Daily Camping

TEAM PORTRAIT

VIDEO (by the team)

INTERVIEW
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1. How do you define the main issue of your project in relation with the theme “Living Cities Imagining architecture taking care of the milieus”? And in which way do you think your project can contribute to an ecological and/or social evolution?
There are many themes overlapping and intertwining in Daily Camping, all rising from specificities of both the site of Parc du Cinquantenaire and the city of Brussels as a whole. On an ecological level, we embrace a broader meaning of ecology where difference and complexity are welcomed as fundamental principles to create atmospheres for human and non-human interactions. We escape imaginaries of dichotomous notions of natural and artificial, We focus on revealing potentials of an ever-changing landscape based on spontaneous compositions of plants, bacteria, fungi and animals instead of human-centred aesthetics. The whole ecology of the park finds its structure on a combination of strategies and approaches: rainwater management, diversification of soil’s conditions and flora and fauna enhancements. On a social level, our main aim was to challenge the monumental character of the park and implement a strategy for its decolonization. This is achieved by avoiding a superposition of an additional layer of monumentality and by choosing contextualisation over deletion. Here a strategy is outlined over multiple themes: decolonization, social infrastructure, learning landscapes and a framework for shared resources to reach equality and accessibility in public space.

2. How did the issues of your design and the questions raised by the site mutation meet?
We believe that to answer to the brief in a way that would have been relevant to the political, social and ecological contemporary discourse, some of it points had to be challenged. Clear examples are the mentioned emphasis on the axis Schuman-Merode, the request to conceal the car tunnel and consequentially, the defined intervention zone. The project escapes the intervention zone and starts with its first implementations in the EU quarter. Here a series of facilitators aim to regain sense of belonging in what we defined as ‘social desert’. Generally, our aim was to challenge the monumental character of the park, at the same time addressing social inclusion and equality and ecological enhancement. Approaching the park, we recognised that its most important role is what it already is: fundamental part of Brussels inhabitant’s everyday life. Thus, our aim has been to enhance its current state while structuring its sustainable and realistic evolution towards a more complex ecosystem and social/cultural infrastructure.

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