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If Given Half a Chance, is an alternative landscape strategy for the rehabilitation of (post) industrial landscapes based on a case study of Charleroi. The project goal is to reconcile these abandoned places to people, by highlighting their authentic qualities. It aims is to change people’s perception of their environment through small design interventions. The strategy based on the the fragment of the area ‘Zone-1’ and links Le Bougnou and Villette neighborhoods. The ambition of the project is to enable Charleroi to benefit from its industrial past and empower the ability of a place to deliver a spatial narrative closely linked to the urban context.

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Aalst is a city with a rich history and full of opportunities. However it is usually perceived as being inferior. This perception motivated me to choose this city for my master dissertation. One of the main problems which the city deals with is that new projects which are being developed in the city avoid the industrial heritage and do not relate to the surrounding. I chose two sites where one of them becomes the source of knowledge for the other one and vice versa, creating a learning circle. I chose two sites and conceptualised a series of ideas for each of them. I investigated multiple scenarios for both sites, mainly through sections. By introducing different grades of collectivity, I integrate the industrial artefacts in the project and its surrounding. On both sites I provided different gradients of collectivity. I believe that I create human friendly living environment where the industrial artefacts become a crucial element around which a collective environment is created.

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I would like to start with a quote: “planning needs to consider global problems (such as modernism) and extended time frames (such as classicism) while imagining humble, local solutions applied by means of infinite variations, adaptations, compromises, replicas, and copies.”...”planning would be listening, observing, learning and only then correcting, while always accepting the logical priority of the existent over the new.” San Rocco, ecology #10 winter 2014. I Illustrated the wanders of different cities and composed a novel in the cell of 15m2. After Visiting 12 unknown cities I distinguished four, the most outstanding urban situations which represent the current global polis. The photo-essay I formed, not only to generate a series of emotions for the viewer but also to critically reflect on particular motions or situations. I use photography as a tool to react and criticize the existing situation of the contemporary architecture in modern cities. It is not only my personal experience and evidence but also a statement, a pure visual evaluation. I chose this tool to present the reality and manifest the consequence of the time and space emergency. I declare that 100 hours is the primary term and the room of wanders is a framework. With these essential ingredients, I developed a strategy that tackles 4 urban conditions and Reflects on the contemporary metropolitan scene.

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The following research is an architectural investigation for the city of Charleroi. Considered one of the most ugly city in Europe1, ‘le pays noir’ is trying to reinvent itself through a consistent renovation and realisation of numerous projects for the future. For this peculiar character of city in the making, the main goal of my work is to find out, or try to give an interpretation of an ‘Unknown’ city. Following this path different points of interest emerged, which led me to study the architectural manufact as a tool of implementation or amplification of urban facts already happening in these areas. The entire process was embedded within three foundamentals concepts: drawing as a cognitive craft, deep investigation of urban condition and experimentation. The metodology derived consequently from the application of these concepts, and from the combination of different perspectives brought in the process thanks to a constant apport of studies concerning the Urban Condition. It is important to mention that the research covers also another crucial investigation, which consists in the interpretation of concept of Chora & Polis, particularly if this is still a relevant concept for the contemporary debate upon urbanism. Thereafter the research is concetrated around two sites, which somehow are entagled. The methodology is the Analogy, which led me to re-imagine the city of Charleroi through the production of a manifesto, that is at once both the sum of the research and the map to read the project. The design process tackled the urban condition into two directions: on one hand the establishment of a power gesture which deals with the use of public space; on the other hand, an enhancement of the site through its re-interpretation. Configured as such the two interventions aim to explore innovative ways of making urbanism: firstly the creation of a prolific ground for the development of a social identity, secondly re-establishment of relation between public and private.

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Lille - one of the post-industrial cities in Europe- has a rich history of urban development. If most European cities grow outwards from the city center, Lille is the exception, in the past the city expanded by its quartiers (neighborhoods). The city was once well known for its agriculture sector, especially food and textile. Its industrial sector thrived even more after the French industrial revolution but the Great Depression began to slow it down until the 1960s when the decline of investment in machinery resulted in the fall of the sector. This shifted Lille’s economic direction towards the tertiary sector. While in the present day, the only evidence of the city’s fortification is the Citadelle, back in the past the entire city was fortified. The decommisioning of the fortification at the end of the 1920s created a vast space for the upcoming urban development. The shift of the economy into the service industry at one point brought a ‘new chapter’ to Lille’s urban development. Until today, the first project, Euralille 1 - a TGV station - remains as one of the most important projects as it not only bore Lille’s ambition to ‘rebrand’ the post-industrial self but also has become the prime project to reflect on. Through a thorough study on Lille’s urban development projects, one acknowledged the change of direction in design approach through time - how every project seems to reflect on the previous ones and gain consciousness towards its surrounding and the city. One significant case is the development of the former freight station Gare Saint-Sauveur by Gehl Architects. In explaining the winnning concept, David Sim had viewed the railyard of Saint-Sauveur as a hole in the city - an extra large one, the one that is never enough just to be patched but to be woven back into the fabric of the city. Sim’s way of thinking in his Saint-Sauveur project triggered one on how to perceive the empty spaces in the Ásty and Khôra of Lille: as holes in the city - the extra small ones that needs to be filled (scale compared to almost every urban development project in Lille). Inspired by Sim, one also recognizes the needs to find the threads of all the streets and the structures of the city in order to recreate its intertwined urban setting. Ásty and Khôra is an exploration of how to fill extra small voids within the city on two different settings: the city center (Ásty) and the periphery (Khôra). It investigates if a community can be generated by public space which has the prospect of indeterminancy. Undetermined, so that the space could allow unexpected appropriation - the freedom to use the space for various spontaneous activities that will inspire other activities to happen - the possibility of endless stimulating experience. The idea of generating a community as the objective of this project is possible to achieve by the use and share of public space (public space as the ‘common interest’, also known as the ‘urban commons’) that might lead to the increasing sense of belonging towards public space and the growth of sense of community amongst the users.