Pottelberg

Our proposal reinforces the ambition for Pottelberg to remain an important employment district in Kortrijk. Innovation driven industries and a critical portion of residential program are added. Bound together by a legible public space network, they turn the district into a new city pole – a twenty-first century Working City.

Ongoing trends challenge the ambition of the project. Over the past couple of centuries, companies and industry have increasingly been placed outside the city due to scaling up, environmental aspects and accessibility.
With the rise of knowledge-based economies and innovative production technologies, there seem to be ever more opportunities to reverse this process. Advanced manufacturing combined with knowledge industries could easier mix with other city functions. Their juxtaposition and interaction with the established (historic) city centers could substantially define the next phase of the city development as such.

Such urban settings could stimulate innovation and cross-fertilization between education and businesses. Seamless transition of start-up companies into established companies. Mixed with residential functions, education program, relaxation and high-quality public space such urban environments would attract a wide range of professionals and their families, binding them to the city.

However, there are virtually no precedents of such urban constellations. Multiplicity of stakeholders, functional requirements and strict environmental regulations prevented such a new urban development paradigm to happen. At least not with inevitability and ease suggested by its rationale.

 

Appreciating the complexity of the task, we have opted for the Juxtaposition of the program instead of  Mixed Urban Blocks. In that we have looked for a balance between the functional zoning in the modernist sense of the word (that secured optimal performance of the robust work units) and the contemporary concept of typical urban mix. Our intention was to prove that the “real” robust manufacturing work program of large scale can still be realized in the context of a typical mid-size European town. We believe that proving such development capacity is of critical importance for the future (re)development of the European urban space.

A number of key investigations guided our approach:

• Function and quality of the public space network
• Integration of infrastructure
• Level of integration/autonomy (zoning) of different programs in relation to their respective functional requirements
• Typological diversity of business and residential uses
• Environmental resilience and sustainability
• Role of the preserved historical buildings