Maintaining modern architecture and the values it embodied is no easy task in Brussels. Modernism has left a lasting impression here, ending its formal aspects to a violent transformation of the city that has been referred to since the end of the 1960s as ‘Brussellisation’¹. Throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century, the focus was on ‘repairing’ the ‘damaged’ parts of the capital. The post-modern movement for the ‘reconstruction’ of the traditional city, which emerged in Brussels² in particular, sought to recover, or even ape, the city's historic 19th-century templates. Since the early 2000s, this cultural form of ostracism has been superimposed by the injunction of energy performance, which legitimises the in-depth transformation of modern architecture in the name of a new ecological modernity, often without taking into account its heritage aspect³. In this context, what place should be given to modern architecture in social housing? How should these buildings be viewed, and how should their renovation be approached today? These questions revolve around the scope of architectural intervention to maintain this type of heritage, around a project culture.

As part of the Gender Mainstreaming project led by Karbon’ for Perspective (Brussels Planning Agency), the team travelled to Vienna to analyse how the city has structured its development around gender-sensitive urban policies and measures.

Eva Kail, a key figure in Viennese gender planning, traced the history of this approach, detailing the administrative mechanisms that ensure its implementation. She also presented us with planning and development projects based on these guidelines, illustrating how the principles of Gender Mainstreaming are translated into urban planning.

This immersion was followed by a workshop bringing together Vienna (Austria), Brussels (Belgium) and Umeå (Sweden), a collective workspace designed to compare analyses and experiences and to outline prospects for the evolution of gender-sensitive urban policies.

On the occasion of the Thinking-Making symposium organised by the ULB and the ULg, Karbon' proposed the ‘reflexive assembly’ of a 1:1 scale model, exploring a construction system with a wooden and straw frame developed by the craftsman carpenter Gautier Nagant. This mock-up was a life-size experiment, a moment when the act of building is shared to bring out new knowledge. At the crossroads of applied research and demonstrator project, Mock creates the conditions for an active exchange of knowledge and reminds us that the construction site can be a place of transmission, where ways of thinking and doing architecture are replayed and reinvented.