Harvest Note with policy recommendations from the 100 Neighbourhoods Platform – News – Architecture Workroom Brussels

The 100 Neighbourhoods Platform brings together the trajectories and experiments of 10 pioneering cities and municipalities in a learning and development platform. By exchanging experiences, by activating collective intelligence, and by adding expertise on the level of process approaches and specific breakthroughs, we support and strengthen these pioneering projects. Mechelen, Turnhout, Mortsel, Ghent, Leuven, Bruges, Beringen, Temse, Zoersel and Antwerp are all working in one or more specific neighbourhoods to realise concrete breakthroughs in terms of energy system, housing renovation, climate adaptation and/or mobility transition.

Today, a year and a half after its launch date, the 100 Neighbourhoods Platform is producing a Harvest Note with policy recommendations from the field. This identifies thresholds, missing frameworks and incentives that hamper the realisation of energy and climate districts today. For households to opt for sustainable heat, we will need to set targets not only for energy efficiency, but also for the fossil-free transition. If we want to achieve neighbourhood transformations that tick off not just one goal, but several goals at once, this requires a supportive framework and cooperation that transcends domains.

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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.