Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

Community housing for socially empowered living

Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Site analysis + Proposal of transformation.

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    Holcim Awards Next Generation prize handover, Códoba, Argentina - September 2022

    Presentation to Next Generation 1st prize winner for Europe (l-r): Loreta Castro Reguera, Taller Capital (Mexico) and Head of the Holcim Awards jury for Latin America with Annik Keoseyan from Mexico City for Transforming Collectivity in Belgium and Holcim Group Executive Committee Member and Region Head Latin America Oliver Osswald.

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Proposal of transformation + Front Facade View.

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Actual condition.

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Floor plans + Interior view of shared facilities.

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Inhabitable walls + Renovated apartment views.

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Community participation.

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Ecological considerations.

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    Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

    Typological diversity.

  • Next generation Next Generation 1st prize 2020–2021 Europe
A social housing concept for Brussels where transformation, sharing and support are the premises for more sustainable and socially empowered living.

Last updated: April 27, 2025

By Annik Keoseyan - Mexico City, Mexico

This master's thesis project addresses the need for urban densification and improved living conditions in Brussels by reimagining outdated social housing blocks. Rather than demolishing and rebuilding, the proposal focuses on reusing existing infrastructure to minimise the city’s environmental footprint. Drawing on historical feminist practices in architecture—emphasising inclusivity and shared spaces—the design transforms dark, compressed apartments into brighter, healthier homes. Key features include natural lighting, shared kitchens that reduce energy and waste, common spaces for families, improved cross-ventilation, rainwater harvesting, and the reuse of demolition materials to promote sustainability.

Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

Project authors

  • Annik Keoseyan

    Mexico City

    Mexico

Project Author

  • Annik Keoseyan

    Mexico

Jury Appraisal

Project description by jury 

In response to the current housing crisis and the increasing need for urban densification, this project revolutionizes the conventional idea of social dwelling by proposing a new habitat solution founded on the concept of “sharing”, here understood as a political, economic and social claim. The project proposes the adaptive reuse of different rundown building blocks in Brussels to offer more sustainable, democratic housing conditions. Spaces are rethought to offer a diversity of apartment typologies to suit different family configurations and enhance overall quality of living. The strategy for the design of the new dwellings is to minimize the surface of the private domestic area in favor of a number of spaces shared with the neighbors, including kitchens and common areas for adults and children. This paradigm shift of “collectivism versus individualism” results in an increased apartment space when collective areas are included (from an average of 40sqm to 90sqm). By reducing private space, energy consumption is lowered and the implementation of extraordinary social reinforcement dynamics for vulnerable groups – especially pregnant women and single mothers – is achieved.

Transforming Collectivity in Belgium

Floor plans + Interior view of shared facilities.

Jury appraisal 

The Holcim Awards jury Europe highly commended the maturity and pragmatic character of the project, which was perceived as the genuine commitment of a young designer to address two core issues that are central to sustainability: the transformation of existing building stock and the promotion of social sustainability. Housing is imagined as a new social institution that embeds several environmental features. The optimistic character of the project was very much welcomed: the project exemplifies the idea that building transformation can be not only feasible but also cheerful. The suggested architecture was found both essential and compelling in establishing a needed dialogue with the urban context. Overall, the proposal was considered remarkable for the political message it conveys, which makes the project of high relevance and of feasible replicability in other social housing conditions.

Project Updates

Statements on Sustainability

  • Reuse can provide us with tools to improve the current quality of living that affects a very vulnerable sector of society and can also reduce the number of square meters constructed in new areas. The increase in rents and purchase prices created a serious crisis manifested in social housing in a poor state. Sustainability, therefore, can be reached by diminishing the number of new constructions that jeopardize green areas while tackling social inequalities. The project not only thinks of reuse in terms of infrastructure, but it also considers spatial reuse by reconfiguring existing degrading inhabitable areas. With the material from the demolition of dividing walls, residents designed new texturized walls that created a more personal dialogue with the intervention.

  • Tackling the current crisis in Brussels housing provided a huge window of opportunities to think about sustainability in terms of reuse. The project also addresses a diversity of typology of living that goes from having originally two main typologies to having six. This new diversity approaches a variety of families and situations benefitting from shared spaces and kitchenless apartments. Domesticity is challenged by reducing areas such as kitchens that produce more waste individually than collectively. The new typologies go from having 40m2 (average) to 90m2 (average). It also rethinks parking spaces by rethinking one level and turning it into green areas providing shared open spaces and facilities. The reconversion provokes a different lecture of space and sustainability.

  • The project envisions the concept of "sharing" as a political, economic and social force that can prevent the current crisis in disengagement of society to expand. This crisis talks about a dominating individualism that consumes more energy and resources. The concept of sharing can reduce gradually excessive consumerism and eventually produce spaces that are more sustainable because they consume fewer means. Sharing is also viewed as a principle and as an action that can provide us with design tools that can challenge the current forces of domesticity, urban planning, land-use, transportation, etc. and reorient them into practices that can turn our living spaces into territories of diversity, flexibility, and less resource consumption.