Even more school children can move safely through Brussels – News – Architecture Workroom Brussels

Test with School quarter Rue de l'Aurore during Mobility Week, september 2021

In the Triangle Quarter in Laeken, 3000 children go to school or day-care every day. Ideally, they can move to and from their school as safely as possible. To make the surroundings of the local schools and day-cares safer, the City of Brussels designed a new circulation plan. On 15 May 2023, this Brussels School Quarter was put into action.

After the opening of several School Streets in the Brussels Region, the Triangle neighbourhood is the first low-traffic School District. In collaboration with the schools and after consulting the residents, we set out the new neighbourhood circulation plan. Instead of designing one School Street, the city council decided to make a larger part of the neighbourhood traffic-free. Several streets have become one-way streets and together form a loop plan, limiting traffic passing through the district and discouraging parents from taking their children to school by car.

The School District encourages schoolchildren to come to school in an active way. The district is also very accessible by public transport (bus, tram, or metro). Even for the thousands of pupils and parents who already come by public transport today, we wanted to make the last few metres as comfortable as possible. Hence the Marsupilami Square will be calmer and safer for schoolchildren.

The residents of the neighbourhood will also reap the benefits. A car-free school district ensures healthier air, and thus fewer lung problems in the short and long term, for school-age children and young people, but also for residents.

In the course of the year, the realisation of two more School Districts is planned: around Rue de Flandres / Rue de la Clé and in Rue des Riches Claires, both in the Pentagon.

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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.