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BRUXELLES THE PRODUCTIVE CITY
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7 MAX MOHL CONFIDENCE STUDIO - JOHAN NIELSEN - SINT LUCAS CAMPUS BRUXELLES - KU LEUVEN - 2020
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GA
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5 SE N
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7 SITE - BRUXELLES
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1:20000
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7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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FEW LOW-RISE HOUSES + SMALL PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITIES + OLD INDUSTRIAL HALL
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BRICO - HARDWARE STORE
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OFFICE BUILDING
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“PROXIMUS” LOGISTIC BUILDING
“PHILLIPS” OFFICE BUILDING 7
7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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URBAN STRATEGY
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FRAGMENTATION OF OPEN SPACES ON SITE
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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BEHAVIOUR OF THE FACADES TOWARDS THE STREET RUE DES DEUX GARES
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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IMPORTANT CONNECTIONS ON SITE WITH MAIN POINTS OF INTERESTS
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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CURRENT FORM OF THE STREET NETWORK AROUND THE SITE ONE-SIDED ORIENTATION OF THE BLOCK
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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NEW PROPOSED STRUCUTURE OF STREETS ON SITE TRADITIONAL FORM OF THE CITY BLOCK INTEGRATING THE GREENERY INTO THE URBAN FABRIC
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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CONNECTING TO THE CITY AND THE URBAN LANDSCAPE
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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CONNECTING TO THE CITY AND THE URBAN LANDSCAPE
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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CONNECTING TO THE CITY AND THE URBAN LANDSCAPE
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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PLANS AND SECTIONS OF THE SITE
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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PLANS AND SECTIONS OF THE SITE
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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PLANS AND SECTIONS OF THE SITE
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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PLANS AND SECTIONS OF THE SITE
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6 GSEducationalVersion
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CURRENT RATIO OF FUNCTIONS ON SITE
OFFICES
54 240 m2
RESIDENTIAL
1 250 m2
LOGISTICS
7 930 m2
RETAIL
8 630 m2
PRODUCTION/SERVICES
880 m2
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4 ESTIMATE OF PROPOSED RATIO OF FUNCTIONS
OFFICES
32 240 m 2
RESIDENTIAL
41 470 m 2
LOGISTICS
7 930 m2
RETAIL
7 800 m2
PRODUCTION/SERVICES
30 300 m 2
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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DESIGN PROPOSAL
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7 THE SITE
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7 THE SITE
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7 AXONOMETRIC VIEW
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7 AXONOMETRIC VIEW
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7 "PROXIMUS" LOGISTIC HALL
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7 SMALL PRODUCTIVE AND COMMERCIAL SPACES
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7 THE TRADITIONAL STREET DIFFERENT LEVELS OF COLLECTIVE SPACES
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7 FLEXIBLE PRODUCTIVE SPACE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF COLLECTIVE SPACES
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7 ROOFTOP COURTYARD DIFFERENT LEVELS OF COLLECTIVE SPACES
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7 0
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EXISTING SITUATION
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1:500
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2. FLOOR
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1:500
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1:500
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SECTION A-A
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SECTION B-B
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1:500
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7 NEW STREET
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7 ROOFTOP COURTYARD
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TYPOLOGY 1
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3. FLOOR
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TYPOLOGY 2
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1:100
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REFLECTION OF THE URBAN STRATEGY
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DEMOLITION
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DEMOLITION PRODUCTIVE SLAB
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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DEMOLITION PRODUCTIVE SLAB EXISTING BUILDINGS
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7 URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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DEMOLITION PRODUCTIVE SLAB EXISTING BUILDINGS RESIDENTS
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7
URBAN STRATEGY COLLEAGUES: IGNACIO CRISTOFORI, EVA JORISSEN, XIANG LIN
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DESIGN PRINCIPLE
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DEMOLITION PRODUCTIVE SLAB EXISTING BUILDINGS RESIDENTS
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GSEducationalVersion
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CRUCIAL DRAWING REVIEWED
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FIRST SKETCH
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FINAL DESIGN
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7 ROOFTOP COURTYARD DIFFERENT LEVELS OF COLLECTIVE SPACES
7
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C
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D
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D
F
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7
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The site is situated southwest of Gare du Midi in Bruxelles. Originally a factory site, now a collection of solitary office buildings, a hardware
store, smaller productive activities, and a logistic hall of Proximus - the biggest telecommunications company in Belgium. Urban strategy for the
1
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site focused on creating a streetscape connecting the city to the Senne with a traditional hierarchy of streets. But very importantly still keeping the productive activities necessary to the city. This became the framework of the design project, which focused on the logistic hall.
The project aims to offer a pure architectural solution in a very constrained situation. The design proposal starts with the idea of keeping the
entire structure of the existing logistic building, in other words not changing the surface area and the volume of the building. Four new volumes are
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added, a thin tower, an extension of the groundfloor with stairs accessing the rooftop, a long residential building on top of the extension, and a long wooden hall with covered open-air spaces at both ends.
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The composition of these volumes creates an inner courtyard on the rooftop area. But this is not a closed courtyard in the traditional sense,
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anyone can enter and is encouraged to do so. The difference is in the level of scale, intimacy, and safety. The courtyard is a quieter and calmer place than the dynamic productive street below. The traditional private-public dynamic is disregarded. All the spaces are interpreted as collective spaces. “Collective spaces consist of multiple collective levels that are defined by as many territorial boundaries. Some of these levels belong to an intimate sphere, others provide a high exposure, some of them can feel safe, others embody threat or danger.” 1
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Yet every aspect of the concept is questioned in its pros and cons. An example: The first floor with parking is demolished, as a 2,3m high
space doesn’t bring spatial quality and by demolishing this floor the rooftop becomes lower and thus more accessible. This becomes a very strong argument for not keeping this specific part of the existing structure. And yet most of the existing situation is kept, which creates very strong limitations to the design solution. These extreme constraints can bring new unique spatial formations and qualities. The thin tower, for example, uses the
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remaining 5 meters between the building and the sidewalk as a thin concentrated base with all the collective areas situated there. The residential floors above are cantilevered creating bigger apartments and a transitional arcade zone on the rooftop level.
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“The question is how you react architecturally to constrains: whether you resist constraints or absorb them in the design and attempt to
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instrumentalize them.” 2 This can become a strong designing technique, through attempting “to include as many of these things in a difficult whole” , these projects “develop a greater depth and are enriched at several levels of meaning.” 2 Through extreme solutions like this, it is possible to
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achieve effective usage of spaces in the city with a certain humility towards something without much of an architectural value but with a value for the city nonetheless.
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1. Mathias Müller and Daniel Niggli, “How We Became Who We Are” in EM2N. BOTH AND, ed. Ilka Ruby and Andreas Ruby (gta, Zürich, 2009), 22.
2. Kris Scheerlinck, Joshua Dandois, Mikel Gurrutxaga, Natalia Hidalgo, and Ferran Massip, Collective
Spaces Streetscape Territories Notebook (KU Leuven, Brussel, 2013), 9.
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