INVESTIGATION

With the first territorial analysis of the Dutch Belgian border, I realized that there is movement at the border every day. The border between the two countries is defined by the movement or the absence of movement on the border. How we perceive it, is not depended on the line drawn on the map, but rather from the movement, or the absence of it, of goods, people, knowledge, soil, water… along and across the border. My second investigation was research about the defense system of world war one and world war two bunker systems. The events that took place all over the defense lines shaped and defined that space. The line in the map itself, or the territory owned by a country was not defining the border region, rather did the Machine Gun towers, and the airplanes crossing the borders. The soldiers marching along with it and the workers creating concrete bunkers on it. The final investigation was a walk through the Border Town of Overslag. A small town of 200 People located on the dutch Belgian border. At first sight, you might assume that there is not a lot of border events happening. But by walking on the border and mapping my path, I experienced a lot of events myself defining the border. They ranged from observing people that crossed to the border to visit the church, to people taking informal paths across the border and birds flying across the space to find food. Especially in the eastern part of the town, I experience a row of nine different events. On this Plot, I designed the INTERREG campus.

EVENT TO SPACE

After being conscious of these Events, I narrowed them down to their essence and designed an Architectural Element for each of the Experiences. The encountered Events are frozen in the Elements and can allow being reexperienced by a user, or to create their own, new types of movements. By sorting the events and rearranging them on the plot I created an architectural space. The Interreg campus. The nine buildings of the campus offer a broad variety of spaces ranging from a grid of pillars to a 3 story tower to a tribune. The spaces allow different uses like office spaces, archives, Outside areas, Social rooms…

The spaces suggest different uses, but according to the interpretation of the user a specific use can be defined The “spaces of event” are connected by different sized pathways. They vary in size to create different experiences when transferring from one space to another. Some of them are very narrow allowing only one person the cross. Others are open and spacious suggesting a big group of people to transfer to another space. The Facades of the Spaces are underlining the initial event which informed the design. Each Space has its individual event, which results in nine different facade types.

CONCLUSION

After investigation on the movements along the border, I designed a campus where the events thems self turn into a program. The user can move through that space, experience their own events and interpret it in their way. They can reexperience the events I observed while walking on the plot or finding their own ways of defining moving through the space.