The exhibition Dirty Materials: Undoing, Dismantling, Undesigning is opening on Thursday 22nd of January at 7:00PM. It will be on show in our exhibition space et al. until Saturday 7th of February.
Visits possible every Friday (10:00-17:00) and Saturday afternoon (14:00-18:00) or on request!
et al. was happy to host "Ode to Joy" as part of their Night School series which allows academic projects and happenings to take place outside the institution walls.
| common:date | 10.10.2024 - 13.10.2024 |
| common:more-info | During the summer of 2024, the European Commission announced the largest real estate operation ever carried out in Brussels. After decades of exemptions from planning regulations aimed at the demolition and reconstruction of the European Quarter, the European Commission suddenly decided to sell 50% of its buildings in order to achieve its exemplary goal of climate neutrality by 2030. The so-called “Cityforward” sale is a two-stage process. In the first stage, the European Commission sold 350,000 m² to the Belgian Federal State for nearly one billion euros. In the second stage, the Federal State plans to resell the buildings in twelve lots to private developers. “Ode to Joy” proposes an alternative to this sale. At an intermediate stage, ownership of the land can be separated from ownership of the buildings constructed on it. Operating within a system of building rights (emphyteutic lease), the land remains in public ownership while the buildings are sold to private entities. If the Belgian State retains ownership of the land, the new residents purchase their homes and the European Commission buys back office space, a more ambitious cultural and residential programme can be implemented, including in particular half of the dwellings priced below the market average. The use of counter-financing mechanisms would thus make it possible to create space for a more diverse population. In light of the ongoing urban transformation, we aim to open a discussion on the ambitions and bottlenecks of the current process. Going beyond the case study of the European Quarter, this discussion will address questions such as the spatial responsibility of institutions, the commercialisation of institutional spaces, and speculation disguised as sustainability. “Ode to Joy” is a graduation project by Maximilian Lewark, Josiane Schmidt and Alexander Throm, developed within the Chair of Affective Architectures at ETH Zurich, led by An Fonteyne. On Thursday 10 October at 7:00 p.m., a discussion moderated by the students who developed the project took place at et al., with the following speakers: An exhibition of the project was presented at et al. from Friday 11 October to Sunday 13 October, from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. |