basins and the crops conclusively fix the complex into the site. The large basins on at the top of the site leak out water coming from the Sambre, which is then used for the fish basin ponds. The fish basin ponds are divided in three distinct categories, according to the size of the fish. These stretches of water are arranged in a way that makes them accessible to every inhabitant or passer-by so they can enjoy the landscape layout.
Implantation plan Section AA’ Sections in the intern street
In conclusion, I would say that this project is a reflection on periurban urbanism in small towns as well as a typological study connecting economic activity and everyday life. This research work has been accomplished as a response to the industrial and residential zoning that typifies Walloon suburban areas, and that often results in a destructuring of the urban fabric.
View of the truck’s loading space
View of the promenade and the restaurant
Plans of the EE’ section
“Charleroi... when we first met, you were dying. I wanted to immortalize your slow agony. But it was not your last breath I was feeling. It was your hunger for vengeance.” As my visits to the city people call the capital of the “Black Lands” went on, I discovered spellbinding ruins, mechanical landscapes and imposing infrastructures that may sometimes feel oppressive but that also convey an unexplainable impression of sturdiness. To me as an architect, there was something romantic about that slow agony I was facing and I have kept pictures of a phantasmagorical universe in my mind. After analysing them, those views of the mind appeared to me as disconnected from reality but also as offering a poetic notion I could work with. Looking for a concept able to give new dynamism to this low-growth city, some questions arose concerning the way of implementing a global urban planning. This working process consisted of three steps.
First, I had to take on the great city of Charleroi and try to understand it in order to develop urban planning strategies and tactics. Then I wrote a report on the various temporalities of a postindustrial city with Charleroi as a background, which allowed me to stress the factors that co-condition the city’s decay. Once I was holding these in hand, I was able to begin with the last step that consisted in defining guidelines allowing to reapproriate sites that are being abandoned because of the ring road surrounding the city.
Topographic plan of the big Chaleroi
During my first visits to Charleroi, I discovered a dead city. The sites surrounded by the ring road seemed to be abandoned by their inhabitants. Indeed, this young city, which has had stunning growth numbers after the industrial revolution due to its coal mines, has faced a dramatic economic and demographic decline during the 1960s. There is an important migration from the city centre to the surrounding areas. After the analysis of city maps, I made a first observation: the urban fabric is not radiocentric but polynuclear.
By that I mean that, as it was growing rapidly, the city wanted to develop around the centre, brought out by the ring. But we observe that the urban fabric has its roots in several central points. In addition, the savage growth has resulted in a very distinctive urban planning typology in Charleroi. We can see a confrontation between the imposing factories and slag heaps and the small buildings designed for housing, and an alternation of empty and filled-out spaces that alter the structure of the urban fabric.
Polynuclear
To conclude this analysis, I would argue that Charleroi did not have the time to develop accordingly to its own identity but has been inevitably shaped by History, and should therefore accept its identity.
Radiocentric
Starting from this statement, I tried to elaborate tactics and strategies in order for the city to recognise its own identity and in the same time to heal the wounds of the industrial era. These tactics and strategies can be defined as direct actions, as “close combat�, that can be conceived for an
overall use but that can also become very specific and contextual once they are implemented. Strategies force us to think in broader terms, on the scale of the whole territory.
Identified abondoned territories New landscapes Territories reappropiations’s propositions
The first step consists in reappropriating the territory that I have divided in two types. The first of them consists of the fallows and slag heaps that are currently abandoned. Once those areas have been identified and registered in the common ground, they can be reappropriated by the inhabitants. The second type is what I have called new landscapes – those huge stacks of scrap, piles of sand and construction waste, and so on that form along the canal. While the slag heaps have integrated the collective memory of the inhabitants, stacks and piles caused by new industries are highly unpopular even though their movements are quite fascinating. Readapting the territory also implies a work on the changes of scale. To start working on this territory, I drafted a series of interventions varying between three factors: the object, the waiting time and the walk. The object allows to put emphasis on an underestimated space; the waiting time allows the beholder to retain progressively the landscape in his mind, in his experience and thus to accept it; the development allows the inhabitant to inhabit it and thus to anchor its memories in this very space.
The second step is the identification of the various poles that constitute the city and their needs in terms of programming. Those various poles must be interconnected by an efficient network of transports in order to become a urban ensemble.
