Competition for the daylighting of the Senne river in Brussels, in a design team composed by 51N4E, De Urbanisten, Plant en Houtgoed and 1010au (August 2020)
This could have been the park where the Senne finally irrupted, leaving its culvert for good to join the many uncertainties that the ground water dynamics would pose to this artificial landscape. A river that has been prevented from any contact with the soil around for longer than a century. It could have been the moment when the Senne would finally, and deeply, sigh, and cry: at last, a breath! Our proposal indeed proposed to daylight the Senne all through the park, stretching the presence of water in all directions. The water transformed into the park figure, its main feature, punctuated by some pavilions that acted as magnets for new activities and people. No need for a ludicrous concrete path built on top of the culvert to remind us of the mistake we once made, but an undulated landscape resulting from the soil works and a rich, mostly edible vegetation covering the whole. We embraced a multispecies endeavour posed by the Senne: What does it mean to make room for water in the city? Could this water come paired with new animal lives, like the sheep grazing, the rodents living on our leftovers or the fishes in their journey to the sea? What is our ethical responsibility towards all this new life, and above all, towards all the places that are deprived of such life? What is nature in the city, something to be protected or to be grown?
