KOOZ Ode to Joy proposes an alternative to the commercialisation of institutional space in Brussels, following the city’s decision to sell a huge proportion of its building stock in its ‘European Quarter’.

ML | JS | AT The European Quarter is utterly fascinating and exasperating at the same time. It is a monofunctional office district, riddled with big architectural gestures devoid of meaning, overwriting a bourgeois residential quarter dating back to King Leopold II. When we heard about the mega-sale of 50% of the buildings of the European Commission and the ensuing transformation of a significant part of the district, we knew we wanted to dedicate our research to speculate on its effect.

The transformation of Brussels into an international ‘service city’ during the 20th century and its material effects has led to the impoverishment of a significant part of the city. This is traceable along the division of the city in its North-West and socio-economically privileged South-East — including the European Quarter. In combination with a practically non-existent culture of fostering a public building stock, the Brussels Capital Region is unable to alleviate this divide. This results in an ongoing struggle for any social or cultural use of space on the terms of an indifferent private market which is most drastically illustrated by the general lack and inadequate state of the social housing offer.

KOOZ The project addresses the sake, on behalf of governmental bodies, of publicly-owned building stock for short-term financial advantages, resulting in an inevitable increase in the value of this land. How does this market-driven practice undermine and threaten the notion of the city as commons?

ML | JS | AT To be quite clear: with an entirely market-driven approach, there are no commons left. If a public institution sells off buildings at market price and private developers redevelop them profitably themselves, there is little to no leverage for truly public or shared spaces. It is therefore not surprising, in a market-driven proposal, that public spaces will make up only 0.5% of the proposed redevelopment. In the case of 21 buildings being sold in the European Quarter, a notoriously monofunctional office district, the type of housing which is being created by the sale is particularly emblematic. Only 30% of the 50% housing target will be achieved following the negotiations with the private project managers. Furthermore, the financing of the 7.5% social housing is entirely unresolved. We have to realise that as of now, anything other than luxury housing will not exist beyond a mere declaration of intent.

Our project proposes an alternative economic model based on a leasehold system. Through the alteration of the sale in its intermediate stage, the Belgian Federal State can keep the land, while the buildings on top are privately owned. Through compensation and cross-financing mechanisms, we could achieve 30 times more truly public, un-commercial space on our case study site — and more than half of the dwellings would be below market-price. The European Commission, as Brussels’ most influential leaseholder, plays a pivotal role in being able to pay a market-price ground rent.

Ode To Joy is not about propagating exclusively public construction projects. Our aim is to distribute spatial responsibilities in the most sustainable way possible. The state should own the land, the dwellers their homes and the European Commission their offices. If the process is to be concluded with the entire privatisation of the buildings and land, no one should be surprised by the devastating effect on the neighbourhood’s affordability and accessibility. Selling off the future of public influence entirely — in a process involving the two biggest responsible institutions on Belgian and European level — should simply not be acceptable.

KOOZ Ode to Joy specifically looks into the European Commission’s decision to sell of 50% of their “underperforming” building stock in order to achieve their exemplary goal for climate neutrality by 2030. Could you expand on how the race for “climate neutrality” is making both public and private entities fall short of their own objectives?

ML | JS | AT At a time in which public bodies and private companies overtake each other in the race for “climate neutrality”, a term distinguishing between carbon neutrality and carbon compensation in the fine print only – we witness institutions falling behind their own ambitions. A vast gap has opened up between drafting the right regulations for others to comply with and following them through as a true example. Exporting policy while externalising responsibility has become the way to act. With the tremendous effect of the ensuing land speculation left off the climate bill, a blind eye is turned on the negative impact of this externalisation practice on urbanity.

In the case of the European Commission, the sale has to be read as their inability to take on the responsibility of making their own working environment sustainable. By selling off their buildings, the deficit in operational energy performance is simply outsourced to the private market to lose the red numbers from their own performance assessment directed towards carbon neutrality by 2030. This practice clashes with the European Commission’s public advocacy for a holistic life cycle approach and large-scale efforts like the New European Bauhaus initiative. Handing one’s problem over to the private market and by that stimulating the creation of new office space as well as the commercialization of the neighbourhood cannot in any way be interpreted as “imagining and building together a sustainable and inclusive future”.

KOOZ The project advocates for the implementation of a leasehold system, speculativelyreworking one of the building parcels — îlot 130 — in this model. Ode to Joy seeks the programmatic combination of the offices of the EC with affordable dwellings and the Brussels Centre for Urban Studies. How does this form of adaptive reuse address “climate neutrality” — which informed the initial sale of the buildings?

ML | JS | AT It adds the “adaptive” to the “reuse”. None of the buildings are up for demolition entirely. Nonetheless, they are regarded as energetically underperforming. But this does not automatically mean that the most sustainable solution is to carry out a renovation that meets the latest technical requirements. Only through the close observation of the existing spaces and their uses, it is possible to identify which adaptation is needed for which space. Here-in, the building’s activation is the main key. An enhanced building activation is achieved identifying three layers of potentials. Firstly, increasing the existing very low activation of office use by combination with other programs such as dwellings and cultural offers that operate at different times of the day. Secondly, by a precise spatial allocation, the effort of transformation can be minimised while creating the appropriate conditions for each use-case. And finally, understanding and instrumentalizing the existing economic pressure. Areas of the building that are not valued at a high price in the sale allow for a more creative and extensive transformation.

