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Creating breakthroughs for Green-blue Networks

23. Mar 2023
Kick-off Green-blue Networks, 20 September 2022

Nineteen Flemish municipalities are looking for concrete tools to put more than 50 projects related to green-blue networking and climate adaptation into practice. They are working on opening up hidden waterways, softening streets and squares, and getting citizens and partners along towards a climate-adaptive city or village. For the Breakthrough Ateliers in March, the municipalities came together and exchanged views on concrete breakthroughs towards raising their pre-set ambitions to put green-blue ambitions into practice.

In realizing a living environment with more space for green and blue, local governments very often encounter the same challenges and opportunities. The trajectory, under the guidance of Architecture Workroom and Department of the Environment, together with design teams and experts, creates a learning environment that facilitates the exchange between the municipalities themselves. It aims to raise the ambitions and quality of the projects and to reach a shared agenda together with the local governments.

During the Breakthrough ateliers on March 2 and 3, local governments came together around the themes of hidden waterways, green(blue) oases, participation in streets and squares, ambitious design of streets and squares, and land direction. Concrete green and blue projects, to be realized in the next two to five years, were the topic of the discussion table. In the ateliers, the participating municipalities, experts, and design teams helped to sharpen the projects further. This way, the municipalities are working toward more qualitative projects in which systemic thinking about green-blue networks can flourish.

During the closing event on Friday, March 17, the entire group shared the collected insights and knowledge with each other. They worked towards Breakthrough questions for the follow-up process such as: How can we raise more awareness to soil (quality) within the process? How can we scale up the design and approach of one street or square to a hundred streets and squares? How do we monitor the level of ambition throughout the process, from vision and participation to implementation? Which directing role can local governments take in order to get citizens and partners to invest sufficiently in a green-blue system?

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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.