51N4E . photos: © Maxime Delvaux
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.
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GALERÍA
Tienen, Belgium
Client
City of Tienen
Competition
2005
Design
2014 – 2018
Construction
2020 – 2022
51N4E project team
Johan Anrys, Freek Persyn, Aline Neirynck, Ruben Janssens, Marta Petrov
Structural engineering
BAS/Dirk Jaspaert
Technical engineering
ARA
Landscape
Plant en Houtgoed
Built surface
18.250 m²
Construction costs
€ 7.500.000 incl. underground techniques and all public lighting
Image credits
51N4E
Photography credits
Maxime Delvaux
