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Project
From Flux to Frame. The Infrastructure Project as a Vehicle of Territorial Imagination and an Instrument of Urbanization in Belgium Since the Early 19th Century
The PhD research investigates the ways in which infrastructure projects represent the underlying structure, or framework, of the Belgian urbanization process. The analysis demonstrates that the design process behind the infrastructure projects was, on the one hand, the outcome of a complex interplay of technical parameters, transport-economic logics, military strategies, or the characteristics of landscape. However, on the other hand, the investigation in the case studies also revealed underlying spatial development motives behind the infrastructure designs, proving that infrastructure was more than the commercial-economic skeleton of the country, a logistic instrument or a merely transport facilitator between point A and B. Infrastructure was successively and conscientiously used as a mechanism through which to steer the expansion of a city, colonize a province, unify a region, regenerate an area or as a way to frame local developments. The analysissketches a wide spectrum of morphological relationships between infrastructure and urbanization in which the trajectory and its junctions act as instigators, catalysts, frameworks, filters and containers of the correlating developments.
The corpus of the research consists of three case studies: the Campine, the coast and urban region of the Antwerp agglomeration.
Throughout the continuous process of urbanization, the landscape of the Campine was definitively redrawn by the canal infrastructure. With the deliberate intention of colonizing the region and reclaiming as much waste land as possible, the Campine canals were designed as parts of a multiple
canal network, widely spread and finely branched, with tentacles reaching into the farthest corners of the desolate region. The new infrastructural technologies (in the form of the Iron Rhine, the local railways, the Albert Canal and the Koning Boudewijn highway) that were subsequentlyimplemented would adapt, double or expand the original Campine canals, but they would also systematically endorse and reinterpret the widely spread landscape figure of the canals as an armature for the successive layers of urbanization.
The early 19th century Belgian coastal landscape was the result of a protracted interplay between natural processes and man-made interventions, consisting of the successive acts of protection, encapsulation and valorization. The railway undeniably had an important morphological impact on the four coastal cities that were branched: Ostend, Blankenberge, Nieuwpoort and Heist. At the turn of the century the landscape of the coastal region would reorient drastically triggeredby the regional schematic for an engineered urbanization project that featured the deployment and entanglement of three parallel infrastructure systems: the coastal tram, the Royal Route and the sea defenses. The implementation of modern roads after the Second World War,together with a drastic reorganization of the public transport resulted in a quasi-ubiquitous and very high level of accessibility, simultaneously reflected in various new forms of accommodation and urbanization patterns.
The city of Antwerp historically grew in successive strips framed by different infrastructural trajectories parallel with the Scheldt river: the old city between the Quays and the Spanish stronghold, the 19th century belt between the Leien and the Brialmont fortifications and the 20th century city between the Ring and the projected belt of fortresses.In the early 20th century the implementation of the urban boulevard on the former Brialmont site is considered the ultimate test of the new emerging discipline of urbanism. It wasn#t until the 1960s that the multiple E3-infrastructure project, consisting of a small ring, a ring railroad, a lateral sewer and the Singel, occupied the vacant fortification site. Simultaneously, the Ringscape provides a test bed for new urban typologies. The saga of the Large Ring Road remains unsettled, even today.
The corpus of the research consists of three case studies: the Campine, the coast and urban region of the Antwerp agglomeration.
Throughout the continuous process of urbanization, the landscape of the Campine was definitively redrawn by the canal infrastructure. With the deliberate intention of colonizing the region and reclaiming as much waste land as possible, the Campine canals were designed as parts of a multiple
canal network, widely spread and finely branched, with tentacles reaching into the farthest corners of the desolate region. The new infrastructural technologies (in the form of the Iron Rhine, the local railways, the Albert Canal and the Koning Boudewijn highway) that were subsequentlyimplemented would adapt, double or expand the original Campine canals, but they would also systematically endorse and reinterpret the widely spread landscape figure of the canals as an armature for the successive layers of urbanization.
The early 19th century Belgian coastal landscape was the result of a protracted interplay between natural processes and man-made interventions, consisting of the successive acts of protection, encapsulation and valorization. The railway undeniably had an important morphological impact on the four coastal cities that were branched: Ostend, Blankenberge, Nieuwpoort and Heist. At the turn of the century the landscape of the coastal region would reorient drastically triggeredby the regional schematic for an engineered urbanization project that featured the deployment and entanglement of three parallel infrastructure systems: the coastal tram, the Royal Route and the sea defenses. The implementation of modern roads after the Second World War,together with a drastic reorganization of the public transport resulted in a quasi-ubiquitous and very high level of accessibility, simultaneously reflected in various new forms of accommodation and urbanization patterns.
The city of Antwerp historically grew in successive strips framed by different infrastructural trajectories parallel with the Scheldt river: the old city between the Quays and the Spanish stronghold, the 19th century belt between the Leien and the Brialmont fortifications and the 20th century city between the Ring and the projected belt of fortresses.In the early 20th century the implementation of the urban boulevard on the former Brialmont site is considered the ultimate test of the new emerging discipline of urbanism. It wasn#t until the 1960s that the multiple E3-infrastructure project, consisting of a small ring, a ring railroad, a lateral sewer and the Singel, occupied the vacant fortification site. Simultaneously, the Ringscape provides a test bed for new urban typologies. The saga of the Large Ring Road remains unsettled, even today.
Date:10 Jan 2008 → 22 Dec 2011
Keywords:Regional infrastructure
Disciplines:Urban and regional design, development and planning
Project type:PhD project