The beauty of a city,
is its versatility.

Its way of behaving differently, of adapting to our needs as time reshapes our lives. An ongoing metamorphosis, it also teaches us how to live densely while leaving room to breathe.

Project 001

Location — New York

Micro Soho

Being architects with firmly rooted beliefs, we thought it important to practice what we preach. Our apartment is a 45 square meter space in Soho, which we adapt to evolve with our growing family. We rethink it whenever necessary, making the furniture ourselves out of affordable construction-grade plywood.

Ours is no classic living room setup, but a space that changes according to our needs. A large 4-meter-long low piece of furniture functions as a Japanese dining table, a coffee table or a bench. Lightweight, it’s easily moved.

Right now, the built-in couch doubles as a daybed and storage unit, with a custom mattress and extended desk for our child. Using the opposite white wall as a screen, we’ve rid ourselves of a television.

Soon, our master bedroom will change into a room for two children. The master bed will hide under an elevated podium and automatically slide into the living room. The dividing wall will become one piece of built-in furniture, incorporating a master bed, a day bed, storage and a closet.


Project 002

Location — New York

Cohabs

Cohabs offers premium shared living to young professionals and expats in Brussels. They are looking to translate their co-living formula to New York, one of the cities with the highest rate of singles in the world.

In Brussels, Cohabs have developed a particular aesthetic, working with historical buildings. Those are hard to come by in New York. Our job was to advise on and design building typologies that would fit their vision.

As the New York building code limits co-living, Cohabs were looking for a partner who understands their European view but has a deep knowledge of the New York market.

The Cohabs model is about creating a community, which is a model we strongly believe in. It allows to respond to the rapid urbanization of the world, rising real estate prices, people marrying later (or not at all), the spike in freelance workers stuck at home as well as the surging loneliness epidemic.


Project 003

Location — Venice

Venice Biennale

Imagine sleeping right in the Giardini during the Venice Biennale. That’s what we proposed for the Flemish Architecture institute’s open call for the 2020 Belgian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

The question posed by the institute was to see what lessons can be learned from history and applied to our sustainable future. With Brussels-based practice Czvek Rigby, we proposed to transform the Belgian pavilion into a co-living and co-working space. A place for people to be and do, rather than one in which they are mere spectators.

Our co-living and co-working space would be rented out on Airbnb, generating income and coupling a green agenda of densified living and working to a lucrative business model. Why? Because we believe that the way to tackle our sustainable challenge is to have an economic added value.

The Belgian Pavilion is uniquely located on the edge of the Giardini. It is also the only pavilion with a direct access from Venice. In our proposal, we switched these entrances: the back door became the front door and vice versa. This way, we would give the pavilion back to the city and the Giardini would be the pavilion’s garden.

Our proposal did not make it to the second round. However, it still does a good job reflecting our belief that architecture should be entrepreneurial, and that it can exist on the edge of creativity and business.