KOOZ What is the potential of such a programmatic matrix — how is the project rendered economically sustainable as an operation? What policies could be put in place to ensure consideration of the full lifecycle process of buildings?

ML | JS | AT Ode to Joy employs different compensation and cross-financing mechanisms turning around the plotting of commercial against social functions. The closeness of the European Commission as Brussels' most influential leaseholder becomes an asset instead of a menace. The basis forms a leasehold system that is based on comparative cost benefits. As the risk and return on an investment in land and the buildings on top are distributed unevenly, splitting them up results in an economically more efficient system and enables certain compensations between the leasehold giver and the leasehold taker. What this means is that institutional office space can indirectly finance cultural and social programs. Beyond its economic potential, this programmatic matrix finally allows for the encounter of the institution with the city in the unprogrammed spaces of the in-between in which the different users can meet.

What is important to realise is that in Brussels, demolition is not the main problem anymore. This is a unique situation for a European city; for example, Zurich still operates on the obligatory demolition-reconstruction practice, in the name of “sustainability”. By contrast, the new and highly innovative building code of Brussels will already work with a life cycle assessment including embodied energy and therefore favouring renovation. The main problem in Brussels, however, is the supremacy of the private real estate market.

The policy that Ode to Joy puts forward is threefold: firstly, public land should never be privatised. This means actively preventing speculation while at the same time allowing for and keeping public influence on the transformation and reprogramming of the existing buildings on top by private entities. Outdated or vacant spaces are more than a commodity of the real estate market. Secondly, public investment should be calculated over a longer period of time. The economic model which we propose of course relies on a one-off investment of public money — but this investment also results in regular income through the ground rent. For a complete refinancing of the public funds invested, we consider 50 years to be appropriate. Third: public institutions should learn from alternative dwelling models such as existing community land trusts based on leasehold systems. This is not only limited to new forms of affordable housing in existing buildings on public land but includes diverse programmatic combinations of cultural, institutional and social uses which explore new ways of living together.

The lifecycle process of a building transcends its materiality. When public institutions start taking the [threat of] financialisation of our built environment seriously, they have the capacity to turn it into a tool for permanently calibrating our cities in an ecologically, economically and socially sustainable way. Otherwise, policy makers will continue to wake up every few years facing over-gentrified districts next to social precarity asking themselves where the diversity of their city has disappeared — while it was their policies which have deliberately left urbanity to the mercy of the private market.

KOOZ The project challenges the role of the European Union beyond its mere bureaucratic function but as an institutional space that enables urbanity. What is the potential of this today, at a time when the very concept of the EU is arguably weakened?

ML | JS | AT We believe that the European renovation project could be a collective moment to recharge the ideas at the very core of the European Union. Urbanity means living together not on the basis of commonness but on the basis of difference. When people transform structures that have fallen out of time and use, they start conceiving a city for each other. Realising the shared sense of belonging which is at the core of the European project means creating an institutional space that not only endures but enables urbanity.

The current situation provides the European institutions with the unique opportunity to live up to their ambitions. Transforming their spaces in a sustainable manner, they could act as a true role model by taking responsibility in their de-facto capital. This does not mean that the EU is solely responsible. In regard to Brussels’ urbanistic history, it is important to recognize that where the EU was indifferent, Belgium was opportunistic. Leading to an uncontrolled overwriting of the urban fabric to the disadvantage of Brussels’ people.

It is crucial to finally end the misunderstanding of Brussels as a ‘service city’. Instead, the EU’s spatial reality must be a productive testing ground for how we want to live together in the future. Brussels has been hosting European institutions for over 70 years; it is high time that the European project starts taking shape in Brussels.

KOOZ Three days before your final presentation of the project, the open call for the transformation of îlot 130 was announced. You have since travelled back to Brussels to showcase the proposal; how was it received?

ML | JS | AT Earlier this summer, the Cityforward sales procedure and redevelopment passed two important steps. The first stage of the sale has been completed and the entire building portfolio has been transferred from the European Commission to the Cityforward fund on behalf of the Belgian Federal State. Shortly afterwards, the first round of open calls for the redevelopment of the buildings was announced — including our case study site at îlot 130. Subsequently and in order to make use of the findings of Ode to Joy, we decided to advocate for a more radical understanding of transformation on site.

Picking up our conversations with various actors in Brussels, we were further encouraged to intervene with our alternative perspective. As of now, our observation on the severe implications of the commercialisation on the entire quarter has been underlined and echoed, even by parties from within the Cityforward consortium, voicing a disillusionment with the setup and outcome of the procedure. Therefore, we are currently contacting federal and regional politicians to lobby for a reconsideration of the second stage of the sale. The goal is to ultimately prevent the wholesale privatisation of the buildings.

