WoonBox Elective

Co-organisation and tutoring of a Community-engaged Architectural Design Learning course at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture (in collaboration with Prof. dr. Burak Pak) aimed at drawing up an architectural design for the first WoonBox (WBX) pilot project to be realized in a vacant building in Molenbeek.

Like Solidary Mobile Housing, WoonBox (WBX) is questioning the current housing typologies and production methods and experimenting with an alternative, more inclusive approach by focusing on small-scale, transitional, and modular living and temporary appropriation of vacant buildings in the Brussels-Capital Region.
In the context of WBX, a modular building system was developed by SAAMO Brussels and Vandereyt Houtskeletbouw. This system, called INSTA’BOX, consists of wall, floor and ceiling elements allowing to realize ‘box-in-the-box’ housing units in un(der)used buildings.
With the financial support of the King Baudouin Foundation, the Brussels-Capital Region, Wijkcontract MolenWest and the Flemish Community, from 2020 to 2022, the first WBX Pilot project was realized in a vacant building in Molenbeek.
The pilot project residents were selected by three social organisations (CAW Brussels, Aprèstoe vzw and Groep INTRO), who were also responsible for their guidance.

The design for the WBX Pilot Project – consisting of ten housing units – was drawn up in collaboration with students and teachers from the Faculty of Architecture at KU Leuven. For this, a service-learning course was set up at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture by Prof. Burak Pak and drs. Aurelie De Smet. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this course took place mostly online.
The weekly course supervision was done by the tutors, however, at least once a month a co-creative session was organised during which the students’ work in progress was presented to employees of SAAMO Brussels, representatives of the involved social guidance organisations and/or the director of Vandereyt Houtskeletbouw and everyone worked together to discuss and improve the proposed concepts and design ideas.
Finally, one of the three involved student designs – the one by Vitor Breder – was selected and built by Vandereyt and SAAMO Brussels.

The WBX Pilot Project was featured in many (social) media publications.