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Studio: B(S)XL
The City as a Resource
2025
Brussels - BE
Academie van bouwkunst Rotterdam
Program: Urbanism master’s studio
Co-Tutors: Giacomo Gallo, Tslil Strauss, Jacopo Grilli
Status: Pedagogy
Challenging growth-driven urbanism
Can we look at the city as a resource: the social, spatial, material, and intellectual ground for a just and sustainable future?
Cities are where the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social justice accumulate at their most complex. This studio investigates what design can do when it refuses growth as the default model, exploring development frameworks aligned with urban degrowth and the circular economy.
The investigation is grounded in Schaarbeek-Vorming, a former railway hub in northern Brussels. The site carries a dense industrial history and today stands as an underutilised enclave of 170 hectares. Its scale and post-industrial complexity make it productive territory for testing what a metabolic urbanism looks like in practice.
Metabolism and degrowth
Designing for a post-growth culture requires a low-tech, resource-conscious approach. The studio investigates the city as a complex metabolic system: mapping and reimagining the flows of energy, water, waste, materials, and green infrastructure.
By understanding the relationship between raw resources, energy, and material use, it proposes circular design strategies that maximise both environmental and social impact.
The process: from 'S' to 'XL'
The methodology operates across a radical shift in scale, from the fragment to the territory.
The micro-scale (S): fieldwork begins by selecting a single physical element found on the terrain such as a stone, a plant, a discarded cup, a piece of cloth, a scrap of metal. Its specific metabolism is decoded through its fabrication cycle, material qualities, embedded knowledge, and potential for reuse.
The macro-scale (XL): this single element becomes the building block for understanding broader urban impacts. The micro-analysis scales up into a comprehensive material flow analysis (MFA) of the neighbourhood.
A manifesto for the future
The research culminates in a manifesto for Schaarbeek-Vorming, a long-term urban-landscape vision grounded in the material reality of the site.
By translating their findings into a spatial proposition, students define a critical standpoint on how we can live, work, and move in a post-growth urban environment.