How citizen protest can redesign the city

Image: Ivan Put 

A traffic-free street where children play, cultural activities are organised, and musicians provide a good atmosphere is hard to imagine in Brussels. Thanks to Openstreets, initiated by Filter Café Filtré Atelier (FCFA) together with partners such as Kanal Centre Pompidou, Ultima Vez, and Cultureghem, several streets are (re)designed as playful public spaces during summer. The team of FCFA consists mostly of architects and uses its knowledge and imagination to develop spatial representations together with neighbours. In addition, FCFA organises actions in public space as a plea for a more liveable city. We interviewed Lotte Luykx, one of the architects at FCFA. 

 

Frithjof Paulsen, Pippa de Kinder May 1st, 2023 

How did Filter Café Filtré Atelier come about?

Luykx: Filter Café Filtré Atelier is a non-profit organisation that grew out of a citizen movement in 2018, as a reaction to a report by Greenpeace investigating the air quality of Brussels schools and broadcasted by Pano (TV programme of the VRT). It turned out that the air quality was particularly bad and had a significant impact on children’s health. At one of the schools, a group of parents immediately reacted and set up a playful action in front of the school gate. They closed the schoolstreet for cars, invited politicians to talk about the subject and used the street for other activities. The spark spread to many other parents and schools. Throughout 2018 and the year after, more than hundred schools participated. Every Friday morning, fifteen minutes before the school bell rang, parents closed the street and organised original activities. The actions helped to raise awareness, put air quality on the political agenda and, above all, revealed the impact of traffic on public space and health. Annekatrien Verdickt, architect and one of the founders of Filter Café Filtré, was one of those parents. She saw that there was a lot of energy in this network of parents. A new group of people wanted to think about a sensitive subject: children and health. Instead of shouting on the sidelines that things had to be better, they decided to show how the situation could be improved. Together with a groups of parents, FCFA started developing design proposals and at the same time continued to take action in public space. That two-pronged practice was the beginning of the FCF Atelier.  

How do you involve citizens in projects?

The first workshop on school environments was called Air for Schools and involved the FCF network  directly: groups of parents, teachers and school management, were asked to work around their own school environment. Together with Architecture Workroom Brussels, we organised a large workshop where we put plans on the table and asked what the problems were, if they already saw solutions or where the opportunities lay. In this way, we gathered a lot of local expertise. In other trajectories, we also start with that first participatory workshop, from which the inspiration and expertise later feed into the design process. For Openstreets, we organise so-called 'imagination ateliers', where we actively involve neighbours. On the streets, in the Maritime district, we pin plans on a table, and exchange opinions and thoughts with neighbours. 

Which tensions or conflicts do you notice in your work? Where does citizen participation still falter?

Generally, our projects are very positively received, Openstreets is full of smiling faces and happy neighbours with rarely any opposition. Last year, together with the municipality, we installed a mobility test with a traffic filter in the Maritime district in Molenbeek. In comparison to other projects, here we encountered some heated reactions.  The filter made a diagonal cut on a central intersection in the neighbourhood. Adjacent streets were turned into one way streets. This intervention allowed neighbours and local commerce to reach their homes and destinations but prevented transit traffic from using the small neighbourhood streets as a shortcut. Even before the mobility test was installed, or information was spread, a few people started a petition against it. Some people felt passed over, because according to their opinion, they were not adequately consulted. This revealed several deeper lying issues away from the mobility debate. For us, this experience stressed again the importance of good communication and information, for example, stewards in place at the intervention explaining the changed traffic situation or informal info sessions in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, the test period of three months ended prematurely but as a positive turnout, the debate on mobility certainly is on the table now. 

Your projects are indeed at the interface between politics, planning and design. What is your role in this process? Do you feel more like an architect or more like an activist?

Fifty-fifty, a combination of the two. I think as an architect, you're never looking for an objective result, but for a design that is best for all. Instead of waiting for a client with a good question, FCFA is thinking and creating together with citizens. That's why we always start with a preparatory workshop. We look together for problems and opportunities, so we go by neighbours’ experiences, and they write the assignment with us. We as architects then get to work on a solution, often design-based. 

What do you hope to change with your work in Brussels?

We hope to evolve towards a city that is more liveable, healthier, where we can move freely without worrying about dangerous traffic situations or breathing bad air. A city that works according to the STOP principle (giving priority to walking, biking, public transport, and lastly to private cars), a city that is climate-resilient, that can take a beating, facing the heat during summer, a city where there is more attention for greenery, life quality and public space. For FCFA, the street is the key space for transition. In public streets many themes come together: road safety, greening, social cohesion... If you look at the map of Brussels a major part of the city  consists of street surfaces. To work on a sustainable transition, we must develop a model or use different types of models and systematically modify all those streets, redesigning the city, together with citizens.

 

Curious about more projects? https://fcfatelier.be/ 

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