Architects: BAUKUNST.
Location: Brussels, Belgium.
Year: 2014.
Photographs: Maxime Delvaux.
Molenbeek-Saint-Jean has distinguished itself in the urban landscape of Brussels by being exceptionally dense, plagued by social conflict, and, more recently, stigmatised by terrorist incidents in Paris and Brussels. While it lacked places that may have given the region some personality, it is full of interstitial areas between its buildings that are either walled off or used for occasionally dubious uses. One of these was a courtyard’s garden in a building on rue des Quatre-Vents, a leftover area bordered at the back by a public school, a church, and a residential structure.
The city has been working on a strategy that sees the two biggest problems with these interstitial areas as opportunities recently. First, because of their residual, distinct nature, they can be transformed into intimate gardens that are safe from traffic. Second, they are so numerous that they can be arranged to create a sizable green constellation. The plan’s two supporters, the Molenbeek-Saint-Jean Municipal Council and the government of the metropolitan area, both exhibit this dual feature of size. Both organisations planned to incorporate the courtyard in rue des Quatre-Vents into the overall concept in 2009. It was determined that adding a playground to this area, which already featured a garden, would encourage more neighbourhood activities.
