Streetscape Territories is an international practice (founded in Barcelona and New York in 2010, currently operating from Brussels, Ghent, London and New York) of research, educational activities and planning/design consultancy. The practice focuses on the transformation of the urban landscape, studied at the intermediate scale, considering the making of diverse and tolerant streetscapes the main objective to achieve socially, economically and environmentally sustainable environments for its inhabitants.
The practice deals with the way architectural interventions, open spaces, the property structure and its inherent accessibility and permeability, configure streetscapes as manifestations of social and productive encounter and how their inhabitants can give meaning to them by appropriation.
The research and design projects focus on models of proximity within a street, neighborhood or region and starts from the assumption that urban space, from the domestic scale till the scale of the city, can be understood as a discontinuous collective space (de Solà-Morales, 1992), containing different levels of shared use that are defined by multiple physical, cultural or territorial boundaries (Scheerlinck, 2013): how do people, open space and buildings relate to each other and how does this contribute to the local identity of the built and social environment? Overall continuity, or strict public consensus in the way urban space is used or claimed, is of less importance: urban space is the result of constant negotiation and systems of appropriation or mis-appropriation.
Instead of having a programmatic or formal approach, the research and design approaches focus rather on the spatial qualities or potentials of architecture in the urban landscape, taking into account the socio-cultural impact of an intervention. The level of programmatic specification is questioned, going against the growing tendency to secure urban projects through programme, leaving no space for multiple interpretation or use.
The intermediate scale, that is the scale between the architectural intervention and the urbanistic plan, defines the research and intervention domain. Within this approach, collective spaces that operate at this intermediate scale, are characterized by an “between/among” space condition are read, mapped or designed: systems of streets, squares, gardens, parks, but also patios, porches, enclaves, covered or portico spaces, courtyards and all other interstitial areas are subject of research and design.
The research and design practice include systematic and comparative analysis of existing neighborhoods, streetscapes, public spaces, urban landscapes or complex buildings in different locations. It also includes consultancy to municipalities or other governments to plan, design or evaluate streetscape projects. All work with multiple approaches from different disciplinary fields and considers research and design simultaneous and integrated processes of developing urban projects. The projects each have a strong in-situ dimension and seek to help to develop real-life projects with local stakeholders. Besides projects in more developed contexts like New York, Ghent or Brussels, the project also focuses on developing contexts, leading to a multiple understanding of its main concepts and methods to this developing condition (Addis Abeba, Havana, Guyaquil, Onitsha, Karachi…).
The reading and use of collective spaces, as an important part of inhabiting the urban landscape, is greatly changed due to environmental, economic and social developments: changing climate, financial crisis and balancing employment rates, political regimes causing changes in ethnic or religious dominance and new flows of migration change the meaning of urban space and by that, its proper use and appropriation. Users change their behaviors, attitudes and claims of squares, gardens, streets and parks, respondent to the incisive and profound changes of their daily reality and opportunities.
Collective space- today more than ever projected by academics, practitioners and stakeholders as multiple, flexible and open- is contradictory to the apparent increasing need and desire to secure boundaries and claim spaces explicitly, in an individual as well as in a collective way. While the need to rethink and build new types of collective spaces grows (Avermaete, 2007), more effort seems to be put into separating, delimiting and specializing urban space from the scale of the domicile to the scale of a neighborhood or the city. The Streetscape Territories research and design practice seeks to study this balance of parallel mechanisms of space production in different contexts and test the outcomes through real life projects, considering the local neighbors stakeholders as main actors and beneficiaries.
As part of this project, various on-site workshops, meetings, studies and seminars are organised with groups of international researchers, students, young professionals and local stakeholders and policymakers, to apply theoretical or conceptual frameworks about depth configurations, accessibility, permeability and territorial boundaries on site.
for more information: kris.scheerlinck@kuleuven.be or kris.scheerlinck@icloud.com
Streetscape Territories is a collective practice and consists of a group of professionals and academics, as well as students of graduate and postgraduate levels. Previous and current collaborators or contributers:
Kris Scheerlinck, Hannes Van Damme, Ferran Massip, Gitte Schreurs, Jan Van Hoof, Pedro Dachs, Mikel Gurrutxaga, Natalia Hidalgo, Román Sarrió, Vincent Chukwuemeka, Asiya Sadiq, Sis Pillen, Maarten Gheysen, Patricia Tamayo, Cecillia Chiappini, Yannick Sluyts, Pille Koppe, Luna Catteeuw, Arnout De Schryver, Matteo Paracchini, Omar Ahmad, Iwo Borkowicz, Simen Lambrecht, Xavier Mendez, Ahmed Adeel, Siddarth Thyagaran and Rasya Kumar.
for information about the Streetscape Territories notebook publications:
for information about KU Leuven, Department of Architecture, where the Streetscape Territories practice is linked to, please visit:
Streetscape Territories 