We’re Going Down by, Down by, the Muddy River!
We are delighted to have contributed to Fragility, Ardeth’s #15, curated by M. Ramsgaard Thomsen, N. Miller and S. Dalager Nielsen. This magazine issue reflects on how fragility challenges our perception of continuity and development by making visible the interdependencies that sustain our shared environment. It considers conditions of openness in which architecture is constantly formed and reformed through processes of transformation. The curators’ hopeful proposition is that fragility is not a limitation, but rather a regenerative condition of architecture. Latitude’s visual essay is based on the materials presented in the logbook Caves. It reports on collaborative research conducted on the cellars of houses that pixelate a large part of the Brussels underground. The cellars of Saint Antoine, one of the poorest and most densely populated neighbourhoods in Brussels, are inhabited spaces tormented by the persistent issue of water intrusion. This includes problems such as soil dampness, rising groundwater levels, sewer backups, street or garden runoff, and the passage of an underground stream. Photographs, micro-stories, maps and drawings reveal the geography of a condition whose causes and responsibilities are manifold. The remedies for this structural problem must be sought by examining the engagement of different human and non-human bodies at multiple scales: from the individual resident’s basement to public structural interventions at regional and inter-regional levels, while also considering the essential collaborations that can be fostered. Meanwhile, the inhabitants have embarked on continuous acts of repair, care, and adaptation: great labours and unconventional acts of continuous “building” that enable the inhabitation of fragility. Latitude’s contribution can be downloaded at the link in bio!
@ardeth__magazine
Îlot d’Eau presents a collaborative design process (2015–2020) involving residents, professionals, researchers, students, and local institutions within two action-research projects in Forest, Brussels. The aim was to rethink how water could be reintegrated into the dense urban landscape.
The book combines a concise narrative with rich visual material—photos, maps, collages, and drawings—and includes an inserted leaflet that guides readers through the sequence of activities. It ends with reflections by Juan López Cano and Cristina Cerulli on the opportunities and challenges encountered during the project – 2019-2025
Design and print with @nicolastorck
Typeface by @sebastien_sanfilippo
Happy to share!
EN
Veneto 2100: Living with Water is on display in Tesa 2 of the Italian Pavilion at @labiennale Architettura 2025, in the Research section. It is also available at La Libreria, the Architecture Biennale 2025 bookshop, designed by DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO.
Photo credits Elena Moro
IT
Veneto 2100: Living with Water è esposto nella Tesa 2 del padiglione Italia TerraeAquae – @labiennale Architettura 2025 all’interno della sezione dedicata alle Ricerche e disponibile presso La Libreria, bookshop della Biennale Architettura 2025 by DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO.
Photo credits Elena Moro
/en/architecture/2025/living-lab/la-libreria
Tailor Made Water 🚰🌻
As the 11th IABR, Nature of Hope, has come to a close, we’re highlighting projects and ideas that live on, such as the installation Tailor-Made Water by Latitude Platform @latitudeplatform & Dallas Collectif @collectifdallas
In Hefpark and Spoortuin in Rotterdam, rainwater is collected for the (vegetable) gardens, using local materials and community involvement, continuing the Eau de Couture project.
Eau De Couture is an experiment that investigates possibilities to store and reuse rainwater in a dense urban area. A white and yellow tarpaulin to intercept and a tank to store rainwater are installed for watering the plants and flowers of the (vegetable) gardens.
The installation aims to raise awareness for a more sustainable management of rainwater for urban agriculture.
Curious to know more? Study our Botanical Monuments map at iabr.nl to find all projects and green places in and around Rotterdam. 🌿 🔍
@hefpark.rotterdam@spoortuin #IABR #IABR11 #NatureofHope #waterinstallation #rainwater #savewater #reusewater #rainwaterstorage #eaudecouture #garden
Photos by @jacqueline_fuijkschot
In order to get in contact with residents and users of the Saint-Antoine district (Forest, Brussels-Capital Region), 1:1 Cartography action was conceived. The ephemeral appearance of flooding risk areas, impermeable soils, and historical alluvial plains and rivers attracted the attention of residents and users. The dispersed presence of researchers and students—the WetBodies—facilitated the setting up of contacts with locals. The WetBodies were able to reveal unknown water-related problems touching the residents.
WetBodies was conceived as an interdisciplinary activity in the context of the project Îlot d’Eau Le Retour, part of the action-research programme Brusseau—Bruxelles sensible à l’eau—funded by Innoviris (Co-Create, 2017–2019). WetBodies addressed the dual challenge of participatory practices in contemporary urban planning and architecture. On the one hand, participatory processes that seek to configure deliberative contexts often fail to gather or sustain moments of citizen involvement. Inversely, approaches which seek to make participation accessible to all by resorting to playful and ludic tactics risk overlooking the serious political stakes at hand.
