Duration
192h Pr
Number of credits
| Master in architecture, professional focus in architecture and urban planning | 15 crédits |
Lecturer
Coordinator
Language(s) of instruction
French language
Organisation and examination
Teaching in the second semester
Schedule
Units courses prerequisite and corequisite
Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program
Learning unit contents
The "Habiter le territoire " studio questions the role of the architect in society and the means through which architecture can act upon it, thereby taking into account the political dimension of architecture.
What vision of society does a territory embody? How can it respond to the needs of its inhabitants, generate new desires, and open up new imaginaries? What human and material resources can it draw upon in order to transform itself while strengthening its autonomy, circularity, and sustainability? What visions of society has it inherited? What place does it give to entities of the natural world (rivers, soils, plants, animals, climate, etc.)? Does it reveal inequalities or injustices? Does it contain commons, and, if so, how are they preserved? The studio invites students to collectively explore these questions-and many others-and to reflect, through design, on the role architects can play in shaping desirable futures in a context of social, ecological, and health crises.
This experimental approach is rooted in hybrid and changing territories. The sites are located nearby, allowing for regular in situ exploration, and are of a scale that can be experienced through walking, making them both graspable and measurable through the body. The territory is not understood as an abstract entity "seen from above" or as a space governed by a set of regulations, but as a place to be physically explored through all the senses. Discovering a territory means immersing oneself in its spaces and encountering its inhabitants and users in order to experience its rhythms, memory, paradoxes, and poetry, and thereby identify the seeds of its possible future. This makes it possible to confront lived experience with archives, narratives, and cartographic, visual, or bibliographic documents.
In 2026-27, the studio is part of the Sambre 2030 movement, which seeks to grant the river legal personhood. Within this approach, natural elements are no longer considered merely as resources serving human development; their own needs are recognized and become drivers for design. It is through this new paradigm that students are invited to imagine new possibilities for the territory!
Learning outcomes of the learning unit
The workshop aims at building a critical posture through a collaborative approach to formulate intervention strategies and imagine projects. It aims to develop the student's ability to :
- forge a personal position, but one that is articulated to collective dynamics, on the issues that fall within the prerogatives of the architect, by becoming aware of the potential and the limits of these prerogatives ;
- formulate proposals using the specific languages of space and landscape at different scales;
- to identify and analyse the political effects and consequences of architecture and, more specifically, of the organisation of space, its materialisation, its modes of production, etc.;
- to apprehend, position oneself and rely on the interplay of actors in a project situation;
- to know, know how to use and mobilise to good effect, the communication processes and tools necessary to report on one's position.
Prerequisite knowledge and skills
Planned learning activities and teaching methods
The learning process involves prospecting, which invites us to explore and read the territory, and the project, through which scenarios are constructed to be tested spatially on different scales.
1. Prospecting: identifying the resources of the territory and the societal issues it carries in order to co-construct a systemic reading.
Immersion in the territory, as well as documentary research and its reappropriation through drawing in particular, make it possible to identify the material and immaterial resources specific to the place and to construct a plural view of it. Particular attention is paid to the uses and the stories or imaginary stories that the territory carries, which implies specific work with the actors (meetings, public workshops, exploratory walks, etc.). From there, it is a question of identifying the discourses and imaginaries relating to the future of this territory carried by the different categories of actors, and then to state, collectively, the socio-spatial stakes specific to the place and the privileged levers of action.
2. Project: to build desirable futures, spatialised scenarios and test them on different scales.
Contrasting scenarios of territorial change are then formulated by the students in small interacting groups. These strategies are tested in a very concrete way by the project on certain parts of the territory (a public space, a wasteland, a set of residual spaces, the heart of the district,...) and/or around certain issues (the green and blue network, the question of common goods, the nourishing network,...) allowing to (de)show their interest and feasibility.
In a transversal way, the workshop proposes to put three specific approaches at the service of these prospecting and project approaches:
- Appropriating and inventing design and representation tools
Drawing, both manual and digital, is a privileged tool for discovering the terrain: reappropriating cartography, manipulating it, breaking it down, reinventing it allows us to reveal new facets of the place, new resources. Drawing a map helps to build ideas, to structure a thought, to make the project concrete.
Drawing is also one of the possible interfaces with the inhabitants and users of the territory. It is explored in this sense, as a tool for communication with peers and with other audiences. Other tools for interaction with the public (workshops, actions in the public space, temporary installations, sensitive cartography, etc.) are also implemented and a critical reflection on what is commonly known as citizen participation is developed.
All these creative steps are part of the project process. They are based on a rich baggage of references co-constructed, deployed by professionals from the world of planning, graphic design and art as a source of inspiration, stimulation and questioning.
- Relying on collaborative practices
The collaborative practices are at the basis of the ways of thinking and acting in the "Habiter le territoire " workshop; this involves the co-production of knowledge and peer review within the workshop.
- Educational trip
The course includes a short immersion stay in the project area.
Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)
Face to face
Course materials and recommended or required readings
Platform(s) used for course materials:
- eCampus
- MyULiège
Further information:
The workshop "Habiter le territoire " integrates the co-construction of a theoretical baggage that includes :
- imposed readings to build up a common baggage and a portfolio of articles and books from which to draw according to the questions that arise;
- meetings with resource persons who are not architects and architects organised in the form of exchanges or joint work rather than conferences or any form of vertical transmission;
- moments of debate and exchange within the workshop based on the students' readings.
Exam(s) in session
Any session
- In-person
oral exam
Continuous assessment
Out-of-session test(s)
Further information:
Exam(s) in session
Any session
In-person
Oral exam
Written work / report
Continuous assessment
Additional information:
The evaluation is continuous in the form of a reflective process with resource persons from outside the workshop and a regular peer review. Two more formal evaluation periods are organised with an external jury. The student's commitment to the work of the workshop and his or her participation in the dynamics of the workshop is also assessed (10% pedagogical rating).
Work placement(s)
Organisational remarks and main changes to the course
The workshop includes an immersion stay in the project area.