Studio ALL OR NOTHING | Exploring Adaptive Urban Futures
Keywords: #adaptive reuse, #urban ecology, #landscape design strategy, #hybrid programs
Semester 2 Theme: Constructing Urban Cultures
Tutors: Christian Nolf (Urban Cultures), in collaboration with Craftsmanship tutors Jan Van Gassen, Quirijn Thijs, and Sandy De Bruycker
Campus: Sint-Lucas Ghent
Languages: English + Dutch
AIM
How can cities adapt to increasingly uncertain social, economic, and climatic conditions while building upon their existing heritage?
In studio ALL OR NOTHING, this question is explored through a large post-industrial site in Ghent, used as an open experimental framework. Students will combine the design of robust and adaptable urban and landscape structures with hybrid typologies to envision the transformation of the site into a dynamic and flexible urban village.
SITE
This year, the studio focuses on the Vynckier site, a 7-hectare post-industrial area in northern Ghent. Formerly a production facility for heating and ventilation components, Vynckier now lies at the heart of ongoing regeneration efforts around the Verbindingskanaal.
Student proposals will explore how the site can act as a catalyst for regeneration, integrating housing, culture, light production, services, and SMEs in a sustainable and context-responsive manner. Situated in a flood-prone area and largely covered by buildings and hard surfaces, the site’s redevelopment requires carefully calibrated strategies addressing accessibility, green space, and the adaptive reuse of existing structures.
HOW
Bringing together the Craftsmanship and Urban Cultures engagements, this studio is open to students interested in interdisciplinary and collaborative ways of working. In line with the second semester’s focus on Constructing Urban Cultures, the studio blends research and design, concept and implementation, and urban-scale thinking with detailed architectural design, under the guidance of tutors with diverse expertise.
PHASES
The studio is structured around four main phases:
1/ Thematic Analysis and Research
Students will work in mixed groups to conduct site analysis, thematic research, and case study investigations.
2/ Spatial Framework and Prototyping
Building on the analytical and research phase, students will develop a spatial framework for the entire site. This framework will define, among others, buildings to retain, reuse, or remove, as well as a strategy for the open space network. In parallel, each group will develop an architectural prototype of an adaptive building or (infra)structure linked to its chosen theme.
3/ Individual Phase: Programmatic Adaptation
Each student will adapt the group prototype to a non-conventional program, or a hybrid combination of programs, assigned at random. This phase explores how adaptive structures can accommodate unforeseen and changing programmatic demands.
4/ Final Phase: Collective Urban Collage
The semester concludes with a collective urban collage in which all group proposals are assembled, tested, and negotiated into a coherent yet experimental urban ensemble. Urban Cultures students will play a mediating role in this phase of productive friction and negotiation.
DELIVERABLES
Collective context model
Research booklet
Physical and/or hybrid models
Drawings (plans, sections, axonometric views, collages)
Final poster and booklet documenting the design process