LIVING BOUNDARIES
Historically, architecture has been viewed as a pristine machine for living, allowing very limited space for evolution. BioDesign and Regenerative Architecture, on the other hand, embrace the fundamental strangeness of the living world, redefining the notion of conventional building elements and helping the world transition from an industrial to an ecological era.
Marais Wiels, the site close to the Brussels-South railway station, has plenty of existing physical and psychological boundaries. The area is hard to access and uncomfortable to move through or stay in. I am proposing to introduce a new set of borders that are interactive and life-welcoming, rather than hostile and separating. They can become “thresholds” between spaces or worlds. These thresholds will celebrate diversity and inclusivity rather than homogeneity and exclusion. Through their creation, I intend to bioremediate the environment of the site and increase the vitality, diversity, and understanding of living spaces. The living boundaries will be produced directly on site from local materials and organic waste. The abandoned building on the site will host a number of “organs” that will serve as biorefineries for the structure of the living boundaries. The “Stomach” will ferment abundant crustacean and fruit waste in rainwater deposited from the building’s roof to generate chitin. This extremely versatile polymer can form solid structures, especially in combination with CaCO3. Similar to atoll formation, the living boundaries will start growing within the building, eventually taking over the building and slowly stripping off the existing facade. They will reshape the experiences on the site, replacing many of the existing boundaries and providing electricity through Microbial Fuel Cell technology. The 3D-printed Structural Modules have cylindrical bodies with porous, rocky surfaces. Similar to the way coral skeletons encourage the growth of reefs and any adjacent marine life due to their porosity, the Structural Modules encourage various microbial species to grow on their surface in the form of biofilm.
