Grote Markt

Tienen’s market square is typical of the historical marketplaces found in small Belgian cities. Moreover, the city’s brief for the redeveloped square can be qualified as overtly prototypical, a textbook example of decision-avoidance politics. The innocuous-looking brief stipulated that the square should serve as a car park, a market square, a church square, a monument to the local war victims, a tourist attraction, a concert venue, a park, etc. In order to be able to deal with this non-exhaustive laundry list of objectives, we decided to re-scale the square, envisioning it as a series of places with their own identity and qualities. This scaled down the edges of the public space and formed a main event square framed by a green façade and urban park. The finishing of the square was realized with reused stone material, featuring a range of different sizes and finishings. The two side-squares in the southern corners were treated as places with their own scale and atmosphere. Using this spatial-puzzle method, the square as an overall project succeeds in playing its different urban roles: a large-scale urban square with a meeting and event space; a cosy inner-city location with terraces and activities; an urban park with a key role in the city’s urban ecology.