Contribution - Angélique Soglo and Hamed Touré

Intersticial soil depths

The project creates a destination in the no-mans-lands of Schaerbeek Formation. The fascination for this building started from the “interstitial” position it occupies in the area. This interstice creates a new link between Haren and Neder-Over-Heembeek on the canal, with a new installation as a central point a new facility. This facility is entirely dedicated to soil and is created in an abandoned building of the SNCB, formerly dedicated to accommodating ancillary activities (refectory/canteen, administration…).

The metaphor of forest stratification is used to describe its functioning, where food is grown and compost is collected and fermented, recalling the agricultural legacy of Haren. The understory, the ground floor, where soils is gathered and reworked into construction materials. The production hall allows to shows several facets of the site. Soils are brought to the site, stored, exposed and treated on site under the eye of everyone passing-by. They participate in the composition of the landscape, of theinterstitial place.

The ground floor has no limits, it was designed from the soil. Niches merge into the program, and the movement continues as the soil is stored and treated. There is no precise space to store the different soils, it is done at random so as to compose and continue the landscape with it. The soils are left on the plot outside and then brought inside.

The circulation in the building is a promenade with an inhabited interstice leading to the glass house and the kitchen garden where food will be grown and then cooked in the canteen that appears as an interesting facility for the future industrialdevelopment.