Elodie Heuschen & Emilie Vanhove & Pierre Delaforge

Our project takes place in Belgium, in the province of Liège, and more specifically in the Vesdre valley. Heavy flooding occurred in July 2021, including in Pepinster, where the city was largely devastated by flooding.

The stake is : thinking of the city in order to be able to continue, after heavy flooding, to live in this beautiful place, both in terms of the landscapes and the attachment of the inhabitants to their neighborhood. Part of the city is a blank page to reinvent. It must be built back better to become resilient while retaining the spirit of the original city.

This affects us particularly because we are the generation that will be impacted by climate change and we will increasingly face this kind of situation. The time to respond and adapt to these new challenges is now ! This project represents what society will expect of us as architects in the years to come.

In order to respond to these challenges and to enable the rehabilitation of the city serenely, we had a reflection on the proximity of some functions with water and on the distribution of functions within buildings, with essential functions in security against the rising waters.
Concretely, we have chosen to rework all of Pepinster’s shorelines to provide greater resilience to flooding, to create softer slopes and welcoming public spaces in connection with waterways. These same public spaces create nice views and landscapes to which we turn our buildings and to which we want Pepinster to turn, and this is why we call our project « Rivages », which means « shorelines » in English.

In conclusion, we can summarize this project with these three terms: resilience, future and well-being.

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