Kanal Central
An armature for logistics and cosmopolitan urbanity
Location: Brussels, Belgium | Year: 2014
Competition: in Kanal Playground, Atelier de Stad, Brussels
Organizers: Architecture Workroom Brussels
Collaborators: Bogdan Ilie, Jeroen Stevens, Jonas De Maeyer, Jonas Knapen, Sedaile Mejías
The industrial legacy characterizes the area with an accumulation of vacancies and building heritage, and a wide spectrum of social and cultural initiatives and cosmopolitan urban cultures. This allows re-envisioning the canal as a central axis and re-claiming its major structuring role within the city.
The project focuses on the infrastructural potentialities the canal offers, as private investment will be eager to follow, initiating a new wave of job creation. The canal itself is regained as a space of logistics and an engine of transformation, connecting various important industrial and commercial activities that take place along it. An industrial legacy is turned into an urban asset.
A superimposition of logistics and public realm reaffirmed as a central structure, the canal combines urban realm with a mixture of programs. The use of different kinds of boats for the transport of people, goods and garbage, embraces a post carbon urban future. Different stops overlap transport hubs with new creative-industrial functions and recreation and event spaces. Design interventions differentiate the quays, mutually connecting vacancies, development areas and existing industries to the revitalized waterways. Various relations are established allowing different appropriations, activities and logistical functions. The armature is turned into a cosmopolitan playground that reclaims the city as a place of coexistence and production.
The project focuses on the infrastructural potentialities the canal offers, as private investment will be eager to follow, initiating a new wave of job creation. The canal itself is regained as a space of logistics and an engine of transformation, connecting various important industrial and commercial activities that take place along it. An industrial legacy is turned into an urban asset.
A superimposition of logistics and public realm reaffirmed as a central structure, the canal combines urban realm with a mixture of programs. The use of different kinds of boats for the transport of people, goods and garbage, embraces a post carbon urban future. Different stops overlap transport hubs with new creative-industrial functions and recreation and event spaces. Design interventions differentiate the quays, mutually connecting vacancies, development areas and existing industries to the revitalized waterways. Various relations are established allowing different appropriations, activities and logistical functions. The armature is turned into a cosmopolitan playground that reclaims the city as a place of coexistence and production.
# Belgium, Competition,
Urbanism