DWELLING BY URBANISM

DWELLING BY URBANISM

Housing can help to fix the urban space

Location: Ghent, Belgium Program: Housing and urban hybridity 2020

The project is trying to recover the relation between historical identical public space with the dwellers by creating the housing system suitable for the structure of households nowadays. The relation between dwelling and urban space is the key point of the topic. The site, Meulestede, was an area that prospered due to the quick industrialization while also decaying in the 1960s when the local industry relocated. The pedestrianized urban space is based on these three levels of publicity. The ground floor consists of the living unit with internal shared space and the space for the neighborhood, such as a small shop, common kitchen and the renovated church as a community library.

Master Plan

1950s

Today

Interventions

Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

The common space is trying to create a micro-climate system that affects living conditions. The food growing produces the oxygen by sunlight and absorbing the carbon dioxide, for which the greenhouse-like long corridor is also the social space for every person in the building. The surface with the semi-common space is the similar form with half or total transparent material.

In order to deeply integrate the relation between the dwellers and the spatial participation, and also for the adaptability of market square, there is a larger event on every weekend that converts one of the semi-courtyard places to the chilling bar providing water and light food. It connects the activities in the community kitchen giving the common meal for villagers.