Project

Learning Environment Societal Infrastructure

Across all of Flanders and Brussels, community centers, churches, schools, and other collective facilities are facing major renovation or transformation challenges. At the same time, in an increasingly diverse, aging, and individualized society, the demand is growing for places of encounter where different groups and programs come together. How can we connect these two dynamics? In the Learning Environment for Societal Infrastructure, organizations, experts, local authorities, and policymakers are working together to build a new framework and practice for societal infrastructure. 

From exceptional projects to a standard practice, a double momentum 

Everywhere we see new types of societal infrastructure emerging that respond to current needs, a school shares spaces with neighborhood associations, a former parish church offers space for local community life and youth work, a care home brings together different care profiles and opens its spaces to residents and local initiatives. Many of these pioneering forms of societal infrastructure arise today despite, rather than thanks to, supportive policy and funding frameworks. Yet we are currently facing a double momentum: 

On the one hand, the majority of our extensive landscape of community infrastructure, nearly two thousand parish churches, around ten thousand school buildings, 1,800 care institutions, and about 900 buildings for associations and culture, is in urgent need of renovation. In times of budgetary scarcity, these costs weigh heavily on the budgets of local governments. As a result, real estate management is reduced to a purely financial issue, and property managers too often cut costs by commercializing assets. While this may balance budgets in the short term, does it not risk undermining long-term access to public facilities for neighborhood communities and society at large? 

On the other hand, most of this infrastructure was built for a society whose composition and habits have since changed. It has become more diverse, more digital, and more individualized. At the same time, we face major challenges that require precisely a renewed sense of collectivity. There is therefore an even greater need for a network of places that provide oxygen for diverse social interactions across communities. We see a vibrant and dynamic field of new types of community spaces and collective facilities responding to this, but they often run up against a supply-driven policy and funding framework that does not fully support their mission. 

These two unfavorable dynamics reinforce each other, a shrinking supply of societal real estate reduces opportunities to address new societal challenges. Can we still connect these dynamics positively in a new approach? The principle of sufficiency, the strategy of enough, offers a framework, maximizing the reuse of buildings, enabling shared use, focusing on adequate rather than absolute comfort, and so on. 

Learning Environment for Societal Infrastructure 

With the Learning Environment for Societal Infrastructure, Workroom initiated a step toward developing this new approach in early 2025, with support from the Flemish Government via Polsslag Brussels and the Arts Decree. Local initiators, experts, designers, and policymakers from different sectors collaborated through three working sessions, numerous bilateral discussions, and public events to move toward a framework and practice for developing future-oriented societal infrastructure, how can we respond as effectively as possible to societal needs and dynamics using available real estate and existing resources? Can we broaden the dominant financial-technical perspective and connect it with a methodology that maps local demand, engages stakeholders from the outset, and operates within a framework that proactively supports the development of societal infrastructure? 

Nine keys for future-oriented societal infrastructure 

After one year of the learning environment, the ingredients for a new practice were brought together in the handbook Nine Keys for Future-Oriented Societal Infrastructure. Drawing on valuable insights into matchmaking, governance and organizational constellations, financial models, and more from many pioneering initiatives and organizations, the publication formulates nine keys and dozens of building blocks for a new approach: 

 

1. Give mandate and capacity to the right people in the right place
 
Societal infrastructure is a story of both buildings and people. Community spaces everywhere rely on the energy and entrepreneurial strength of local practices and experts who stimulate, connect, and sustain them. By giving them mandate and capacity, new roles emerge in different phases of project development and user organization. 

 

2. Link social needs with spatial opportunities
 
Social dynamics and spatial provisions differ in every neighborhood, village, or city, and so do the needs and opportunities that societal infrastructure must address. To ensure that societal infrastructure effectively responds to these, an integrated socio-spatial analysis combined with strategic real estate assessment is a necessary starting point.

 

3. Build strong matches between initiators and users
 
Creating interdisciplinary, multifunctional, place-based ecosystems for societal infrastructure requires coalition-building and co-programming with public, civic, and private actors, both around the table and on the ground. A co-creative process with a broad coalition ensures a widely supported and well-embedded community space.

 

4. Take a step-by-step approach to what is possible and what is truly needed 

The intelligence of an existing building, its spatial and technical possibilities as well as its limitations, can guide both programming and development. A phased approach allows a full renovation to be broken down into feasible, targeted interventions. In this way, societal infrastructure can grow gradually, with decisions aligned to experiences from temporary use, available resources, and evolving needs.

 

5. Invest together in feasible and affordable space for the long term
 
A robust financial model ensures affordability, enables long-term investment, and supports stable development. Combining different sources of investment and income makes it possible to maximize societal value while allowing all partners, from investors to users, to contribute according to their capacity. 

 

6. Maximize societal value through collaboration and good management 

Managing societal infrastructure that promotes shared use, serves multiple sectors and target groups, is neighborhood-oriented, and works toward the future of society requires collaborative organizational and management models. These clarify how daily responsibilities are distributed, are grounded in financial logic, and help safeguard the shared mission of the place. 

 

7. Encourage openness, involvement, and ownership 

Societal infrastructure also functions as an environment where residents and users actively participate in community life. These places offer space to meet, strengthen social cohesion, or organize activities themselves. In a context of increasing diversity and changing needs, such places are more necessary than ever to build a stronger, more cohesive society. It is crucial that users can take ownership of the place, feel comfortable and safe, use it regularly, and shape its programming and identity. 
 

8. Spatial interventions open doors to shared use
 
The design and layout of spaces determine which activities can take place, how accessible they are, and who can use them. A design process in which space, users, and operations are in continuous dialogue strengthens the impact and mission of societal infrastructure. Simple yet thoughtful spatial interventions unlock the future potential of existing buildings and stimulate shared use, multifunctionality, and inclusivity. 

 

9. A supra-local framework as a catalyst for local practice
 
Many community spaces across Brussels and Flanders are already responding to changing societal needs, they connect local and supra-local culture, care, and education, youth and sports. When higher-level policy aligns with this reality and develops supportive instruments, it can become a driving force for local transformations in many places at once.

 

The publication serves as a source of inspiration for local initiators, councils, public authorities… but also as a call for collective action at multiple levels, not just that of local initiatives. The Learning Environment served as a safe space to explore synergies between programmes, investments and policy objectives. The building blocks resulting from this chart a course, but do not in themselves constitute a complete answer to the challenges facing social infrastructure. There remains a need for a framework and long-term partnerships between different sectors, policy levels and funds to accelerate the transition towards more future-oriented social infrastructure. 

Periode: 2025-2026 

With the support of:  

The Flemish Government

Agency for Home Affairs – Polsslag Brussel 

Departement of Culture, Youth & Media – Arts Decree

Vlaams Brusselfonds 

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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.