The big, the bad & the ugly by Vinh Tran

Urban Explorations Post THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

Building the 21st century city by redesigning the modernist utopias. Charleroi, one could argue, is a pure product of the first industrial revolution. It is the archetypical coal mine city. Since fifty years now, it is facing the radical shifts entailed by a radical desindustrialisation. In that sense, Charleroi is also a prototype postindustrial city.

Charleroi is a ‘Social City’. Its remarkable strong social sector makes it attractive for ‘disadvantaged’ people The territory of Charleroi took shape around the coal mines that punctuate the landscape with terrils (slag heaps), and large scale horizontal industrial platforms. The mining structures determined urbanization forms, that are characterized by a juxtaposition of multiple entities, such as: existing villages, local industry/ well mines and the many variations of workers’ housing. Heavy industries like steel and glass settled in the river valley and along the canal Brussels-Charleroi.. Industries and workers were the major resources of the city and made its wealth. Currently everything here seems to be in the “waiting line” to be reconverted… Housing production in Charleroi makes no exception to this. From a positive resource that begins by salubriously accommodating workers near mines and industries, dwelling environments were then improved by offering residential units located in a green and peaceful environment. Today however, these sites became places that assemble ‘excluded citizens’. Today, the strength (and in a certain sense it vulnerabily) of the city lies in the social sector. Charleroi is an attractive city for the “disadvantaged” population. It is no coincidence that Charleroi gathers one of

Cité Parc, Marcinelle

the highest percentages of social housing in Wallonia and offers a welcoming social assistance network to everyone Evidently, the biggest challenge for the city is to revive the socio-economic condition of its population. Considering alternative futures for the social housing estates of Charleroi entails a reflection on the shift between the ideal, mix and multi-functional neighborhood and the precarious condition of inhabitants on the ground. They often face strong deprivation and a lack of services,.“Living together” in the often enclaved social housing estates becomes more and more challenging. The Charleroi design studio has dwelled on crucial research questions as: How can high-rise social housing estates become pivotal contributors to the rearticulation of the 20th century urban structure of Charleroi? How can their recovery be elaborated beyond the discourses of ‘dis-enclaving’ the enclave and of refurbishing

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

architecture as to achieve sustainable building envelopes? In other words, is the here after of modernist utopias a solid ground on contemporary urbanism can be anchored? How can the modernist housing complexes of Charleroi break free from an enduring stigmatization and become sites for socio-spatial intensification and the drivers of alternative development scenarios? Can new forms of living be invented here, where density, intensity and diversity could meet the outlandish and the exceptional without normalizing it? Finally, can the large-scale of the housing estates become an asset to embed these complexes into wider flows of use and landscape dynamics? Can these complex dwelling environments become platforms to re-conceptualize the relationship between built and unbuilt, the public and the private, the individual and the collective, inside and outside? 1

SOCIAL HOUSING ESTATE IN CHARLEROI

TERRILS SOCIAL HOUSING URBAN TISSUE RAVEL HIGHWAY RIVER

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THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

C&A Design Studio - Charleroi have been working on three particular social housing: Allée Verte in Jumet with its long low-rise buildings, threes “cités” in Montignies-sur-Sambre, and Cité Parc in Marcinelle.

Drawings realized during ethnographical observation on fieldwork in Charleroi

Young people have a lack of persepective. For me The 2 biggest problems are eductaion and the economy. You can see interesting changes of mentality between generations. In the older generation there was more racism, thats why so many turkish, marrocan people choose to be their own boss. The new police tower is a bad symbol for this city.

There are a lot of lonley people here in this blocks. They have nothng else to do than to spy and call the police when they get suspicious.

Im so angry, i grew up working in the mines with my father. I feel so sad for these young people. They have no future here. Its all the fault of the state. Belgium has forgotten about Charleroi.

I really like playing here, my dad doesn’t want me to play on the big field between the blocks. Here i can play with all my friend from school.

