Scarcity and Abundance: Faking it or Making it.
Instructor(s):
Tomas Ooms
Engagement:
Craftsmanship
Location:
Brussels
Language:
English
Semester:
Semester 2, Spring 2026
Description:
An active construction site will serve as the studio’s primary context for observation, intervention, and experimentation—allowing students to engage directly with flows of materials, on-site conditions, and the potential of reuse in real time.
This studio investigates how architectural practice is transformed when operating within conditions of material scarcity or abundance. With a focus on re-use, urban mining, and resource-based design thinking, students are invited to explore how fluctuating availability, irregular qualities, and unforeseen material conditions challenge and inspire new spatial strategies. The studio encourages repositioning, recalibration, and reinterpretation—working not from a blank slate, but from the shifting ground of existing material realities.
Line of inquiry:
Material Reality / For Real / Practice as Study
Topic, Thematic Focus:
Adaptive reuse, material flows, urban mining, working with uncertainty, design under constraint
Key Questions or Provocations:
How does scarcity—or surplus—reshape architectural decision-making?
What can be designed when materials are uncertain, fragmented, or found?
How can reuse become a central design methodology rather than a constraint?
Methodologies or Formats:
Material research, prototyping, urban mining, fieldwork, site-based testing, iterative modeling, documentation of process and outcome
Design / Expected Outcome(s):
Development of architectural strategies and spatial interventions rooted in the reuse of reclaimed materials. Projects will respond to the unpredictable nature of supply and the challenge of designing with what is available—fragmented, imperfect, and full of potential.
Deliverables:
Analytical drawings, models, reclaimed material prototypes, on-site interventions or scaled mock-ups, visual documentation, project booklet
Photo: Cocon by STTUW, © Tomas Ooms