Spaces for Economy in the City

The International Master of Architecture, organized by Sint-Lucas Ghent KU Leuven (Belgium), has organized for the past three years its first masters design studio around the topic of "Space for Economy in the City". The studio explores productive ‘volumes’ can be re-integrated into the city centre instead of sending them to the outskirts. Aiming towards a productive city, sustainable in many perspectives and a force to drive cities away from gentrification and segregation. Although starting from a socially and politically heavily loaded topic, the general objective of the studio is primarily to explore the relationship between the autonomy of built form and the influence it has on the city and its inhabitants. Studio tags would be: precise, buildable, informed, tectonic, integrated and resilient.

The studio management is divided into 3 segments; DISCOVER, REWORK & RE-DISCOVER.
The studio understands that architecture is a discipline with a rich history. Every new project makes a contribution to that lineage. In the DISCOVER phase the studio documents several unique examples of buildings economy has generated within the city. The objective is to discover the different nature of these economy driven realisations, create a frame of references and learn to make high-end and precise documents. Case studies are places like Turn & Taxis, Van Nelle, Felixpakhuizen, showing that the economy often generates highly specific but also highly sustainable/resilient buildings/spaces. Although their economic origin today no longer exists, they are still of great value being used in new ways, unthinkable at the time of their creation. The economy of today can also generate new spaces, equally resilient and sustainable.

In REWORK phase students start designing their own contribution, enriched by the case studies of the discover faze. The overall theme “Spaces for economy in the city” is tested starting from a specific set of programs. A selection of relevant economic activities has been made: sheltered workshops, stacked industries and food factories. Each theme is complemented with ‘housing’. Hence the program is hybrid. 

At the RE-DISCOVER phase the made designs are presented in a similar way the case studies of the discover faze where communicated. To be able to build upon the knowledge of each other’s work, the studio will archive and spread the work that has been done in multiple ways: an online archive of all the documented buildings, video coverage of the lectures and a publication of the student output. 

Contributed by: Kasper Denayer