Parallel to the ongoing architectural competitions for building transformations, we are setting up an exhibition of Ode to Joy in Brussels. This space will show the material of the project, which is heavily reliant on film as its communicative medium. The exhibition will ultimately serve as a space for a workshop, which we want to incorporate into the official competition procedure of îlot 130. Between campaign and conversation, it will open up a much-needed discussion and hopefully contribute towards establishing a new narrative.

The urgency of the climate crisis does not mean our institutions have to automatically fall back onto the private market to provide solutions, no matter their (social) cost. In order to imagine a more sustainable alternative together, we are currently in conversation with among others the Flemish Architecture Institute as well as CIVA, the architecture museum of Brussels, and are very much looking forward to what autumn will bring.

KOOZ Your project is developed within the context of the Chair for Affective Architectures and station+ (the name given to the Chair of Architecture and Storytelling), both at ETHZ. What prompted you to base your research at the intersection of these two strands?

ML | JS | AT The initial trigger was our work as researchers for the European Citizen Initiative HouseEurope! initiated by station+. This initiative advocates for a change of EU-laws to facilitate renovation and save our existing building stock from demolition, driven by speculation. We are passionate believers in the ideal of the EU and our conviction is that we must actively shape our institutions. In parallel, encountering the spatial reality of these institutions in Brussels is an overwhelming experience as an architect.

As one of our team has lived in Brussels, we were particularly aware of the significance of the historically dysfunctional relationship of the city with the European institutions. Therefore, we chose to be guided principally by the Chair of Affective Architectures. The chair has focused on an analogue issue of spatial responsibility of institutions in a four-semester collaboration with ETH Real Estate, researching the relationship of the university’s space with the city. Led by Prof An Fonteyne — whose practice is based in Brussels — the chair additionally brought a deep and multi-faceted understanding of the city beyond the European Quarter.

The most important realisation we had, combining the expertise of the two chairs, was that the material of an institution is ultimately people. Therefore, we engaged in conversations with more than 30 people involved in the Quarter’s building sales process, from within and outside the institutions and from the multiple perspectives of activism, real estate and academia. Only with this rich involvement was the project able to gain its depth and the capacity to develop an alternative solution.

KOOZ The project runs at the intersection between architecture and activism. How do you understand your role as architects and how do you seek to continue to practice?

ML | JS | AT During our master’s thesis, we were already acutely aware of the privileged academic position provided by our university education. We were able to dedicate our time to urban issues that conventional architecture practices would hardly manage to address — and when such issues are addressed by people outside institutions, they are often disregarded. If we, as architects, want to help to make socio-ecological transformations possible, we must challenge the systems in which we are practising. Otherwise, we restrict ourselves to the continuation of present problems of the urban constitution — for instance in what is usually described as green-washing. Therefore, we consider it integral to our role as architects to assume responsibility and carefully look, listen and re-imagine.

As a team of close friends, we have worked in collaboration throughout our studies and on independent projects for six years already. In December, we will officially join the teaching team of station+, the Chair of Architecture and Storytelling at ETH Zurich. We are looking forward to dedicating the coming year to the HouseEurope! campaign and at the same time exploring how Ode to Joy can contribute to the discussion, as a case study for a transformation beyond materiality.

Bios

JAM was established in 2024 by Maximilian Lewark, Josiane Schmidt and Alexander Throm. Conceived by a team of close friends, the architecture practice is built on a fluid collaboration on academic and independent projects since 2018. The practice contemplates architecture in light of the socio-ecological transformation of our built environment. JAM has focused on the design of various small-scale transformations, studies and renovation workshops in Germany, Italy and Switzerland. Their work has been exhibited in the context of a winning competition entry at ZAZ Bellerive in Zurich. Advocating for a transformation beyond materiality, they put the idea of spatial responsibility to the fore. Architecture emerges not only from cultural and social but as well from economic and political processes. JAM believes we must challenge the systems in which we are working in order to start conceiving a city for each other. Most recently, JAM has engaged with and rethought a large-scale real estate operation of the European Commission in Brussels. The independent diploma project Ode to Joy has evolved from an academic project to an exhibition and invitation for a collective discussion on spatial responsibility.

Maximilian Lewark (1998, Kiel) graduated from ETH Zürich in 2024. He completed his bachelor’s degree at TU Munich and UTFSM Valparaiso and has collaborated with Auer Weber Architekten Munich amongst others, as well as Büro Krucker in Zurich since 2021. He is based in Zurich and Munich.

Josiane Schmidt (1997, Karlsruhe) graduated in 2024 from ETH Zurich from which she held the Excellence scholarship. She studied previously at TU Munich as well as TU Delft and amongst others collaborated with noAarchitecten in Brussels. Josiane is based in Zurich.

Alexander Throm (1998, Freiburg i. Br.) graduated from ETH Zürich in 2024. He has collaborated with several offices in Freiburg and after completing his bachelor’s at TU Munich and at Arkitektskolen Aarhus continued to work with Büro Krucker in Zurich since 2021. Alexander is based in Zurich.

The three members are part of the research team of the European Citizen Initiative HouseEurope! as well as part of station+, the Chair of Architecture and Storytelling at ETH Zurich.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.