The Great Repair: Can Architecture Be a Reparative Force?
Instructor(s):
Tomas Ooms
Engagement:
Craftsmanship
Location:
Brussels
Language:
English
Semester:
Semester 3, Fall 2025
Description:
In a world marked by ecological imbalance and social fragmentation, this studio explores architecture as a reparative force. Rather than focusing on new construction, students will engage with existing sites—undervalued buildings, young heritage, or forgotten public spaces—to investigate how architecture can heal, restore, and reconnect.
The studio invites students to rethink architectural practice through the lens of repair—material, social, and disciplinary. Working from the current condition of a site, students will develop proposals and attitudes that embody care, transformation, and upkeep. Architecture becomes an instrument of upkeep, reflection, and responsibility.
Line of Inquiry:
Material Reality / Practice as Study / Working With
Topic, Thematic Focus:
Architecture as Upkeep
Reparative design
Adaptive reuse
Social and cultural repair
Non-extractive architecture
Urban mining
Architectural ethics
Instrument-making in design practice
Key Questions or Provocations:
Is repair the most radical form of innovation that we overlooked?
Can the act of mending be a visionary act of making?
How can architectural practice itself be reimagined as a reparative act?
What instruments do we need to design with care and precision?
Methodologies or Formats:
Field research and site visits, Drawing, modeling, and prototyping, Narrative development and critical reflection, Collective seminars and peer reviews, Iterative design and real-world testing
Design / Expected Outcome(s):
Students will cultivate a critically informed practice of architectural repair—grounded in observation, reflection, and intervention. Students will engage in the development of an informed and critically reflective practice of architectural repair—one that responds to the material, social, and spatial conditions of a specific site. Outcomes may range from scale 1:1 in-situ interventions to large-scale architectural drawings, all grounded in thoughtful and sometimes radical design decisions.
Deliverables:
The output depends very much on the topic and theme that will be developed by the student as is demonstrated in the post below. This may contain: Site analysis and documentation, Architectural drawings and models, Narrative and conceptual framework, In-situ interventions or prototypes…
- Find the full studio brief as pdf here.
Photo: Cocon by STTUW, © Tomas Ooms
