Avelgem Housing
3500m2 Housing and masterplan
Avelgem, Belgium
in collaboration with Debaes Architects
Short-listed Architizer A+ Award 2026
Short-listed WAF 2025
Winner Rethinking the Future 2025
fot team: Will Galloway, Koen Klinkers, Christopher Sjoberg, Connor Gagnon, Patrick-John Sandberg, Nicola Caccavella
dba team: Joris DeBaes, Noemi Chausidis, Charles Weinberg, Shai Ben Ami, Veronika Paralova, Yolente Van Brussel
Facing a national housing crisis Belgium encourages development and intensification of their small towns instead of sprawl. Neither rural nor urban, what form should housing in these areas take?
Located in Avelgem Belgium, this project is situated on a significant road leading to the old tower church, and directly faces City Hall. In spite of its location the site is host only to a small abandoned factory and the family home of its operators, both unused for years.
New housing in a rural community is urban planning by definition. And so we begin with urbanism. Ironically, much of the new housing in the area retreats from its context. Unquestioned, as-of-right regulations leads to a wall of apartments on each of the roads that define the site, perpetuating the closed and tunnel-like streetscape that is common in the neighborhood. Ironically, new construction in the area separates itself from the street even further, relying on blind walls and ubroken sheets of glass, with outdoor space onlly on upper levels.
Setting aside the normal outcome we instead distribute 35 units across five blocks. In the process forming a passageway through the site, a shortcut to the city hall, and green space for the neighborhood. Buildings engage the street with a modified house-in-the-park typology, deliberately breaking the street wall to create connections.
The site sits at the edge of a more walkable city center. Closed street-walls turn sidewalks into uncomfortable passages, the result of the conversion of the town into a car-centric community in the last century. The development makes space for area residents to slow down and gather, to experience green space as part of a public urban life. New homes face both the street and the green space. Oversized balconies split each of the buildings, creating a passage, hosting vertical circulation, and forming private space for each home. Working like elevated porches they offer choice, so residents can connect or step away from the public realm as they like.
Life in the area combines the best of urban freedom with the space and opportunity of a rural community. Connection to the rest of Europe is ensured by transit by car and rail, meaning the ultimate goal of the project is to provide choice at every scale. From unit to neighborhood, to town and country. A strong beginning for a new kind of urban planning and housing typology.
