Educational projects

The historical town of Bagamoyo is located just North of Dar-Es-Salaam and across Zanzibar Island. Bagamoyo was the most important harbour of the East-African mainland during the 19^th and early 20^th century. Famous before for trade in ivory and slaves, the town briefly became the colonial capital of German East-Africa, until it moved to Dar-Es-Salaam. The town has today about 85.000 inhabitants who mainly live in informal settlements while the historic stone town along the coast line is largely abandoned with most of its historical buildings in a poor state of conservation.

The regeneration of Bagamoyo through adaptive reuse of its (pre-)colonial heritage buildings was the topic of the intermediate workshop. The students were asked to investigate the economic, social and cultural potentialities of the waterfront and urban strip along the coast, and to create new opportunities for current and future inhabitants. They developed a spatial narrative by designing the adaptive reuse of a particular heritage building or site and by reflecting on their contentious properties. The proposals were to be routed in the historical or existing characteristics of the site, elaborating on tangible as well as intangible heritage values.

Participants: Nikolaas Vande Keere, Bie Plevoets, Linde Van Den Bosch, Peggy Winkels, Yvonne Matinyi

The intermediate workshop ran in collaboration with Studio Brussels North, 1^st Master in Architecture at Hasselt University.

The North Quarter in Brussels is a business area largely constructed in the 1960-70’s. The plans for the transformation of this part of the city were con­troversial since they implied the expropriation and erasure of a large neighbourhood. Today the area is a combination of various high rise office blocks of which many are underused and outdated.

The students participated in an on-site master class and lecture programme. They looked at this areas through the lens of adaptive reuse, not by planning it once more from the top down, but instead investi­gating how a transition could be imagined, building on its (odd) qualities and the forms of use that have already taken shape there. Organised on the 19th floor of the emblematic WTC1 tower, the studio opened up to the public, triggering a discussion and an experience beyond the scope of architecture. By doing so, the studio itself became one moment in the occurring transformation of the North Quarter.

Participants: Freek Persyn, Dieter Leyssen

Image: Poster workshop, photograph by Filip Dujardin, 2016

The intermediate workshop ran in collaboration with Studio Brussels North, 1^st Master in Architecture at Hasselt University.

The North Quarter in Brussels is a business area largely constructed in the 1960-70’s. The plans for the transformation of this part of the city were con­troversial since they implied the expropriation and erasure of a large neighbourhood. Today the area is a combination of various high rise office blocks of which many are underused and outdated.

During the two-week workshop the students investigated the temporary use of one of these office blocks: WTC1. They were each assigned a floor with a variety of users. By mapping the interventions and users in the strict format of an axonometric drawing, relations between floors were uncovered and visualized.

Participants: Freek Persyn, Koenraad Van Cleempoel

Kaleidoscope – Appearance, Fragment, Ornament, Porosity Euregional workshop on themes of Adaptive re-use and Umbaukultur The Faculty of Architecture of Architecture and Building Engineering at Wuppertal joined forces with three universities in our larger region at Hasselt and Liège and Eindhovenin the organisation of a workshop focusing on adaptive re-use and strategies of Umbaukultur.

Unter the title ‘Kaleidoscope’ 75 students studied proposals for the former Küppers Brewery/Weinkontor in Wuppertal. This rather enigmatic building is located at the far end of Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse, the former grand axis of Elberfeld. Built as a brewery in the guise of an oriental fantasy castle, later converted into one of the bestknown wine merchants in the Rhine and Berg region, the remainder of the building now accommodates a music club and offers many music groups around the city, both refuge and a convenient place to produce spirited noises.

During the online workshop the participants spent five days of intensive research into the spatial and material possibilities of experiencing, celebrating, and completely rethinking this building. The shared context of our region in the north western core of Europe includes the history of industrialization and of various waves of migration that have had profound effects on its demographic and cultural conditions. Each of the universities has established a particular expertise in the field of adaptive re-use or Umbaukultur, with often similar areas of research ranging from industrial monuments to the future of religious buildings.

The workshop is therefore also a laboratory for a strong and sustainable network of exchange and an internationally visible core of excellence in BENELUXNRW.

Kaleidoscope – Continuity, Fragment, Ornament, Tectonics

The second edition of the Kaleidoscope workshop, involving the universities of Liège and Hasselt (BE), Eindhoven (NL) and Wuppertal (DE), was dedicated to the Hôtel Torrentius in Liège.

The building is one of the few surviving architectural testimonies to the appropriation of Italian Renaissance models (1565) in Liège and is attributed to the architect Lambert Lombard. Between 1978 and 1981, architect Charles Vandenhove transformed it into his architectural practice space, offering a creative reinterpretation of the building. By combining specific references and approaching the project from a stylistic point of view, he turned the building into a point of reference for his peers and opened up the debate on the meaning and role of postmodernism in Belgium.

The students' task was to re-read the site to suit the future public and cultural function of the "Fondation Jeanne et Charles Vandenhove". The students had six days in Liège to study the building on all levels - from the urban to the detailed. Based on the four given themes - continuity, fragment, ornament and tectonics - the students examined the building itself, its changes over time and its place in the city.

The transformation of the building from private to public use was a particular point that spurred the students into action. The results ranged from new public connections to the city centre to structural redesigns and the conception of exhibition furniture.