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Fertile ground for the Open Space Platform

7. Nov 2022
Open Space Day - Agriculture, 2022, Photo: Bob van Mol

The different programmes and projects within the Open Space Platform (OSP) teach us the crucial role of agriculture in strengthening and governing our open space. To enable us to take on that role, however, we must take the agricultural perspective into account more and investigate which types of support this sector might need. During the working session of the Open Space Platform on 4 October 2022 we further researched this.

Which are the biggest barriers and which forms of support can enhance sustainable business operations? Through conversations between cultivators, governments, and initiators of agricultural projects, we researched the challenges, opportunities, and possible concrete actions that the Open Space Platform can include.

During this OSP day several cultivators, municipalities, provinces, and landscape managers presented projects that illustrate several approaches to the opportunities that agriculture has to offer.

Through tangible cases, such as the Agricultural Plan of Aalst, Park Groot Saefthinge, Pays des Collines, the tool ‘boer-en-bedrijvenmatch’, an agricultural test space in the Vlaamse Rand and the Brussels Good Food-strategy, we worked on topical themes concerning agriculture and open space. We discussed, amongst other things, the role of (supra)local governance in granting access to farmland, the lack of and demand for an agricultural vision and the power of a collective and region-oriented approach that takes into consideration all the stakeholders in the field.

A dialogue between initiators and policy makers helped us find ways in which the Open Space Platform can overcome barriers like these.

We learned that local identity and pride can be an important force in establishing feelings of connection, and that Flanders remains a strategic region for food production. On the other hand, the link between needs in the agricultural sector and the development of a comprehensive vision is still lacking, for example within the field of spatial planning. Promising examples showed us new approaches of how to strategically unburden cultivators. The working session illustrated how establishing new business models, access to land, or the development of regional investment strategies form challenges, but at the same time entail many opportunities.

Lessons like these enrich the dossier of the Open Space Platform. As this OSP-day has illustrated, the platform remains an indispensable space for experimentation to support the agricultural transition in a bottom-up way. All aboard!

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WORKROOM

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.