News

More space (to breathe) for schoolchildren in Brussels

1. Oct 2022
The new car-free schoolyards in Rue du Canon in use, 2022, City of Brussels

The City of Brussels wants to take action to make the city and its neighbourhoods safer and healthier, especially for students and school pupils. Therefore, we have been asked to supervise, together with Citytools and Filter Café Filtré, the realisation of a network of low-traffic School quarters in Brussels. By improving the air quality around schools and making school neighbourhoods safer, we are working on making our city more liveable. During Mobility Week (16-22 September 2022) we celebrated the realisation of one of the School quarters that was developed for Good Move Pentagon. In 2023 we will be working towards new School quarters and streets in and outside of the Pentagon of Brussels.

On 16 August 2022, a new circulation scheme was introduced for the city centre of Brussels. This new circulation scheme is the local implementation of Good Move, the Brussels Capital Region's mobility plan. With the circulation scheme, the City of Brussels wants to make the various neighbourhoods more accessible, pleasant, and safe for all modes of transport: on foot, by bike, by public transport, or by car.

As part of Good Move Pentagon, we set up a total of three car-free School Districts. The first School District was already festively opened during Week of Mobility 2022, last September. Several educational institutions, from nurseries to universities, are in and near Rue du Canon and Rue du Marais. As part of the new circulation scheme, car traffic in those two streets will be restricted. Two car-free schoolyards will give pupils and students in the neighbourhood more breathing space.

The festivities on Wednesday 21 September gave schoolchildren, teachers, residents, and passers-by the opportunity to really appropriate this new public space for the first time. During school hours, students learned more about air quality (Les Chercheurs d’air) and pedestrian-friendly public space (Goodplanet), and how school streets can contribute to it. After the school gates closed, we gave fun to the car-free school forecourts for one day with open circus and dance workshops by Atelier Leon and Be Flat (Theater La montagne magique).

In 2023, we will officially inaugurate two new car-free School Districts in the Pentagon, around Vlaamsesteenweg / Sleutelstraat and Rijksklarenstraat. Additionally, we are working on car-free School quarters in other parts of the Brussels City! In the Tivoli and Triangel districts, we developed the proposals for car-free School quarters in 2022, being realised in 2023. Dageraadstraat will also become a School street in early 2023.

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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.