Architect: A Practice.
Typology: Public space
Location: Molenbeek-Saint-Jean
Construction Date: 2014
Photos by: Marie-Françoise Plissart
The project first and foremost takes advantage of the great potential of the existing public space. It aims at a delicate intervention with an extreme attention to details for the square to become again what it used to be: a large ground available for multiple uses, an open air common room.
The new space is paved with one and the same stone, from facades to facades. The sobriety and elegance of the proposition arises from the care to the path of water and its collecting.
The proposal offers benches that can be used in various ways: seats for passers-by, protection for trees, qualifying pedestrian and vehicles paths to protect “weak users”. Water features and vegetation completes this relaxing area. The idea of “shared space” is central and unifying to the proposal and can be defined as a “unified layout of public space that reduced the environmental impact of vehicle traffic, fostering pedestrians and cyclists, supporting stable activities, decluttering and embellishing places.”
The “Moment-Point-Zero” of artist Jöelle Tuerlinckx – a monolith buried at the center of gravity of the “urban room” – obliterates and underlines this large stone carpet drawn with the eraser rather than with the pencil.