Zinneke Plateau

During the analysis of the site and its environment, there were several things that stood out for us. We clustered them around four different themes: heterogeneity, lack of social infrastructure, mobility and green continuity.

In the neighbourhood, there are a lot of different islands that are very mono-functional. There is the site of the NATO, the Da Vinci quarter, the social housing neighbourhood of Evere… a lot of functions that aren’t linked to each other. This results in a very heterogeneous patchwork that looks like a zoning plan from the early modernists. It influences the social cohesion a lot. If there are any social functions, they are based in Evere, but even in Evere there is a lack of certain functions. The part of Evere closest to the site consists of a social housing neighbourhood. The people who live here are located in the lowest social classes of society, but we saw that there are no facilities that help them to increase their social status. In order for these facilities to be effective, they need to be accessible, which led to our third theme. In the current situation, the whole area is car oriented. The Brussels capital region is aware of this and is constructing a new transport hub at Bordet, which will be ready in 2030. This isn’t enough, in our opinion, since Bordet is still 750 meters away from the site. We propose to make the public transport penetrate the site and connect to a network of bike paths and pedestrian roads. In this way, we assure that the site and its social function are accessible. Our fourth main point of attention is the green continuity. The area has a lot of green to offer, but only 45% of all this green is currently open for access to the public. We want to increase this amount of accessible green, in that way we not only make it more pleasant for the local community, but it can also become a green lung in Brussels. Throughout the development of our master plan, these themes remained the cornerstones on which we emphasized. We synthesized all of this in our proposal of a new kind of urbanity called: The Zinneke Plateau.

Assignment title

Sustainable urban regeneration of Brussels: Ex-NATO / Defence site

Academic year

2019-2020

Study year

MA1

Structure Material

steel, reinforced concrete, stone, brick

Structural System

beam-column, masonry

Programme

mixed (housing and public), public space, urban planning, infrastructure

Approach

sustainable design, sustainable urbanism

Course(s) attached

ARCH-H400

Date of defense

4 February 2020

Affiliation

BRUFACE