Bart Hoylaerts

The mission stated a project in Borgloon with “youth” for a topic. Research in urban development shows that the city itself is as an interwoven whole with a large mixture of functions. Youngsters know their region and its possibilities, and use it gratefully. The infrastucture of each of these possibilities is integrated in the city and they don’t ask for a largerscale project.

When we analyse the theme “youth”, we must dare to look at its problems. Today, a lot of young people frequently get lost in their search for identity. They try to escape from reality and drugs help them with this problem.

The same confrontation between context and architecture also takes place between the project in Borgloon and the former drug-addict. Just as architecture adapts itself to the context, the former addict must incorporate himself into society. The location of the project, the historical place of birth of Haspengouw and even Limburg, becomes the starting point for the re-birth of a lost personality. A person gets the chance of growing in the foottracks of the city. Afterwards this person, when he has refound his personality again, can exceed its borders (of the city), the old town circumvallations.

This urban development tale results in an architectural project where the former addict, as the main actor, grows to the society in several stages (scenes). In the other direction the population can get introduced into an unknown and misunderstood problem of society. The confrontation between these two takes place at the point where the project “anchors itself” into the context: the community room. Both the inhabitants and the occupants of the project enter this place with each their own scenario on the background. 

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