New Urban Figures 2026
Tutor(s): Roeland Smits
Campus Ghent
Language: EN / NL
Engagement: Reflecting Urban Cultures
Semester 3
introduction
For some years, this studio works on densification processes within peri-urban conditions. In previous years, it mainly focused on the regional (Flemish) policy-objectives which projects >320.000 new households in Flanders until 2030-2035. Despite a classic dichotomy between the rural and the urban, part of this policy objective was seen in more peri-urban regions, mainly at the insistence of bigger cities like Antwerp.
Although, densifying within these peripheral municipalities seems at first sight a very simple assignment, it soon becomes clear that architects and urban designers often fall back on classic inner-city urban morphologies and architectural typologies. But simply copying dense urban models or typologies (as f.e. the figure of the closed building-block or the high-rise (apartment) buildings, … ) has been proven inadequate to the complicated context of these peri-urban area’s with their seemingly unordered heterogeneous landscapes and the juxtaposition of all kinds of uses. This is all the more accepted because it is thought that these types of inner-city forms originated from theoretical land surveyors models and are often bluntly superimposed on existing landscapes.
Densification therefore, needs to be rethought with new urban models and building typologies whereby the relation with landscape environments and existing ecologies are more interwoven. In contrast to inner cities morphology, these peripheral conditions prove to be the perfect background for searching and testing New Urban Figures.
Today these horizontal metropolis, to quote P. Vigano and B. Secchi, is subject for many challenges. Besides the ever increasing housing production, which translates into terms such as an increasing apartmentization of village centres, also urban facilities, commercial centres and working areas are changing in rapid succession. Although these items seem at first sight a question for spatial planners, it is believed in this studio that answers could not only arise top-down, but must also be a research ‘bottom-up’, from architecture to city….
The studio assignment
The studio’s objective is to explore the policy-objectives of densification within regional and smaller municipalities. As a complement for the ‘building block book’, which is an instrument for the city of Antwerp to deal with inner urban developments, the studio aims to create a policy supporting insight obtained by a research by design, in the way alternative design strategies can evoke alternative relations between the built and the non-build. This is mostly relevant in the studio of 2026-2027, where we will work on Schelle.
Schelle is smaller municipality, located barely 15 km from the center of Antwerp, but easily accessible with train (it has an own train station). Schelle is located in the valley of the Schelde and Rupel, and with a clay soil covering the greater part of the municipality, it has a special relationship with water. At the same time the municipality is absorbed by the ‘Antwerp metropolitan area’, meaning that a part of the policy objective for further densification for Antwerp is prospected within this municipality.
This paradox, where at one hand more open land is needed for water-capture, and at the other hand more buildings are needed, as well for housing as well for services, makes the municipalities urban administration and the mayor our client. By using a research by design strategy the studio will to explore new typologies or new strategies to cope the densification process
In these studio you can work on a small plot, a whole building block, or an entire landscape… the urban issue is therefore not led by a specific urban scale but more about an urban attitude. The studio focusses especially on the fringes of the village, where classic landscapes structures as water systems collide with the build environment (some plots will be proposed); but this is widely interpreted; also allotments or adjacent plots in the surrounding could be questioned. The challenges surrounding densification are primarily seen as architectural challenges and not as urban planning issues. It is thereby believed that whereas a building block originates from a sequence or juxtaposition of 1 or more architectural typologies, densification of these building blocks can be successful, by redefining these architectural typologies.
Expected output:
This studio balances between planning and architecture; although it arises from planning issues, it seeks to address them through architectural practice. It is therefore expected that the student can read patterns in a non classic urban (an seemingly ‘dull’) environment, formulate an adequate research by design question which is translated in a design proposition.
The studio focusses on reading and understanding different urban forms, their applicability within existing urban tissues and their effects towards f.e. social coherence, urban climate resilience…. The research by design can be complemented with individual interests or contemporary themes, as a first step towards the masterstudio.
Excursions
– first studio day;
morning; Introduction in Schelle (town hall)
Afternoon; site visit
– further excursions to be defined
References/Further reading:
– B. Secchi, P. Viganò, Antwerp, territory of a new modernity, SUN Amsterdam, 2009
– T. Burklin M. Peterek, BASICS-Urban building Blocks, Bazel, Birkhausen, 2008
– P. Panerai, J. Castex & J-C Depaule, Urban forms : death and life of the urban block, Oxford Architectural Press, 2004
– New Topographics. Photographs of a man-altered landscape. Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, Henry Wessel, jr. Paperback – January 1, 1974
– B. De Meulder, J. Schreurs, A. Cock, B. Notteboom, Patching up the Belgian Urban Landscape, 1999, Oase
– K. Alles stad. Over een paradigma voor nieuwe stedelijkheid (UGent) (1999) Ons Erfdeel. 42(4). p.544-553
– J. Corner, The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention in Dennis Cosgrove, Mappings, 1999, Reaction Books, London
– P. Vigano, CH. Cavallieri, The Horizontal Metropolis, A Radical Project, ACC Publishing Group, 2020