Program : “L’architecture peut-elle réconcilier le fleuve et ses habitants ?” Exhibition
ICA-WB (Institut Culturel d’Architecture Wallonie-Bruxelles) Location : Liège (Belgium) Date : 2022
A sponge (park) on a (water)table
In a context of urban densification, the value of existing urban park is
not yet to be contested. In Brussels nevertheless most of them being
under heritage jurisdiction, they are considered as frozen images of
nature. The attentive examination of existing
ground conditions leads to responsive design strategies to adapt those
needed spaces to current socio ecological challenges
Picturesque revisited
Through to the first Brussels Urban Landscape Biennal we highlighted in
the whole Brussels region the potential of heritage park located in rich
sandy ground to become sponge parks, a new public infrastructure vital
at the scale of a several watersheds. This
hypothesis is tested through the design of on action plan for water and
biodiversity improvement in Josaphat park, an iconic Brussels park.
What is at stake? We deal here with a real paradox. The park was
conceived as a piece of a valley, but its current water
management ignore it. Above the ground, the architect Galopin designed
the park as a succession of scenes of nature along several lakes with
very poor living quality. Under the ground a vast pipe and pumping
systems bring the water to the top of the park featuring
a cascade. Working closely with hydrologist and biodiversity experts
the design research attests the potential of the sandy ground to
infiltrate and retain water above the clay. We discover that the wooden
hills of the park can become a vast water reservoir
able to supply constant flow of water into the pond system. In short,
our proposition acknowledges the ecology of the valley as an alternative
to the obsolete technological design of the park. The picturesque is
understood not as a scenographic construction
but as a holistic attempt to design places for living human-nonhuman
systems.
