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Architects: Traumnovelle
- Area: 5000 m²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Philippe Braquenier
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Manufacturers: AGC, Amorim, Zumtobel
Text description provided by the architects. Inside an unoccupied industrial building close to Charleroi train station, new working spaces for high-tech companies and laid out according to a city grid. Autonomous workspaces frame a central public space dedicated to the communal activities of this industrial ecosystem. In the context of a post-industrial city faced with an employment deficit, the conversion of the spaces of this golden age is as slow as that of historic know-how. The Advanced Engineering Centre acts as a laboratory to experiment with the new forms of work of the 21st century, faced with the transformation of the labor market.
City grids can be considered to testify to a culture’s cosmogony. As such, the urban grid of the post-industrial workspace is that of high individual liberty—in the form of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurial freedom—confronted with a strong regulatory framework inherited from salaried employment, which implies the control of individuals and optimization of productivity. Referencing the Roman training camp, organized according to two perpendicular axes symbolizing order and the submission of the worker to the city’s logic. The central shared spaces bring the workers together through federative collective activities, similarly to the exercise ground.
The parallel strips of glazed office spaces highlight the contradiction between workers’ autonomy and their visibility. The expectation of visibility of the workers practicing their tasks, from a theoretical central viewpoint, is challenged by an overlay of transparencies and reflections. Their overlapping offers workers a respite from observation by blurring observation. The project takes place within the complex structure of an existing building. Grafted to its circulation system, it aims at making the existing spatial structures and uses more legible. Workspaces for 8 to 12 people outline communal amenities such as various meeting spaces, as well as community and leisure spaces in the center of the industrial slab.
The Advanced Engineering Centre fosters a sense of collective collaboration between workers, as well as optimal work and research conditions. The central space, an indoor tropical garden, offers a different kind of community and leisure space, thus encouraging new forms of work and collaboration. It generates sub-spaces that can be appropriated by users for lunch, a meeting, a game, or a phone call. Thus spaces for unproductive activities take up a central position in the overall layout of the workspace.
The project is entirely removable in case the industrial space needs to be converted or demolished. Each element has been considered in terms of re-use and short construction phase (4 months). The work modules are composed of industrial storage platforms. The facilities are autonomous and can be accessed from the roofs of the workspaces. All partition materials can be detached and reused elsewhere. The bio-sourced cork flooring system as well as the standardized glass panels can be disassembled and reaffixed.
