Craftsmanship in Urban Space. Brussels Atlas of the Community.
MétisPresses| N° d'inventaire | 25755 |
| Format | 17 x 24 |
| Détails | 286 p., illustrated, paperback. |
| Publication | Geneva, 2022 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782940711116 |
Today, while urban planning practice continues to approach the theme of production from a utilitarian perspective, a profusion of initiatives escapes this cognitive framework, testifying to work as an existential value. Also artisans of their lives, the actors of these initiatives engage in new networking that structures the places of housing, work and the exercise of public life in singular spatialities, profoundly transforming the relationship between work and the city. Far from representing a new way of building the city, this movement is part of the tradition of urban craftsmanship, understood here in light of the work of Hannah Arendt, Fernand Braudel, William Morris and Karl Polanyi.
Craftsmanship in urban space proposes a narrative of the production of space by artisans, through the development of an original method of analysis, the cartographic lisuel. Brussels is the case study, emblematic of the tertiarization of the city in the 20th century and a major center for the development of European urban reindustrialization policies. Marine Declève thus composes a dynamic atlas of the city that resonates three maps relating to key moments in its economic history – the noble city of 1770, the new industrial Brussels of 1910 and Brussels productive city of 2018 – with the stories of artisan lives and their imprint on the urban fabric.
From this research emerge spatial patterns, derived from artisanal lives and figures of a singular urban sociability, here defined as communality. More than architecture, it is the social energy generated in these places that signals, revealing the intensity of the urban action of the trades.
Today, while urban planning practice continues to approach the theme of production from a utilitarian perspective, a profusion of initiatives escapes this cognitive framework, testifying to work as an existential value. Also artisans of their lives, the actors of these initiatives engage in new networking that structures the places of housing, work and the exercise of public life in singular spatialities, profoundly transforming the relationship between work and the city. Far from representing a new way of building the city, this movement is part of the tradition of urban craftsmanship, understood here in light of the work of Hannah Arendt, Fernand Braudel, William Morris and Karl Polanyi.
Craftsmanship in urban space proposes a narrative of the production of space by artisans, through the development of an original method of analysis, the cartographic lisuel. Brussels is the case study, emblematic of the tertiarization of the city in the 20th century and a major center for the development of European urban reindustrialization policies. Marine Declève thus composes a dynamic atlas of the city that resonates three maps relating to key moments in its economic history – the noble city of 1770, the new industrial Brussels of 1910 and Brussels productive city of 2018 – with the stories of artisan lives and their imprint on the urban fabric.
From this research emerge spatial patterns, derived from artisanal lives and figures of a singular urban sociability, here defined as communality. More than architecture, it is the social energy generated in these places that signals, revealing the intensity of the urban action of the trades.