Observation / Solitude

Interpretation of the daylife social housing inhabitants after some days living in the highrise building by Montignies-sur-Sambre Team

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

OPEN THE GATES A new network through Allée verte Allée verte is located between two important structuring and particular north-south axis: Chaussée de Bruxelles, an important commercial street and the canal Charleroi-Bruxelles along which industries are still active. La rue de Marchienne accessing the site is also considered part of this north-south system at a smaller scale as it structures the territory by gathering many of the neighborhood shops. Allée verte social housing estate then defined itself as an interesting “crossing point” attached to this third north-south axis and directly related in the west with green open spaces such as terrils and industrial relics that link the site with the canal axis and in the east with a residual, oversized piece of highway, relic of the megalomaniac expansion of Charleroi. The strategy of the project bases itself on this analysis and proposes to re-structure this non-hierarchical piece of city without denaturizing the specificity of the urban tissue marked by history and strong topography. The strategy takes advantage of the inbetween situation of the Allée Verte site, connecting the three parallel northsouth axis through a new structuring west-east axis composed of open spaces, terrils, Allée Verte social housing site and highway landscape.

Built Environment Social Housing Amenities Social Facilities Private Voids Buffer green

Territorial analysis: Jumet being structured by three main north-south axis

Connecting the three parallel north-south axis through a new structuring west-east axis

Sections 1: the new public space along rue de Marchienne - Section 2: the urban park related bith the high buildings and water tower.

THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

NGUYEN THI MINH NGUYET, WENYI FAN, IRINA CONSTANTINESCU

Through the new axis, Allée verte could become a positive connecting point and give a chance to revitalize the left over space both at the scale of the site and at the scale of Jumet

In order to create a friendly environment for the neighborhood, the highway will be transformed into a “slow-way” (cars, pedestrians and bikes). The “slowway” then becomes a linear collective public space, which helps to make soft connections to the neighbourhoods along, including Allée Verte social housing. The Allée Verte site itself has many qualities such as its localization, aforestation and huge residual open space that could be reshaped as part of the new structure. OPEN THE GATES is an idea based on the current condition of Allée Verte accommodating an intense forest but unknown by the surroundings. The site, accessible from two important parallel streets, could become an interesting piece of the network/axis connecting down the hill, the commercial street -rue de

Marchienne- with up the hill, rue de Bayemont and the terrils. Trough the new axis, Allee verte could become a positive connecting point between Chaussée de Bruxelles and the canal that give a chance to revitalize the left over space both at the scale of the site and at the scale of the west territory of Charleroi (Jumet). The project proposes two “gates”: the ‘low’ entrance at the east side is attached to the commercial street and to Place du Ballon and the ‘high’ entrance in the west, attached to a residential street and connects with the post industrial landscape. The proposal for the first gate is to create new “crossing plaza”, in the Jumet’ system of places of intensity such as Place du Ballon, Place Jules Francq, Place Albert 1er,... that guide the walker through this non-hierarchical piece of city.

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

The second gate proposition restructures a residual space from defragmented to a compact area. The place becomes an urban park that provides activities for the entire neighborhood.

BACKSIDE CONDITION Allée verte as initiator of a new network In a landscape marked by complex topography and post-industrial relics and voids, the Allée Verte site presents itself as a green island inside the (sub-) urbanised tissue of Jumet in Charleroi. Analyzing these voids showed us that they are configured on an old network of abandoned infrastructure and linked together by the topography in a system of backside conditions throughout the larger neighbourhood. Using this as a base, the question arises: How can an intelligent coexistence of front sides, backsides and accessible voids, make the space-use of the modern social housing project innovative again? The project searches for interesting inverse movements as a more complex configuration of front- and backsides to reduce social and spatial distances and turn the green island of the Allee Verte into an “active” node of the neighbourhood. 1. Alternative networks, landscape experience & activity nodes 2. Three border conditions 3. Neighbourhood empowerment/ leisure landscape 4. Back-to-front network 5. (in-)formal economies 6. Continous Landscape

