Studio Bates &

Master Thesis

SS 22/23 As the idea of the city is changing amidst the physical and social consequences of economic uncertainty, climate emergency, the increasing digitalisation of our daily lives, the impact of increasing immigration, changing family patterns and lifestyles, questions arise about how we live, where we live and the role and the language of architecture in this shifting urban landscape. The city is versatile enough to accommodate different ideas and typologies, not as an excuse for generating cosmetic differences to make similar buildings look as different as possible but as a way of tuning the urban figure to its place, its outlook or response to orientation and climate. Building types were historically connected to use and representation and while there may still be a place for the known conventions of the block, the palazzo or the tower it is now less clear what they stand for. This is brought into particular focus through the reuse of buildings, repurposing them from one use to another or from a single to multiple use. In this case function becomes transient and form derives more from a consequence of what is inherited rather than from intent. These transformations challenge conventions on the representational role of buildings as their meaning, use or utility becomes increasingly temporal. The old codes of architecture remain useful but require a new kind of enquiry and a necessary evolution. For this Master Thesis assignment, we ask you to transform an existing building complex into a new urban community. This will require alteration and transformation of the host buildings currently in office use and to provide a specific living, working and recreational environment which is also a social hub for its occupants. We might call it a ‘living labyrinth’ - able to accommodate a diverse range of lifestyles and household structures with communal spaces providing everything needed to live and work entirely within the complex. We could imagine this living labyrinth with interconnected courtyards, walkways, bridges and staircases that weave through the building at varying levels. Some paths might be open to the sky and the surrounding city; others face inward, forming an inner world distant from the city outside. The project should open up new ways to live, for example to offer new typologies by combining two apartments (or more) into one by making vertical and horizontal connections, or by developing a DIY (do it yourself) concept which enables occupants to renovate and fully fit out their apartments by themselves. Layouts might be designed around repeatable units of space (think of Le Cabanon of Le Corbusier which measures 3.66 x 3.66 x 2.66m for example). Each ‘minimum cell’ might typically include a kitchenette, a bathroom, a table, and various cupboards but the layout is flexible. The design approach is tailored to the needs of the residents, whether that means adjusting the division of space or changing the placement of the front door.

One important factor relevant to both the transformation of existing buildings or new building is the circularity of materials and the recovery, reuse and re-application of materials previously used, contributing to reducing emissions, waste and resource consumption by returning materials to the cycle after a period of use. To integrate this new emphasis into the conventions of architectural thinking - up until now led by the guidance of proportion, exacting detail and volumetric coherence - is a significant challenge. How can we work without such certainty, without such completeness while retaining a conceptual and strategic rigour? Perhaps it is about finding discipline and guidance through a lightness of touch, an economy of means and a pleasure in the improvised and unfinished?

The location of the host buildings is in the European Quarter of Brussels, housing some of the EU’s Brussels-based institutions. It is regarded as an elite enclave or administrative ghetto, isolated and surrounded by lower income districts. There is little mix of use, cultural or community life. This condition makes your project pivotable in transforming the area from a homogenous one to a richly heterogenous one. The question remains how this transformation occurs, in what timescale, in what manner? We might consider your project as a ‘frontier’ one – the start of something – and therefore it must be resilient and self-sufficient in a certain way. We ask you therefore to speculate not just about how various uses interweave within the building, but how the operation of the building may become independent, as much as possible, from public utilities (power, drainage, water). How can the building generate its own energy, harvest and store its own water supply, recycle its waste and where possible provide on-site food production? This energy independence will require the full investment and commitment of the occupants, and their shared focus will contribute to defining a coherent social structure.

It is our imperative to find a new language of architecture; an architecture of reuse, an architecture that creates the new from the existing, that reassembles and reinterprets things. New and old are equal parts of this architecture, neither one more precious than the other and this sense of the ‘ongoing’ makes the project more clearly part of the constant process of transformation.

Stephen Bates and Bruno Krucker, August 2022