Last summer, the European Commission announced the biggest single real estate operation in the history of Brussels. After decades of overturning planning regulations aimed at the demolition and re-building of the European Quarter, the European Commission suddenly decided to sell 50% of their buildings to achieve their exemplary goal for climate neutrality by 2030. The so-called “Cityforward” sale is a two-stage process. In the first stage, the European Commission has sold the 350.000 m2 to the Belgian Federal State for close to one billion Euros. In the second stage, the Federal State is going to sell the buildings in 12 packages to private developers.

"Ode to Joy" designs an alternative to the sale. In its intermediate stage, the land ownership can be separated from the ownership of the buildings on top. Operating within a leasehold system, the land is kept in public ownership while the buildings are sold to private entities. If the Belgian State keeps the land, the new dwellers buy their homes and the European Commission buys back office space, a more ambitious cultural and residential programme can be achieved including half of the dwellings below market-price average. Employing counterfinancing mechanisms would mean creating space for a more diverse set of people.

In the light of the ongoing urban transformation, we want to start a discussion on the ambitions and bottlenecks of the existing process. Leading beyond the case study of the European Quarter, this discussion will address questions of the spatial responsibility of institutions, the commercialisation of institutional space and speculation under the guise of sustainability.

"Ode to Joy" is a graduation project from Maximilian Lewark, Josiane Schmidt and Alexander Throm inside the Chair of Affective Architectures at the ETH Zurich, led by An Fonteyne. An exhibition of the work will be on show at et al. from Friday 11 October until Sunday 13 October from 10:00 AM until 8:00 PM.