As part of the European Studiotopia programme, which fosters dialogue between art and science, the BOZAR – Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels has invited the UCLouvain – LOCI Faculty of Architecture to engage in a collaborative project developed in partnership with Delcy Morelos. The projet draws its conceptual grounding from Morelos’ practice, particularly her work Madre, in which Indigenous cosmologies are interwoven with an understanding of soil as humus—recalling, through a shared Latin root, the condition of the human as fundamentally earthbound.

Within this framework, the project turns its attention to the soil of the UCLouvain–LOCI campus in Brussels, a former pharmaceutic factory, where a perceptible disjunction persists between the built environment and its latent ecological substrate. Here, the ground is not only material, but symbolic: at once obscured, compacted, and awaiting reactivation.

In response, Loci-Lab brings together architects, scientists, and artists in a collective act of de-paving, de-construction and re-construction—an intervention that is at once spatial, ecological, and cultural. Conceived as an artistic and self-built process within the university courtyard, the project unfolds through the creation of two gardens—one shaped by shadow, the other by sun exposure—alongside the construction of a wooden cabane and a series of artistic performances that activate the site over time. Through the careful dismantling and reuse of on-site materials, the initiative aspires to cultivate new forms of ecological connectivity, enhance soil vitality, and re-establish a sensorial and ethical relationship to the ground—understood not as a passive support, but as a living matrix.

This project (construction on site April 19th - April 25th) is carried out in partnership with several European and worldwide organizations: Bozar, Latitude Platform, AHO Oslo, École d’Architecture Paris-Est, Iuav Venice, Roma Tre University, Free University of Tbilisi and Ibaceta architect.

“Sous les pavés” – a co-production of Bozar & UCLouvain | een co-productie van Bozar & UCLouvain | une coproduction de Bozar & UCLouvain  . STUDIOTOPIA is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European  Commission (EC). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. UCLouvain: Nathanaëlle Baës-Cantillon, Alexandre Bossard, Chiara Cavalieri, Basil Descheemaeker, Christine Fontaine; Beatrice Lampariello, Maider LLaguno

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