The street is a complex socio-physical network that reveals various layers of life in a city: its historical setting, planning, political and economic situation, and cultural mentality. Studying such complexities of social life is important in order to understand the constantly changing identity of space. In the face of globalization, cities are being transformed into similar prototypes of each other and architecture has experienced placeness and loss of identity. Analysis of the context is relevant for the “localization” of new design interventions and it could help to avoid universal design solutions.

The project focus on a continuous old wall, which separates the site into two, as the “Spolia”. According to the research on both previous and present urban pattern of the neighborhood, the value of the wall is reflected: it is one of the few remnants of the buried river and a defining character in the sites social manifestation. As a result of interactions with the differing segments of wall, it was renovated again and again and the qualities are variant. The wall acts as connection and separation, nature and built environment, protection and orientation, closure and openness. The intention of the master plan is to create a community oriented block, with the wall connect the newly added public facilities and form a linear landscape run through the whole block, thereby inverting the space along the wall from “back” to accessible “front” to serve the residents living in the neighborhood. The architectural program in the master plan is a public building that consists of a library and a sports center. The meaning of a street corner is also taken into consideration due to the site location. The corner building, works as an entrance of the linear “wall” space. Following the alley along the wall from a street corner, a vivid “front”, represents both a spiritual core of history and cohesion of the neighborhood.

The theme of the studio, spolia, is a term from archaeology, which is to place remnants in a new environment. The project started research of a historical river in the city—the Senne in Brussels. The river influenced the urban development of the whole city morphologically and typologically. Interventions regarding the river show how local people treat spolia. The site is also located along the trace of Senne. A typical wall was formed because of the covering the Senne. It indicates the history but also segregates and influences current situations. It serves as such an important role that it should not be easily discarded. It is the spolia for this site. There is a big difference between the two sides of the wall--living and working, nature and the built environment, leisure and production. The urban concept is to reuse the wall to activate the neighbourhood, increase housing and public facilities and remove the productive constructions to the suburban area. The urban regards the wall as the main spolia and returns the centre of the block to the public. The wall frames the public facilities and parks of the community garden. The architectural proposal continues the focus on the wall as the spolia and explores how to treat it on the architectural scale. The project deals with three issues: the urban gestures facing different sides, the combination of the elderly and the children and the reuse of the existing wall. Among these, to reuse and reconfigure the wall intertwine the other two and becomes the main spine of my project. In the architectural scale, the content of spolia can be enriched. The wall is not only a line. It has the thickness; it has structure; it has a function. The wall acts as the perimeter of the project and organizes programs. The two user groups share an event hall and the kitchen. They have visual connections but also have their privacy. The façade intends to remain the solidness of the wall and make the new open and light while ties in with the old. So for the new façade, the frame can open up the courtyard by reducing the mass of the wall. The original texture of the old is remained to highlight the old wall. The façade also uses similar bricks of the old wall but uses different bonding to create a subtle difference between new and old. Especially for the entrance, light and translucent material is applied to the cladding to express an opening of the old. The interior use wood floor and plaster wall to release the heaviness of the texture of the bricks. In conclusion, my project lies partly in the urban solution. It articulates and celebrates an existing wall from urban scale down to materialization. In different stages, the content of the wall is enriched and enhanced.

The story started from the invisible river Senne on the urban scale of Brussels, concentrating on the wall which is both spolia on site and the identity of my youth center. The archaeological idea of Spolia keeps me discovering the existing value, then constantly thinking of collecting, composing and re-using. Once existing fragments collide with new ones, the process of bricolage comes up.
The wall on site is the ghost of Senne that could be seen as spolia on immaterial, but now it became the backdrop of people’s lives in the neighborhood, where the youths there are facing issues such as stigmatization. The strategy of the urban proposal and architectural part is to use the wall as a frame to turn the situation from segregation and at the meanwhile to break youths’ mental wall. The old wall owns the collective memory, speaks for space. That’s why the walls teach.

The Urban Architecture graduation studio focuses on the topic of spolia, a term from archaeology that defines the leftovers of a building that find themselves back in a new structure. Spolia is about reuse, finding value in what is there, and how it can acquire new meanings by being transformed or relocated. It is also about stratification, of adding layers to a story that continues when the spolia is given a new life. The research focused on time and the unfinished, exploring the relationship between architecture and time. Architecture is subjected to the social forces of time, defined by the change of users and functions over time. Buildings are usually designed to be a finished product, with a specific use, leaving the time factor out of the equation. This often leads to vacancy or underuse, due to the inability of the building to adapt to new uses or undergo a transformation to accommodate new uses. Aiming for the unfinished allows time to take its course. Like spolia, a building can acquire new meanings – or a new life – when transformed. This stratification of layers of time, materials and uses, turns the building into a story that will never be complete, evolving and adapting to respond to occurrences over time.

This research is the result of an ongoing work of search. Throughout this process, research and design have been constantly interwoven together. Initially the research gave clues for the design, which in turn informed the research back. The aim is to position the project toward the city, at different scales. In this act of positioning, the project reveals the problems of the city and tries to address them. This research is presented in form of narrative. The text is divided in four main chapters, each one of which is an essay that deals with different aspects of the project, and contains elements of research, borrowed theories, ideas, quotes and reflections.