The strategy focuses on the border conditions

THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

AN VU TIEN, RUBEN JANSSENS

The project addresses two issues : the problematic positioning of the social housing and the distances with adjacent neighbourhood Looking at the existing local network of roads and nodes, and taking into account the already existing alternative one (RAVeL) together with the potential of some of the old industrial railway lines, we proposed a cross-way alternative network on a larger neighbourhood level. Taking this proposition as a basic territorial strategy, the project develops different points along it such as public housing projects along with topography and new crossroads becoming new nodes/hotspots for the neighbourhood. At the scale of the social housing, the project addresses two issues: the problematic positioning of the social housing and the distances with adjacent neighbourhood, and try to capture the opportunities that this location has in an alternative networking mindset. The Allée Verte site could now become the pilot project to create a new way of living and at the same time become an

active node on this network. Due to the site condition of being an island, the strategy focuses on the border conditions and relation towards the neighbourhood as a method to come with a complete plan for the site. By looking at the borders of the site in three different cases called “the border conditions”, an attempt is made to propose a plan for multiple types of relations, adjacencies and neighbourhood structures. By interacting with existing qualities and redefining some specific places, a more active and complex relation with the surroundings is achieved. The first border condition focuses on productivity and economic activity, where involvement of the neighbouring car-centre into the site is achieved by using existing two-level garage blocks as an overlap between formal and informal economy : where inhabitants but also small start-up companies could rent a

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

garage workspace and help reactivating the public space. A second border condition is identified Rue de Coteaux (south of the site). The focus lies on the informal connections in the neighbourhood in between buildings, and the relation of functional backsides and front sides that form the space. This complex arrangement is used to articulate the two ‘back’ entrances of the two long blocks, to open them towards this part of the neighbourhood. By envisioning an additional connection, an extra opportunity to access and move into this network of backsides is created. Lastly, uphill around the water tower, the project proposes a condition where the focus lies on reducing the distance between social housing blocks and existing urban tissue by rethinking the landscape as on the one hand a recreational landscape, and on the other hand an active one. 7

FROM CITÉ PARC TO CENTRAL PARK Turning the in-between condition into a central, structuring landscape The Cité Parc social housing is located inbetween the contrasting environments of urban and ecological characters. At the city scale, the northern Marcinelle area is characterized by an old urban fabric that, organizes urbanity by delivering “mineral surfaces” such as the commercial street, church square and city hall plazas, supermarket’s parking lots... Meanwhile in the South, allotments with big gardens are dispersed over the rich ecological territory with its dense forests and agriculutral estates. At the scale of Cité Parc social housing, the in-between situation is also visible: dividing the site into a more densely urbanized area structured around a dead-end road system and a open green area bordered with high-rise buildings that provide a totally different relation with the ground and the urban tissue. A monumental row of trees marks the division of Cité Parc into these two areas, one more densely built with low/ intermediate houses and the other with high-rise collective housing, standing on a open green platform.

Conceptual scheme: 1. In between situation 2. Connecting the entities

The potentialities of the spaces and facilities around to create the Central Park

Cité Parc is located in-between the contrasting environments of urban and ecological characters

THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

SADIA SUBRINA, WAN FAKARUDDIN

Central Park will organize Cité Parc and the larger neighborhood by linking urban environment, forest and agriculture together

The design strategy proposes a new landscape structure - a Central Park that will organize Cité Parc as well as the larger neighborhood by linking the urban environment, the forest and the agricultural fields together. This park will reposition Cité Parc as the central point of a bigger ensemble. The new designed central park will be structured by a new kind of housing that gives a shape, a meaning and an interest to the park, not anymore a lavish green...

The huge green landscape, gives to the neighborhood a new condition of green urban park as well as a positive feeling of belonging to the Cité Parc inhabitants. By enhancing the connection with the commercial road and by reviving the old railway trough the initiation of soft mobility networks, the aim is to link the Cité Parc with the cultural centre, city centre, educational facilities and the ecological spaces.

