From tamed infrastructure to city takes an attitude of revealing implicit qualities and potential grand spaces. This attitude uses the dominant infrastructure as a resource. Its constraint is also its potential.

 “Van getemde infrastructuur naar stad” is a process-based project. It departs from an approach of best return on invest: how to achieve first a maximum with a minimum effort, in the shortest period of time.

 Starting from this fundamental state, the footprint of the infrastructure is reduced to its bare functional minimum for traffic. By strategically shifting this thinned road to one of its sides, space is made available. 

Available space that activates the specific resources along the Coppéelaan, in order to offer new, cosmopolitan public spaces, enable new modes of mobility and urban experiences, or emphasize existing environments.

 These efforts are guided by a consideration for different scales: pinpointing local identities and territorial structures. Sequences are identified, defined by morphology, program, potential and needs.

 The Toolbox is a set of opportunist instruments. These instruments are illustrated with best practice reference projects that show how to develop this fundamental state and articulate a vision, a prospective narrative. Opportunist, because the toolbox is flexible, not bound by time or budget, and is unconditional to a first upgrade of the Coppéelaan into an equipment for the city.

“Van getemde infrastructuur naar stad”  draws a vision of the Coppéelaan as a pearl necklace: a continuity of metropolitan spaces, of destinations.

in collaboration with CENTRAL (be)