#city-synth

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Facade comparison of two European cities, Paris and Bruxelles.

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CITY-STORY . Bruxelles

Bruxelles is a heterogeneous, entropic, often paradoxical city, resulting from habitual urban reconstruction driven by entrepreneurial and political motives. Large scale, drastic  projects throughout history have diverted, connected, overlaid and fragmented the urban landscape into the chaotic collage it is today. 

Timeline of Urban Projects in Bruxelles

1867/ The Senne River, once the founding place and source of economy for Brussels had by the early 19th century, become nothing more than a polluted open sewer. Several infrastructural projects over sixty years redirected and covered the Senne to the point where most Brusseleers have forgotten it's existence.

19th c/ Leopold II, 'The Builder King' demolished vast residential areas for the creation of straight, broad boulevards which connected the urban fabric with the outlying landscape. Sound familiar?

1952/ The North-South Junction, a massive endeavour of urban modernization, connected the national rail network and simultaneously divided the city of Brussels.

1959/ 'Europeanization' of the city after the establishment of the European Union generated oppositions physically and socially; foreigners and inhabitants, office towers and residential blocks, wealth and poverty.

1990s/ Haphazard urban development allowed uncontrolled demolition of historically and culturally significant buildings to make way for modern construction, a process aptly named Brusselization.

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CITY-SYNTH

Timeline of the building of Paris

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CITY-STORY . Paris

The massive urban construction of Baron Haussmann in the 1860’s generated the image of Paris which remains to this day in our global perception of the city. When Haussmann replaced winding, congested streets with broad, treelined boulevards, he eradicated Medieval Paris of disease, filth and poverty but afflicted the modern city with unrelenting sameness. 

Over a century later, the dwarfed skyline remains largely unchanged and perfect Parisian street of the 19th century remains untouched. For a city whose visual identity was defined and ultimately limited by a single, great act, what is it’s future? If we reconsider, manipulate, reconstruct the urban fabric of Paris, would it still be Paris?

Times ‘The Sky’s The Limit’