‘Anti Anti-
Architecture’
2022
Participatory urban interventions
in collaboration with: Omar Kashmiry
Site: Helihavenlaan, Antwerpenlaan, Brussels
When thinking of an inclusive city, we believe that architecture should facilitate life rather than negate it. Though, when observing public spaces in Brussels, we can find numerous defensive designs and anti-architecture preventing and controlling behaviours. How can we break down or intervene a defensive city-scape by testing a locally imagined and supported urban environment? And, how can these tests feed the larger urban development plans?
The site of this self-initiated project is located in the center of the Northern Quarter, around a social housing complex at the Helihavenlaan and Antwerpsesteenweg in Brussels. It is an area in the midst of an urban transformation. According to the recently published Sustainable Neighborhood Contract Helihaven-Antwerpen, it is decided to re-purpose the space of the entire plinth and esplanade surrounding the six housing blocks. The text mentions to ‘onsite test’ these changes within the local context. Within a series of participatory design and build workshops on site, we aim to contribute to this testing phase. By doing so, future plans proposed by the city are spread, questioned, imagined and possibly even enriched by local inhabitants.
Along an involvement in the developments around the site, a series of workshops for kids are launched through Archikids, to re-imagine the anti-architecture / defensive city and test actual interventions on site. An influential Brussels politician, Ans Persoons (schepen Stedenbouw, Openbare Ruimte) is invited to a presentation of the kids on site.
Archikids Workshop 1:
'Re-imagining Anti-Architecture'
Archikids Workshop 2:
'The Defensive City'
Archikids Workshop 3 (summer internship):
'Testing the Playful City'
