A+ 302, Tackling water at the source

In A+ 302 ‘Tackling Water at The Source’, Architecture Workroom Brussels fosters the search for the source of the water challenge. Several innovative projects, a round table conversation, and students’ work bring the reader closer to the source.

The water-themed issue shines a light on inspiring water projects, such as Eau de Couture and Woluwe Waterland. These projects have also been on view in the exhibition PREFIGURATIONS, which brought together new building blocks for a Great Transformation.

In the round table discussion ‘Guardians of Water’, AWB’s Joachim Declerck enters into conversation with five landscape architects and urban planners. We have to change our relation to water, but where to start? How can water, instead of a problem, also be a solution to societal questions? And which role can designers take up in this process? One of the conclusions: we should create a context that allows everyone to be a guardian of water.

Students’ work has been an inspiring source of inspiration too! Two projects of the UGhent design studio Architecture, Landscape and Transitions, with academic teachers Bert Gellynck (1010au), Bram Vandemoortel, and Joachim Declerck (AWB), are included on page 118 and 119 of this A+ issue. Flore Soens and Enriqué Ramael came up with a new permeable road system for De Mattein in Affligem. A design called Driven By Drops, made by Ella Ooms and Astrid Berlengé, resulted in a social-artistic summer festival on the topic of the water issues in the valley of the Dender.

A digital and paper version of A+ (Dutch or French) can be ordered on their website.

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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.