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In the debate on sustainability, a lot of time and effort goes (righteously) to buildings. In this conference it is aimed to investigate initiatives, designs, research and proposals that challenge the sustainability of the public open space and the role participation plays in this. The conference is organised in the context of the ASPIS project “Auditing the Sustainability of Public Spaces”, co-funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme (Transversal Programmes – Key Activity 3 ICT – Multilateral Projects) and implemented in 7 EU countries.ASPIS introduces a Games-based Learning (GBL) methodology, complemented with other interactive communication/internet-based tools, aiming to encourage “learning by-doing” through simulation, negotiation and role-playing. The learning products of ASPIS address professional architects and planners as much as citizens, and are also designed for introduction in school and university curricula, making learning more attractive and relevant to real life situations.

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Architecture --- Buildings --- Circular economy. --- Environmental aspects. --- Remodeling for other use. --- Repair and reconstruction. --- Conix RDBM Architects (Belgiu, Brussels).

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I want to start by addressing the issue of infrastructure, where in many cases, such as Boston, Tokyo, and others but also the site I was introduced to for my project, it has a strong fallout on the ways of living. With the apparition of the Industrial Revolution and followed up by the Fordism, the cities became places for cars and infrastructure. Emphasizing the “mass” in production, construction, consumption and basically anything the outcome was the densification of urban areas and the apparition of urban sprawls. Kronenburg is an example of such a working neighborhood, built in order to keep up with the fast pace of production. In the speed of process there was a lack of attention in creating spaces to “live in”, therefore spaces to “work in” were created in which the priority was the fast transit of goods, of people that would go to work from the city to the periphery or between cities as well. So, a big part of our understanding for the definition of infrastructure is limited by this typology. Thus, with my drawings which you see here I zoom out of this idea that constrains us into thinking that this is what infrastructure is defined by. I am herby challenging the notion of infrastructure and pushing it into an unknown realm of infinite possibilities through which I explore scenarios on how architecture can react to a twenty second century infrastructure. In my research process, there was a point when I realized that even when I was looking into how the relation between architecture and infrastructure can favor the living, while criticizing on the infrastructure favoring transit, I have found myself still placing infrastructure in the same domain. So, in order to escape designing “architecture for cars” I stated working with any concept that might be supported by the idea of infrastructure. The mental reflections that are represented in these six drawings, which are accompanied by some smaller ones, illustrate different cities starting from the preoccupation of the impact of infrastructure. But in the same time, what Italo Calvino did in writing, in his “Invisible cities”, the ideas that stand behind my drawings illustrate different identities of infrastructure that are found or could be found in a near possible future city, in this case being Antwerp. In the process of working with abstract ideas the drawing becomes an important tool of exploring and designing, where this kind of imagination could never be achieved on a computer. David Ross Scheer talks in his book “The Death of Drawing: Architecture in the Age of Simulation” about drawing being more than just a way of representing ideas but also a way of producing knowledge about architecture itself. It gives the opportunity to experiment and search for a proper way to express an idea, critically examine it and generate new ideas afterwards. I have let my drawings become the driver of knowledge where from drawing to drawing ideas began to shape, to define themselves and resulted in the final drawings that you see. This process advanced me from a basic understanding of infrastructure to new ways in which it could manifest.

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Liberated space Deconstructing architecture to reinterpret the city The following series of design explorations envision the role of architecture in a scenario where the current ideology shifts from a model of economical growth to one of sustainable degrowth. The studies take place in Urbino, a historical city inhabited by a polarized population.

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This thesis is generally under the realm of the phenomenology of architecture and specifically based the work of Gaston Bacherlard of his book The Poetics of Space. The research is around the concept of “image”, a pure product of imagination as Gaston defined. The concept of image is meaningful for architects to study to realize and recognize the origins of unconscious origins of poetic spaces. The aim is to use the understanding of image to recreate and reproduce inhabitable meaningful space. At the same time, by conducting making on home, new understanding of home will hopefully be seen. The significance of the thesis is firstly presented by the final artefact that is the direct outcome of studying image about home through the making process. And secondly, the methodology of translation could be applied to other similar situation and provide a way of design.