URBANISMEUROPEAN POSTGRADUATE MASTERS IN

STRATEGIES AND DESIGN FOR CITIES AND TERRITORIES

DESIGN STUDIOS FALL 2009KU LEUVEN / DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE, URBANISM AND PLANNING

1/ RE-INVENTING KORTRIJK. REDESIGNING THE 21ST CENTURY SECONDARY CITY

Kortrijk is a medium-sized provincial Flemish city, located in the periphery of Belgium, but it is simul-taneously a functional part of the metropolitan re-gion of Lille. Since Euralille became the crossroads of high speed train connections between France, UK, Germany and the Netherlands, the metropolis of Lille is undergoing a dynamic process of trans-formation.

Today the medieval city structure of Kortrijk has the unique possibility to fundamentally transform the character of a very large part of its urban fab-ric. Not only various post industrial sites but also the voids resulting from the ongoing restructuring and rationalisations of the welfare state (empty schools and convents, abandoned hospitals, derelict elderly residences and a variety of similar institutions). As well, the oversized and conse-quently under-utilized infrastructures of the 70s offer a multitude of potential redevelopment sites of all possible sizes and imaginable characters. Thirty percent of the inner city area could be con-sidered vacant or becoming vacant in the coming years. This peculiar proportion and the way these vacancies are distributed and intermingled in the structure of the city gives the inner city of Kortrijk, in a certain way, a hologrammatic character: a more or less coherent urban structure inherited from the past on one side, and an almost empty city centre on the other.

This specific contemporary condition –balancing between intactness and erosion, between inte-gration and fragmentation- is an open invitation to requalify the spatial structures of Kortrijk or to introduce new urban fabrics by warp and woof. It also opens the possibility – without the necessity of the modernist tabula rasa - to fundamentally reconceive, for example the dwelling environments and housing conditions for the secondary city of the 21st century.

The urbanism studio proposes the develop-ment of an innovative and multiscalar spatial strategy that goes beyond the conventional urban renewal practices concerning voids and consequently investigates the potential sys-tem value and constellational capacity of the multitude and variety of the mentioned voids. It anticipates the emerging of a variety of new housing typologies and innovative dwelling environments where needed.

The studio forms part of the ongoing design re-search investigations of OSA –Research Group Urbanism and Architecture- in the region of Kortrijk directed by prof. Bruno De Meulder.

The studio will elaborate further on (recently published) OSA research on urban renewal in Flanders (A. Loeckx, ed.), new collective hous-ing forms (B. De Meulder, ed.), innovation in re-gional design (N. Meijsmans, ed.) (all published by SUN Publishers, Amsterdam).

The studio will engage actively with policy mak-ers, technicians and other professionals and stakeholders from the region (city of Kortrijk, province of West Vlaanderen, intermunicipal association Leiedal, Lille Métropole, etc.). Evidently the studio will be a testing ground for innovative concepts and theories of urbanism and urban development.

Studio instructors: Bruno De Meulder, Cathérine Vilquin, Bieke Cattoor

STUDIO OPTION 01

2/ NAHR AL BARED, LIBANON. STUDIO CONCEPTS AND ANALYSIS

Nahr al Bared is a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Libanon, 15 km from the city of Tripoli. Some 30,000 displaced Palestinians and their descendents live in and around the camp that was established in December 1949 by the League of Red Cross. The camp was established outside any major Lebanese towns or settlements. Due to its position on the main road to Syria it nevertheless developed into a regional commercial hub. Nahr al-Bared hosted the largest market in northern Lebanon.

The ‘original’ camp is roughly 2 km² and is under the responsibility of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). The confl ict between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam had dramatic conse-quences for Nahr al Bared. The settlement was completely destroyed in 2007. Today Nahr el Bared is the object of a diffi cult reconstruction, made more diffi cult due to lack of fi nancial aid.

This reconstruction of a refugee camp challenges accepted notions of urbanity and the signifi cance of settlement structures. In the case of Palestinian refugee camps for generations of displaced fami-lies (with a denied right of return) - it raises ques-tions of identity, set upside down conventional wisdom on place, place attachment and identity. It nevertheless remains an environment that struc-tures the daily life of more than 30,000 people and facilitates interaction between spatial characteris-tics and social practices; between practices and discourses; between despair and hope.

The ongoing plan for the reconstruction of Nahr al Bared is based on a meticulous (reconstitutive) investigation of Nahr al Bared, in relation to physi-cal and material, as well as social and cultural, realities.

The studio has a strong focus on concepts and analysis and is advocating a multimedia, mul-tiscalar and multidisciplinary approach to the interpretation of urban environments. Physical space and the interpretation of its morpho-ty-pological characteristics will be complemented.

The studio will be taught by Ismael Sheik Hasan, an alumni of the MaHS program and an architect-activist who continues to be actively involved in the reconstruction of Nahr al Bared.

Studio instructors: Ismael Sheikh Hasan, with contributions by Bruno De Meulder (urbanism), André Loeckx (architectural theory, anthropology) and Frank Moulaert (planning).

STUDIO OPTION 02

URBANISMEUROPEAN POSTGRADUATE MASTERS IN

STRATEGIES AND DESIGN FOR CITIES AND TERRITORIES

DESIGN STUDIOS FALL 2009KU Leuven / Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning

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