The productive city

TRANS architectuur | stedenbouw

How can we create space for manufacturing in an urban context where often all mechanisms seem to focus on housing development? There is a need for a bigger story about the productive city, with shared spaces, that goes beyond the real estate story. Although the need for housing is justified, we must guard against a monoculture. The manufacturing industry is an added value for a city. TRANS architectuur | stedenbouw is not new in the field. With experience in various urban manufacturing projects in Ghent, the office is now also investigating the sharing economy in Kortrijk. The lecture shows projects that perfectly illustrate the city’s manufacturing industry.

The lecture will be preceded by the presentation of the Kortrijk Architecture Prize, with Bram Aerts also serving as chairman of the jury.

“AK (Architectuur Kortrijk – formerly Kortrijk Heritage) and ABEKO (Architectural Heritage Advisory Board Kortrijk) have in recent years, separately, organized architecture competitions for Kortrijk architecture projects. This year, they decided to do it together.

As in other cities, in Kortrijk, especially in the city center, renovation and heritage projects are increasingly surpassing new construction projects.
Certain submitted renovations are on the Inventory of Immovable Heritage. These projects fall within a special category, “heritage.

All submissions are special projects. We want to show them to the people of Kortrijk. We also want to pay tribute to the owners of the buildings for their courage in making a clear choice for quality, in often not obvious circumstances. And we also want to show which architects are capable of shaping these special projects and continuing to build a quality city.

This architectural competition this time is deliberately limited to small-scale projects, mostly built by private building owners. As examples for others who want to embark on a heritage project, a renovation or a new construction.

Notwithstanding this limitation, 38 projects were submitted for the Kortrijk Architecture Prize. From these submissions, an assessment committee selected 8 that it considers particularly valuable. These are all existing projects that are interestingly transformed or that are being demolished and rebuilt.

We find all types of interventions in them: a classic renovation, a division of a house into office space and home, a new building that combines a home, a liberal profession and a barber store, a renovation with a special garden room, a store with home and studio transformed into a home, a new home on a very narrow plot, a particularly compact house where no space is lost, a house from the sixties that with great respect for the existing is transformed into a fascinating contemporary home, …

All this together shows us a rich range of possibilities and solutions, Surprising and inventive interventions that we would not immediately expect and that show how, with creativity, one can realize special and pleasant homes.”

From September 22, all projects can be seen on the website kortrijkarchitectuur