A+287 Article: Building bridges by Hanne Mangelschots and Serafina Van Godtsenhoven

a+287 Designing processes for acceleration
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One swallow doesn’t make a summer. One
car-free street doesn’t lead to fewer traffic jams
or deaths. One low-energy renovation doesn’t
make the energy transition affordable. One
agro-ecological farm doesn’t make our diet
healthier and more sustainable. One caring
neighbourhood project doesn’t lead to a more
inclusive care system. One make-and-learn
hub that gives newcomers access to the labour
market doesn’t solve unemployment. Wonderful
initiatives are being taken on each of these
fronts, but many of them feel like exceptions
rather than the rule. The major social goals – in
terms of nature and climate, solidarity and affordability,
sustainability and economic resilience
– seem a long way off. The policymakers
formulating long-term objectives often fail to
explain what exactly we need to do differently
today. There is a missing link: a tremendous
gap between where we are now and where we
want to be. And we are all wondering how on
earth we are going to get there together.
© Architecture Workroom Brussels
for IABR–2018 and You Are Here 2018
The Missing Link
between a
multitude of local
initiatives and
ambitious
objectives. We are
hitting both a glass
roof and a glass
floor.
Social innovation and the design of our urban
landscape go hand in hand. It is the new
arrangements between policymakers, citizens,
civil society, experts and social practices that
shape our environments. Think, for example,
of the impact of Ringland on the infrastructure
debate in Antwerp, the contribution of
an action group such as Filter Café Filtré to
the creation of school streets (see a+278) or
the BoerenBruxselPaysans initiative that gives
short-chain farmers access to land on the outskirts
of Brussels (see a+282). It is clear that
the range of actors weighing on the changes in
our living environment is widening. Moreover,
these projects show that social transitions are
not only major planning assignments, but grow
out of small scale initiatives as well. We need
to start thinking of solutions as a multitude of
concrete interventions in our homes, streets
and neighbourhoods.
The role of the
architectural practice
The architectural and building practice is evolving
in accordance with the changing demand.
Buildings are becoming increasingly energyefficient,
circular construction is becoming the
norm, developers are offering neighbourhoods
instead of dwellings, grey squares are becoming
green-blue oases in the city, care district
centres are seeing the light of day, libraries and
museums are becoming meeting places. But
isn’t it so that the necessary turnaround is happening
much too slowly? The contribution of
the architectural practice needs to go much
further. Today there is a tremendous opportunity
to use spatial design as a lever to accelerate
social transitions. This can be done by representing
the positive qualities that change can
bring about. By demonstrating how solutions
can be tackled interdependently – and in one
and the same space. By bringing future design
issues into focus and actively participating in
new collaborations, new financing models, new
building methods and new social arrangements
that are being tested. That is why we need an
architectural practice that drives change rather
than a practice that adapts to change.
In order to really renew the practice, knowledge
must find its way from the pioneers to the
mainstream actors, from the experts to the