The project consists of a renovation of a historic mansion in Leuven (Belgium) of which the main focus is enhancing life quality and reorganizing living on the ground floor. A new extension is realized, supported by steel trusses, a sort of lightfilled city-cabin. In the historic mansion furniture is introduced in the existing carriage-corridor, as a way of mediation with the oversized corridor and practical organization of a few smaller functions in to a dense cluster.
Recently the construction started of the block14 development in Antwerp’s new city quarter Nieuw Zuid. Block 14 is the central block situated at the new piazza Zuiderplein that will function as the civic centre for the new neighbourhood with several thousand inhabitants.
‘The waterdog’ is a state-of-the-art workspace where working almost becomes a spiritual experience. No more dull and unimaginative offices; be inspired by a challenging working environment where past, present and future are inextricably linked. By stacking the different offices and spreading out the various departments across different floors, a constant sense of dynamism is created in the workspace.
Danish architects COBE and Belgian architects BRUT reveal the winning design for Place Schuman in Brussels, Belgium. Located in the heart of the European Quarter, in between the main institutions of the European Union, Place Schuman constitutes the entrance to the EU. The project transforms a heavily trafficked roundabout into an urban space and meeting point. Inspired by the shape of the European Parliaments’ hemicycle, a reflective roof covering an urban agora unites all citizens and institutions of the EU and transforms the European Quarter from a city for cars into a city for people.
The terraced house is located in a housing project from ’58 in Wondelgem, Belgium. The project has the typical combination of identical row houses with alternately mirrored ground plans. All of them have a single-storey extension and a semi-private road at the back of the plot connecting the various garages and garden storages. Over the years many residents have filled up the open space between the extensions with verandas and secondary buildings, and by thus have lost relationship with the exterior space.
This house is built on a plot located in an outlying area, behind a first row of typical Flemish landhouses (“fermettes”). An exceptional starting position: there are no direct neighbours – splendid isolation – and the building is barely subject to urban regulations.
To accommodate the merger of two primary schools the city of Knokke-Heist has developed an ambitious project: a so-called Passiefschool. The building has to comply with the highest environmental standards which should lead to a maximal consumption of 15 kWh per square meter for heating and cooling. A number of measures have been taken, some technical and some architectonic, to reach this goal. So besides triple glass, heavy duty insulation and the ‘Canadian Well’ for instance, the building features a ‘Volcano’ for night ventilation and a multifunctional porch to block the direct rays of the sun.
Team: Guus Peters, Gertjan Machiels, Gerbrand van Oostveen, Giulia Pastore, Michael Schoner and Gen Yamamoto with Shuichiro Mitomo, Justine Lemesre, Jasper Selen, Christian Asbø, Mindaugas Glodenis, Else Ferf Jentink, Luca Kaptein Roodnat (cover drawing)
The house is located in a street lined with typical 19th century twin worker houses. A local regulation requires that any new construction has to take over the traditional typology of small houses with pitched roof.
JUMA was asked to accommodate a restaurant in an Art Deco house. Although the exterior suggests otherwise, there were only a few elements that were worth saving in the interior. Only the monumental wooden staircase with a beautifully coloured stained-glass window above it, reflect the grandeur that this property once offered. First a number of walls were taken down to create larger spaces. An opening was created from the entrance hall to the kitchen so that visitors have a direct view of chef Maxence Sys at work.
From Ghent’s ring road the first sight of the hospital AZ Sint-Lucas one gets is the multi-storey car park. For this reason the design devotes a lot of attention to the atmosphere and appearance of the site. The project zone is split into two parts, with the high capacity car park distributed over two buildings. This creation of two smaller buildings is effective within the spatial context and the granular size of the hospital campus, and creates a visual axis leading to the hospital.