Exhibition: Re-imagining Belval

Dates: February 8th – 25th, 2023
Place: Main Hall Maison du Savoir, University of Luxembourg.

Students:
Diogo Gomes Costa, Emine Ayse Karaarslan, Ivan Dmitrievich Badiarov, Kasra Karami, Lun Lam Kwok, Mahdi Panjehpour, Malan Ilangarathna Ilangarathnage, Maria Vavoule, Maryam Rasheed, Melsida Babayan, Michel Da Silva Ferreira, Mohammed Zanboa, Selin Sarikaya, Shui Mei Chan, Siranuysh Martirosyan, Vanessa Peresi, Arturas Certovas, Astrid Hennus, Christine Jiayi Chen, Wilhelm Gardeleone, Heida Sigrun Palsdottir, Kristina Shatokhina, Michelle Soares De Sousa.

Lecturers:
Florian Hertweck, Marija Maric, Markus Miessen, César Reyes Nájera, Carole Schmit, David Peleman

Re-imagining Belval. Exhibition setting up.

The exhibition “Re-imagining Belval” presented the proposals by the students, who transversally worked with tutors, external experts, neighbours, and users of Belval on a semester-long immersive on-site research project. The research groups critically explored urban politics, land and housing rights, urban commons, and the environment by evaluating the current spatial, political, and economic mechanisms operating in Belval, imagining alternative scenarios regarding the regeneration of post-industrial heritage and city-making in Luxembourg.

With the support of the academic staff, all the courses, seminars, and workshops of the Master addressed the case of Belval with a hands-on work-attitude, and informed the design proposals to avoid keeping them at mere theoretical level. This opened the possibility to explore Belval with a multidisciplinary perspective and gave the students the opportunity to define projects beyond technical considerations.

Throughout the course of the design studio, students of the first and third semester were supervised weekly by ‘teaching duos’. Each of the teaching duos focused on one entry point into Belval, which was developed into several specific sub-topics to focus the research of the student groups. The topics studied were: Land and Housing, The Urban Commons in Belval, Elements of a Living Environment.

The students’ proposals – and resulting demands – suggest the possibility of collective affordable housing reusing old industrial facilities, autonomous student associations, community-driven intergenerational initiatives, urban ecologies and planning for non-human neighbours, soil archives, and strategies for ecological regeneration.

In short, they present possibilities and models to re-imagine Belval.

Opening day. February 8th, 2023.

Intro panel Re-imagining Belval and documentary “All We Need”?

Documentary “All We Need”?.

Soil samples of Belval, from the topic of Living Environment.