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

THE PRODUCTIVE VALLEY A longitudinal experience of exchanges

Connecting the enclave through a restructured mobility system and reactivating the potentiality of the huge green open space

Use of the ground floor. From the facade to the backyard: flower field, leisure system, orchard

THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

CLAIRE BOSMANS, VINH TRAN TRUNG

Cité Parc is located at the heart of a valley structured by a stream and a sleeping industrial landscape. In between the city and the suburbs, the social housing neighbourhood is surrounded by public facilities with various audience’s scales. The blend of high, low rise buildings, and private houses is organized on a large green space. Double roads and dead ends define the car-based system, built in the 60’s and 70’s. The project tackles the social housing’s issue: connecting the enclave through a restructured mobility system and reactivating the potentiality of the huge green open space. By diversifying the ground’s surface in and around Cité Parc the intervention brings new uses on site that activate productive exchanges between up- and downstream elements of the valley. Framed by a stream and a gentle mobility path on a former track those relations

develop a new reading of the local landscape stressing its longitudinal and cross scalar dynamic. Upstream, starting point of an economic corridor with Cité Parc as pivot, a new horticulture school and its research department are established on the Condorcet university campus, partially invading and transforming the over-sized parking lot. In Cité Parc, local interruptions and stretching of the road system combined structure the slightly climbing topography. On the park fruit trees and flowers are grown by a cooperative that empowers unemployed and retired inhabitants and develops commercial exchanges with outsiders. Shifting in seasonal combinations of ground’s uses diversify the overall image of the site. Part of the whole productive system, empty apartments accommodate students and seasonal workers to increase the social

diversity. Existing sport fields and centers are connected and integrated in a transgenerational leisure system that takes place in- and outside the social housing. Behind the terrils the Bois du Cazier’s museum opens some of its rooms for lectures organized either by the university, the social housing cooperative or the downstream working hubs - empty warehouses and idling industrial pockets converted into mixed-use urban places connecting the productive valley to the city. While developing a bigger system along the valley by bringing quality to open spaces in term of view and use for outsiders and insiders, the intervention also aims to affect the feeling of belonging and pride of the inhabitants of the social housing and eventually work for a better maintenance of the common areas.

Shifting in seasonal combinations of ground’s uses diversify the overall image of the site

Four seasons in Cité Parc - Places of productivities

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

RECOMPOSING ECOLOGICAL STREAMS How the shrinking city reality can be used to improve social housing conditions in Montignies-sur-Sambre and vice versa?

Section through the four axis

The territory of Montignies-sur-Sambre is composed by four principal linear eastwest structures: the Sambre river with the industrial valley, the ancient main eastwest road with its old urban tissue, the abandoned (“ghost”) railway line and the “terrils range”. Additionally, it is characterized by an important amount of big pockets/platform of institutional buildings that break the continuity of the ribbon development, with schools, hospitals, social housing estates, sport facilities, etc. In socio-economic terms, this piece of the city is shrinking, what results in a significant vacancy rate and simultaneously high percentages of houses of poor quality. They probably would have been labeledas slums half a century ago. In strategic locations, some of these derelict buildings are removed in order to give a room for new open spaces to emerge. This would help to recompose four ecological north-south streams, from the terrils to the Sambre river, which is currently being transformed into a new economic activity area. Apart from providing diverse landscape experiences to the user, these structures aim to be used as everyday mobility paths that link and serve the existing big pockets of functions. The four ecological north-south streams accommodating a new north-south connection complete the existing westeast network in order to create a complete mesh of mobility. The objective of the project is to reconsider the social housing complexes within this new reality.

