School streets: on to the first local tests! – News – Architecture Workroom Brussels

Example of an earlier test for a school street in Ixelles (elementary school De Wimpel)

The assignment is part of the city's ambition to improve the air quality around schools and to create pleasant and safe school environments by discouraging car traffic, increasing safety around schools and strengthening the social fabric within a neighbourhood.

The literal definition of a school street, as defined in the Road Code, is a street at the entrance of a school, which is closed at the beginning and the end of the school day. Car traffic is prohibited in those streets so that students can safely arrive at school on foot or by bike.

Architecture Workroom, CityTools and Filter Café Filtré Atelier will focus the next three years on the local guidance of the schools in carrying out and evaluating tests, linked to the bundling of lessons in an inspiring learning environment. In this learning environment, school boards, parents, neighbourhood actors, mobility experts, designers and policy will search together for long-term, city-wide visions of the future. In this way, school streets can become a lever for more fundamental interventions such as car-free neighborhoods or the safe and pedestrian-friendly design of public space. If they can trigger parents to take the bike instead of the car from now on, they can also contribute to a real mobility shift!

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Since 2010, Architecture Workroom Brussels has focused on the future of our living environment. The organisation began as a safe haven to address the link between space and societal transitions, aimed at fostering a futureproof design practice, commissioning and building culture.

It has now become evident that the transformation of our streets, neighbourhoods, and landscapes is both a prerequisite and a lever for achieving societal goals in synergy. Yet we observe that these transformations remain difficult to imagine and implement. They span so many sectors and involve so many actors that responsibility falls on everyone, and therefore, ultimately, on no one.

That is why we make it our mission to create the space that connects them. And with this refined mission comes a new name: WORKROOM, House for transformation. WORKROOM is the shared space where the future of our living environment is not only imagined but also organised.

We are currently taking the lead on three mission-driven transformations:

SOCIETAL INCUBATORS - By 2030, stakeholders from the youth, culture, sports, care and education sectors will join forces to create renewed societal spaces that tackle loneliness and counteract the fragmentation and pressure on public infrastructure.
FOSSIL-FREE NEIGHBOURHOODS - By 2030, at least ten neighbourhoods will be underway with the transition to fossil-free energy in an inclusive and affordable way, with a view to completely phase-out fossil fuels by 2040.
SPONGE LANDSCAPES - By 2030, we will have achieved our water, agriculture and nature goals through a single, coherent approach at catchment area level, in which strong regional coalitions collectively enhance the landscape's sponge capacity.

To make these transformations a reality, WORKROOM works shoulder to shoulder with pioneering designers, local authorities, organisations and businesses, governments, knowledge institutions and impact investors.

Through co-creative design, we imagine shared pathways to the future in exhibitions, publications, innovation programmes and public programmes. These are the workrooms where we connect the actors capable of realising these transformations. From there, we design shared ownership and the organisational, funding and policy models that lead to real change.

The name is simpler. The stakes are higher. WORKROOM is the shared space where we tackle the social and spatial transformations that no one can achieve alone. In an era of polarisation, compartmentalisation and instability, that is perhaps the most radical thing we can do.