Propositions and programmatics potentials of the identifiated poles
Being done with this first step, I begun getting interested in the city’s temporalities to the point that I wrote a report on this topic. Without pretending to be exhaustive, I tried to identify temporal forms of different scales at different times in post-industrial cities. By searching in the past and analysing the present, a solution firmly anchored in its context in terms of urban planning could emerge for the future. First, a series of examples of factors causing ruptures in the city’s cycle allowed me to focus my research on concrete points. The questions related to the city’s proper temporality and architecture then allowed me to stress the importance of memory and permanence as a vector of the city’s identity. The research goes on along the marks and the tracks left by the time and their influence on the urban setting, from the micro scale of the material to the macro level of the landscape. Then, identifying common elements in various definitions of sustainability allowed me to incorporate concepts such as resilience and, most importantly, mutability in urban planning in order to open the debate on a possible new methodology of urbanism. This work rises the question of the architect’s role when he
modifies a urban setting, independently of the scope of his intervention, and the question related to the necessity of humbleness in this respect. Why should we try to control things that we have no influence on knowing that, as J. Richter points out, “Time completes all creation.”
To start working on the city centre and more particularly on the ring road, which was the third part of my project, I began by taking a little distance from what had already been done. That is the reason why I started analysing photographic pictures that I annotated with personal reflexions or observations I had heard during my visits. Through a collection of several pictures called “Day One: a random story”, I tried to point out ordinary details.
Of course, those pictures are a completely subjective view of the mind that does not pretend to change the city’s image. This notebook is to be seen more as a tool that makes the beholder discover or rediscover Charleroi from a different perspective, with a poetic dimension., in which one can write notes, draw pictures, that can be torn apart an in which one can stick everything that strikes his attention, everything that crosses his mind.
Interventions examples Feelings map
Project presentation “ Day One :a randam story ” extract
After that, it was important to have an idea of the vision that the inhabitants have concerning their city. To do so, I used three tools: a survey called “Attaches et contreattaches”, carried out by the city of Charleroi in 2006; a questionnaire that I submitted to people on the market place and a series of four installations. These tools allowed me to establish a map reflecting the feelings brought out by the city.
Having done that, I identified spaces that are abandoned or underused because of the ring road. This infrastructure has a strong impact on the city and provides a sensation of seclusion in its centre. However, if the targeted goal is to develop the different poles, it is important that the ring road and the spaces it generates are integrated, that the citizens live within them. By analysing the functions of the areas surrounding these identified spaces, various poles seem to emerge. For example, the north-east zone is surrounded by several health centres and sports facilities such as the football stadium and the dance centre; developing these aspects in that particular area could therefore be interesting. Before I started implementing architectural modifications, I thought it was important to analyse the different typologies of the ring road. Running sometimes over and sometimes under the city, it defines a particular rhythmic for both pedestrians and drivers.
Adjacent programs to the identifiated spaces Ring road rythmic’s examples viewed by drivers and pedestrians
Having gathered all these elements, the identification of high-potential locations allowed me to draft a punctual project or what I call “slope architecture and landscape”. To illustrate those drafts, I developed one of these interventions.
Map of the proposition’s sketches in the potential identifiated
The site is located south-east of the city centre. It features elements that, at first sight, seem to be highly constraining but that appear to be the site’s qualities. Indeed, an important motorway node runs through the site. Gigantic factories line the area and the canal runs not far from it. The concept consists of an imposing hollow concrete monolith that stands out between two access roads.
Situation plan Implantation plan
Pedestrians can access it through three paths that slowly sink into the ground. When the user walks into the belvedere, he notices that the site is roofless. While he goes up, he can also progressively notice openings. First, he can see a road with cars driving at low speed. But, as he continues to move up, the cars are running faster and faster. A feeling of seclusion comes over him due to the proximity, the speed of the cars and the sound of their engines, amplified by the openings’ shapes. This sensation reaches its highest point at the level of the ring road, where the cars reach a high speed. The pedestrian continues his way up and finally gets past the ring road and, once he has reached the top, he stands in the light, dominating what oppressed him before.
The belvedere opens on the surrounding slag heaps, near factories and the city. In the middle of what we once have built in the name of progress and that has come to dominate us, Men can regain their central place. The monolith also has impact on the drivers, who, after having dominated the city while driving on the ring road, suddenly face an upright building, which reminds them that they are still anchored in the urban fabric.
There is something utopian about this project. It is some sort of manifesto, but it is more than just that. It allows me to inhabit a forgotten location, to anchor memories in it. The goal of these first steps of a more global urban planning project is to sublimate an existing site. Places with a particular mark come from the ring road: places that have to be rediscovered in order to be accepted. Belevedere plans
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Project presentation with two models. One has a concrete base to understand the cinematic of the project. The second is an implantation model to understand the complexity of the road ring at this place. The context is drawn ont the floor at the implantation model scale. It permit to use all the space for the presentation
3DS Max images issued from a video about the Small House of Sejima
Presentation pannels forEvolo’s contest with A.Maes, N. Baeck and F. Bihr