Analysis map: four west-east axis structure the territory

From analysis to strategy: four ecological streams/mobility axis to complete the mesh

THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

HAO FENG, MARIA ZOUROUDI

To recompose four ecological north-south streams, from the terrils to the Sambre

Collective garden at the back of th elderly house

The Western ecological stream

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

MAKING ROOM FOR MESSINESS Offering platform for the everyday

social housing education sport healthcare industry administration terrils private local economies exhisting nodes existing pathways busstops busline

Les Trieux in Montignies-Sur-Sambre is characterised by its mining activities, after the industrial period the former mining sites were reclaimed for healthcare, sport and social housing facilities. The footprints of these organised, institutional spaces strongly contrast with the conventional low-rise houses with their big gardens and divers facades. The social housing sites in les Trieux struggle with multiple problems that can be found in most modernist social housing projects: lack of qualitative public space, social isolation, complete dependence on the welfare system.... More specifically there is a big amount of unused open

ghostline

Spatial analysis - Montignies-sur-Sambre a social housing pocket territory

The footprints of these organised, institutional spaces strongly contrast with the conventional low-rise houses

Density of activities - Three different spatial identities determined by the surrounding elements Concept of rooms shaped by the different identities

How to breach the formal boundaries, reactivate the territory and make better use of the social potential?

THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?

HANNE VAN GILS, JOYCE STIJNEN

We feel that this institutional ‘organised’ and regulated spaces require more complexity, more messiness. space and unexploited social potential. As a result nowadays the social housing becomes a dead end instead of leading to upwards-social mobility. How to breach the formal boundaries, reactivate the territory and make better use of the social potential? We feel that this institutional ‘organised’ and regulated spaces require more complexity, more messiness. Urban environments require spaces of the everyday and should be able to accommodate a variety of spontaneous

activities. Regulated spatial conditions mismatch with social activities. We want to close this gap by facilitating room. The existing informal existing activities whitin the low-rise housing blocks show the way. Making room in this sense can be understood as providing a new qualitative spatial structure to imbed the existing human activities but also as a ground from where new activities can emerge. This concept is translated in different typologies of rooms emerging from the 3 morphologic spatial

CONCEPTS & ANALYSIS DESIGN STUDIO FALL SEMESTER 2014

figures and existing social activities. There will be rooms that provide the possibility for encounters, education, sporting, agriculture, working, playing, rooms for sharing and private rooms. The set up will be orchestrated but the play anyways comes from the people themselves. This propelling intervention could generate more local interdependencies between inhabitants and the present institutions and install a process of local empowerment and resilience. 15

Design Studio Concepts & Analysis Fall Semester 2014 PARTICIPANTS

JURY MID AND FINAL REVIEW

An Vu Tien Claire Bosmans Fan Wenyi Hanne Van Gils Hao Feng Irina Constantinescu Joyce Stijnen Maria Zouroudi Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet Ruben Janssens Sadia Subrina Vinh Tran Trung Wan Fakaruddin

STUDIO INSTRUCTORS

Geraldine Lacasse, Jeanne Mosseray, Viviana D’Auria, Verena Lenna. PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Bruno De Meulder MAHS/MAUSP ADMINISTRATIVE COORDINATION:

Maura Slootmaekers & Paulien Martens paulien.martens@kuleuven.be Departement Architectuur Kasteelpark Arenberg 1 - bus 2431 3001Leuven

STUDIO INVESTIGATIONS

GUEST LECTURERS

Hannah le Roux | University of Witswatersrand, Johannesburg Peter Ward | University of Texas, Austi Doina Petrescu | Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée Bas Smets | Bureau Bas Smets, Brussels Chris Reed | Stoss Landscape Urbanism / GSD Harvard Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample | MOS Architects Jacqueline Klopp | Columbia University Peter Ngau | University of Nairobi Elena Cogato Lanza | Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Thierry Kandjee, Sebastien Penfornis | Taktyk Landscape + Urbanism, Paris - Brussels

C&A Design Studio Charleroi has been supported by La Sambrienne SCRL -Charleroi Social Housing Company- and the city of Charleroi thanks to Fabrice Jacqmin, Françoise Cauvain, Patricia Cremaschi, Jacqueline Lhoir and the technical team.

ISBN 978-94-6018-964-7 D/2015/7515/20

THE BIG, THE BAD & THE UGLY?