A building–housing project for Brussels
part of the Rituals for Real Estate project
Choreographed over time through a sequence of project phases, a community emerges. The construction of the dwellings becomes an extended frolic; the complex task of building becomes a collective social event.
This project takes learnings from ritualistic building processes and finds strategies to reinterpret these social mechanisms for the urban context of Brussels, Belgium. The design framework enables one to create the backdrop—through architecture and the making of architecture—for a polyrhythmic choreography of cultural practices; to establish a new ritual for real estate.
Central to the project is a school where basic construction skills can be learnt, aimed at both building apprentices as well as future residents of the housing units.
Within the building grounds are a learning spaces with varying spatial qualities, suited for public workshops taking place on the street level of the building school. Meanwhile, shared domestic facilities—library, collective kitchen, laundry, play spaces—are used by inhabitants.
The living unit typologies cater to different household formations; cluster apartments where a eight to twelve small studio apartments are organised around a shared living area and kitchen, maisonettes for four to six people, as well as the more conventional studio and two bedroom apartment units.