Changing Perspectives

2016 : Location : Team :

Second year of master degree

Leuven, Belgium

Bruno Stevens

Laurens Vanden Eynde Brecht Vermeylen

We won the Existenz 24h competition on the topic of welcoming refugees in Leuven during the refugee crisis of 2015 - 2016.

In our proposal we change the perspective from temporary asylum shelters towards an approach of integrating refugees in society and simultaneously strengthening the urban fabric. While the logical move is to provide shelter for incoming refugees, we change perspective and invite students to move in these new shelters. Their rooms that become available are allocated to refugees. We do this by implementing student housing in existing empty buildings. At the same time, every student house owner will be obliged to give a room to an asylum seeker.

The students move to the government financed reallocated buildings. They keep paying rent to their landlord thus providing free rooms for refugees.

This new system of student housing creates the opportunity for refugees to integrate in the urban tissue which leads to a multicultural society where solidarity can be one of the cornerstones.