@brunodiasventura
The third L Latitude Logbook ‘In the Making: Brussels Atlas’ is out now.
It is based on LATITUDE Platform’s work for the research Cities of Making (JPI Urban Europe) and the results of the design studio of the Master in urban design and spatial planning STeR*of the VUB Brussels. The research explores the future of urban manufacturing in European cities in terms of technology, resources, governance and place. What kind of technologies and materials drive contemporary urban manufacturing? How urban manufacturing adapts in cities that have evicted industries and makers? In which ways can we bring back manufacturing into cities?. ‘In the Making: Brussels Atlas’ investigates spatial configurations of urban production, unfolds the functioning of local companies and indicates possible policies and interventions for urban manufacture in the Brussels Capital-Region.
Graphic design @ivone.mtz@citiesofmaking@innoviris@vubrussel@insta_ulb
#departementomgeving
LIMINAL is an action that crosses performance arts, landscape and architectural interventions. LIMINAL is an opportunity to engage a radical reflection on border areas and, simultaneously, to experiment collective processes of public-space construction. LIMINAL explores new potential nuances of hospitality for the inhabitants of Slavutych, Ukraine.
During summer 2021, LATITUDE Platform is invited to participate in the @sesam2021_easaukraine workshop together with other architectural and urbanism practices. Through a series of collective actions ranging from territorial exploration, construction and discussions, LIMINAL focuses on healthcare and its relationship with architecture and territories. The workshop takes place in Slavutych, the Ukrainian city built to reallocate the workers of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families.
2021 / 2016. As final act of a design participatory process, LATITUDE Platform – together with students of the faculty of architecture La Cambre-Horta (ULB), local inhabitants, and the construction company Casablanco – desealed the pavements of the Rue du Dries, Forest, in the south of Brussels. New vegetated facades blossomed. New relations activated. A small, but potential action, such as removing some tiles from the public space, generated a new environment by reducing rainwater runoff in a street in the south of Brussels.
The action is part of Ilôt d’Eau (2015-2017), a participatory design project, coordinated by LATITUDE Platform in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta (ULB), the non-profit organization EGEB, and other partners of the project Des Nouveaux Chemins de l’Eau Solidaires pour le quartier de l’Abbaye. The initiative is part of a wider participatory project presented in the frame of the Contrat de Quartier Abbaye (Forest) that looks for bottom-up ways to contrast water-related hazards.
‘Every space counts’ as every drop of water does. For the Brussels Urban Landscape Biennial 2018, LATITUDE Platform interprets any centimetre of the region as if it was operating detention, retention and processing of (rain)water. Every centimetre of the region is a potential catalyst. Every spatial handler is a potential stakeholder. This hypothesis leads to imagining that a rain of objects would land on the Brussels landscape and would inhabit its urban elements like parasites. New coalitions or complex socio-ecological arrangements of wet city elements would pop-up in a collective move for water.
LATITUDE Platform aims at striking the imaginary of the visitor displaying objects, elements, and practices for the detention, retention and processing of (rain)water at any level of the Brussels-scape and their interlinkages across the scales.
#brusselsurbanlandscapebiennal
@bozarbrussels@brunodiasventura
Veneto 2100: Living with Water is a long visual essay, made of a wide range of maps, extracts of video-interviews, archival and news clippings, diagrams, short stories, and critical wordings. This book explores the future of one of Italy’s richest regions against the forecasted changes in climate patterns and water behaviour, and their impacts on the territory.
The book collects the results of a research that LATITUDE Platform, developed alongside engineers and communication designers, as well as the students and teaching staff of several European graduate and post-graduate masters, and local institutions. Exhibited in its intermediate stage at the 5th #iabr the outputs have been later presented and debated with the local communities through the implementation of temporary exhibitions and open talks.
You can find it at the bookshop of the Venice Biennale
#biennaledivenezia
@silvanaeditoriale
Graphic design @studio_iknoki
Eau De Couture is an experiment that investigates possibilities to store and reuse rainwater in a dense urban area, such as the one of the Marolles, in the city centre of Brussels. A white and yellow tarpaulin to intercept and a tank to store rainwater are installed for watering the berry plants of the Jardin Akarova.
Through a shared design process involving residents of nearby social housing blocks of Brigittines and local associations, the installation aims to raise awareness for a more sustainable management of rainwater for urban agriculture.
The project is part of an ‘Initiative Durable’ of the municipality of the ‘Ville de Bruxelles’. The team engaged in the project is LATITUDE Platform together with Collectif Dallas, Habitat et Rénovation and Loop Studio.
@collectifdallas@habitatetrenovation@alexisjacobphotographe@nicolastorck@brunodiasventura
