This scheme transforms the concentrically evolved traditional city of Brussels into a fabric to allow for the necessary expansion as capital of a growing Europe. The project should be regarded as a strategy to reorganize the existing rhizomatic structure. An advanced system of public transport presents a springboard for further extensions to the city. The design constructs twelve state-of-the art residential strips interlaced with choreographed belts of unsullied nature, a city within the city. The latter is carried by a tapis flottant which, proceeding from the various underground stations, blazes a trail through the unstructured urban wilderness. A trio of residential strips in Zennedal on the abandoned railway yard at Schaarbeek, have been worked out in detail. In a layout based on experiments with three-dimensional urban planning, these three strips, crowned with an artificial horizon, link the two ridges along the valley of Zennedal. Below that horizon seethes an intense urban environment.

A number of public 'nodal points' implanted in each residential strip open the way to systematic transformation of the urban context. One of these, a hybrid shopping centre, has been developed in greater detail. The shopping centre acts as a social generator, transmuting the current two-dimensional zoning into a three-dimensional hybrid structure.

Place of education: TU Delft
Tutors: Jan Heeling, Paul Drewe, Clemens Steenbergen, Henk Engel & Arie Graafland
Specialization: urban planning/architecture