In former times, architecture was regarded as one of the highest forms of art. In those days, art was for extolling the virtues of the nobility; now it largely plays a critical role. Architecture by contrast has yet to go through this development and to this day has mostly remained a servant medium, serving public and personal safety and political and economic interests. This final-year project seeks to be critical, using architecture to hold up a mirror to the world and generate another way of seeing. SHADOWCITY is a concept in the tradition of Bernard Tschumi, who feels that architecture should cause events rather than make space for them.

In the Belgian city of Liège, construction of the TGV station to a competition-winning design by Santiago Calatrava is now in full swing. A concomitant feature of the brief is to redevelop the adjoining quarter of Guillemins. In the next ten to fifteen years, many of the quarter's present inhabitants will have to leave as new offices, apartment complexes and shops are built. My project explores the issue of how the city of Liège will relate to Guillemins, an urban quarter in transition, in the intervening period.

SHADOWCITY proposes giving Guillemins an intermediary infill using temporary interventions with, for and by the local community. My project regards the existing buildings, people, activities and places not as a problem for Guillemins but as a potential. The interventions are to enhance the quality of life in and around the quarter in the transitional phase and contribute to the welfare of the city as a whole. This temporary use, and particularly the milieu it will automatically give rise to for the duration, can help to bring forth a better end-product with a stronger identity. Parts of the temporary uses may then perhaps be taken up more permanently in the final plan.

Applying the strategy and its methods of analysis to Guillemins gave me five potential groups of inhabitants and eight potential 'locations'. The five groups are, respectively, Guillemins (or rather, all that is characteristic of it), small businesses, young people, old people, and subcultures. The designed interventions are crying out to be filled in, standing as they are on the dividing line between architecture and art, folly and building. Since this is only a paper project, I have placed two site boards as the last component. The board at loc 05-06 announced the construction of a relocatable market and included the council's telephone number for reserving a market wagon. That at loc 08 announces the imminent arrival of a footballing area cum car park. These sites boards are my first act as an architect in claiming space for Guillemins and its community.

Place of education: AvB Maastricht | Specialization: architecture | Tutors: Marco Vermeulen, Marc Maurer, Niek Bisscheroux