Files: abstract, poster, full paper (= updated abstract)
Fragments from proceedings (‘abstract submission’)’:
Abstract.
How can we provide quality space, in a world evolving towards a man-centered planet (the Anthropocene), for 9 – 12 billion people by 2050? Can architecture play an important role in this necessary evolution? In Architecture man continually seeks to attain the exact relationship between the rational and the irrational. The goal is “completeness”, always based on man himself as a poetic rational being. The most important motive in the search is the perception of the environment. The site, the shape, the technicity, the program are all interwoven in a unison oneness within the most ultimate possibilities, out of which emerges a fascinating beauty, growing stronger while gaining accuracy. There exists an inextricable bond between “what” and “why” of Architecture and the development of a society. Through fascination for historical architectural phenomena as Abu Simbel, Chichén Itzá, Pienza, Tugendhat, Danteum and Passage, through extensive research of Ksar Tissergate, a historic village in southern Morocco and through experience with realised contemporary projects by Delmulle Delmulle Architects, we redesign a village in Flanders as an urban statement. Many villages in Flanders have their own identity and are definitely an alternative to mitigate congestion and pollution in cities. However, villages suffer with depopulation and ultimately become desolated ghost towns. Human and social capital are an important factor in the exodus. The “active” population is looking for career in our capitalist “hurry” society and are therefore forced to live in cities. The inactive population remains behind in the villages or is dumped in nursing homes. We redesign Elsegem as a village that can play again an important role in this new world. The implantation is situated in the centre of the village and is related to the church and ensures that there are compelling, useful, spatial qualitative, public spaces that binds the rest of the villages. This project is prospectivism and must be an effort to optimize the available space in a physical and human context. Axonometric drawings of 5 squares around the Sint-Mauruschurch, a sentō, a multifunctional building, an automatic parking, a vertical farm, a liquid space, a mega solar disk and a proportion triangle are used as “interfaces”: through a kind of simplification, the drawing clarifies the relationship between humans and spaces. It is a search for new forms of communication that are specific to the discipline as an opportunity to explicate research accurately. It is a way how architecture can generate own insights, can use appropriate forms of knowledge and can experiment with own forms of discourse.
Keywords.
prospectivism / social capital / human context / materiality / experience