Fernand Bodson’s ‘Homborch’ garden city has grown gradually over the course of time. Each extension built further on the initial qualities of the first dwellings in the garden city. This inspired us as we reflected on what this 4th intervention in 2021 should offer the neighbourhood: continuity in terms of a common architectural idiom with a focus on discovering the possibilities of its surrounding landscape.

The garden city of Homborch today is a rather homogeneous green environment that almost mimics the scale of a ‘village bruxellois’. The underused landscape is a backdrop for family houses with nice private gardens. With the demand for a densification project of 90 social and middle-class housing units, our aim is to preserve and renew the existing qualities of the garden city and to reinterpret a historical neighbourhood by designing architecture and landscape that go hand in hand.
New urban polarities, a hierarchy of alternative ways of crossing the district, and a wilder and more active landscape with opportunity gardens are added to the neighbourhood. The new housing units have been designed with outside staircases, kitchens and living spaces capturing multiple orientations of this diverse and productive landscape.

Our project reinterprets the current garden city based on a shared landscape and on the feeling of belonging to the Homborch community.
Through a participatory process, we aimed to achieve the integration of the old and new inhabitants and users in order to create a sustainable and inspiring living environment in which all residents feel at home.

• Location

  Brussels, Belgium

• Client

  SLRB-BGHM social housing company, BINHOME

• Construction

  2023-2025

• 51N4E project team

  Johan Anrys, Freek Persyn, Alice Babini, Aline Neirynck, Anton Parys, Carlo Frassinelli, Marta Petrov, Matthieu Moreau, Róbert Kulcsár-Kilyén, Stefano Dell'Oro

• 51N4E involvement

  Full Process

• Structural engineer

  BAS

• Technical engineer

  Istema

• Acoustical engineer

  De Fonseca

• Landscape

  Coloco

• Landscape engineering

  ARA

• Safety coordination

  IVW-consult

• Budget

  € 26.000.000 (landscape and participation trajectory included)

• Programme

  90 social housing units, multifunctional spaces and landscape design

• Built surface

  12.250 m² (houses and multifunctional spaces)
  17.700 m² (landscape)

• Image credits

  Sepideh Farvardin