Giacomo Pimpini
Urban Architecture
An Evolutionary Ground: Tracing soil transformations of the Friche Josaphat
This project is a recording of the trajectory of the Friche Josaphat, a contested island of 24 hectares, locked out of, yet within, the city of Brussels. A physical model is employed to re-trace the site’s evolution, exposing the centrality of soil transformations.
The ground becomes a space-generating force for the design of a productive and residential neighbourhood. The soil excavated during construction is re-used to overlay the site and architecture, rejecting the conventional displacement of ground caused by the building industry.
Concerning construction, a concrete base hosts productive facilities and becomes the formwork over which the earth excavated for the foundations is poured. The ground finds its natural form as a 3-dimensional terrain, a public space. Above it, a solid timber and filigree-steel structure houses co-operative apartments, gravitating around a central courtyard.
In this project, architecture is understood as the tracing of a site’s processes and occurrences into its future trajectory.