KOOLMIJNLAAN - MAPPING RADICAL INTERDEPENDENCIES

In this case study we look back at our involvement in the redesign of Koolmijnlaan road in the Limburg municipality Houthalen-Helchteren. We reflect on how we have worked there with local and supralocal collectives to re-imagine this road and its surrounding neighbourhood. Whereas the project did generate a new dynamic and evidenced a willingness to cooperate among different existing collectives, it also became quickly clear to us that we would first have to unpack a certain number of ‘deep tensions’ amongst those collectives, but also between them and the municipality, the regional governments and individual inhabitants. We will explain how we used mapping as a way to provide a platform for revealing and designing the radical interdependence between individual human and non-human actors, collectives. This case study thus brings the concept of ontologising - designing for and with radical interdependencies- into practice via mapping.

University/Design-Architectural Studio UHasselt,  Spatial Capacity Building 
Project lead
Liesbeth Huybrechts, Hannelore Goyens
Partners
The Koolmijnlaan case is part of the ‘Noord-Zuid Limburg’ project. This Complex Project is organised by Studio NZL - an interdisciplinary team of partners consisting of the spatial agencies Tractebel, Arcadis, Maat architecten, 51n4, the Faculty of Architecture & Arts of UHasselt and the communication agency Connect - and is supervised by De Werkvennootschap and Department Omgeving - organisations coordinating large mobility projects for the Flemish government.
Country/region
Houthalen-Helchteren
Keywords
Radical interdependence, silent actors, mapping, platforms