During this summer workshop, small groups of young designers are coached by experienced architects. The goal is to organize a temporary working team and to simulate the investigation, production and decision-making processes that determine architectural practice. In this practical approach, we aim to complement summer schools with an academic objective.

 

As a case study, a late-modernist office building is the topic for one week of design-based exploration, in a first stage consisting of analysis and in a second stage consisting of design. We project a new urban housing programme on this building. We will confirm the selected case well before the start of the summer workshop.

 

The first stage of the workshop is analytical. Each team focuses on three key topics: building and vegetation, a protective environment, material recuperation. The teams conclude their analysis by formulating a team design challenge and ambition.

 

Each group then works on a design that translates the challenge and ambition into a proposal for adaptively reusing a modernist office building in Brussels. The design focuses on feasible solutions for greening facades, protection of inhabitants and material recuperation.

 

Results are presented and discussed during a final symposium, concluding the programme. This symposium consists of a jury moment with coaches and local experts and of a debate about the challenges to modernist patrimony in contemporary urban redevelopment.