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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.