Buda LP

Year | 2018

Location | BUDA, Brussels

Clients | Jan Zaman

Building on last years live project ‘Made in Brussels’ Buda LP  has worked alongside the client Jan Zaman and a network of stakeholders to produce a body of work that explores the key features and opportunities of multilevel industry. Based in industrial Buda to the north of Brussels, the goal was to bring fresh ideas to ongoing conversations on how to retain and intensify what has defined Buda for generations: industry.

An initial meeting in Sheffield with the client introduced us to our 6500m2 site and a brief that the group felt could be challenged. A week of brainstorming produced a number of bold proposals that the group felt could reinvent and revitalise industry in the city. However, it wasn’t until we visited Buda in our second week that we realised industry didn’t need reinventing. Industry was alive, it was well and it was functioning. Industry just needed attention. The conversation became less revolutionary, focus switched to how we could nurture industry. A list of core objectives our proposal would need to meet was produced. From this a base model for multi-level industry was developed containing industry of different scales stacked on top of each other, with shared yards, lifts and loading areas.

This base model would work and would meet the main objectives our client had set out. However, this was one voice and on the subject of Buda’s future there are many voices that need to be heard. We proposed that the base model set out what we ‘had to’ do, but it could be rearranged and added to with a series of proposals that we ‘could do’. These were informed by conversations with stakeholders, client and our own ambitions to improve the area. On a second trip to Brussels we presented our ideas so far, demonstrated how this base model could change with the addition of ‘could dos’ and engaged with all of the various stakeholders to hear their voice and find out what they thought a development on this site could bring to the community.

This was the first time these various parties had been in the same room as each other and the feedback we received was incredibly diverse. We soon realised our initial aim to produce one single scheme could not possibly demonstrate this wealth of ideas. Our final outcome became a series of booklets or studies that investigated the ideas that had been proposed and incorporated them into the base model. The ‘could do’ nature of the studies was demonstrated through a diagram of interchangeable bricks and an animation that cycled through the various ideas within those studies.As we had built on the work by ‘Made in Brussels’ we hope that our work will too be built on in future developments. A third trip to Buda is planned where the work we have produced will be presented to a larger audience of stakeholders allowing for more voices to be heard and for any development in the future to provide more than just new industrial space. We hope that through this live projects ability to connect stakeholders and get them engaged in the future of Buda the legacy of the work will be in reinforcing and nurturing a network in this industrial community, and any development on site to be an embodiment of the collective aspirations of all involved.