Esquisse Commune: architectural Manneken'skis

“Oubliez l’analyse rationelle et l’étude de chiffre, faites prendre forme l’instantané de vos émotions”.
To let go of all academic reasoning and to follow their gut. The moral of the exercise “Esquisse Commune”, given to more than 400 BA2-BA3-MA1 students at ULB’s Faculty of Architecture, is clear and sound: liberate yourself. This edition being called “Manneken’skis” is due to having Manneken Pis as mascot for the project, with tourism as the central theme. The idea of working together as a family for one week, without competition, on the theme of tourism, led to interesting creations with each intergenerational group of students having their brainchild exposed to the Brussels public. Last week each group was given a duplicate of our very own Manneken Pis with whom they were sent out to a particular neighbourhood in Brussels.

After five days of brainstorming about how to visually represent their emotions and impressions of the quartier Bruxellois they visited, in the format of a postcard in 3-D, they put their reflection into production. Answers to questions like: “Who lives in this neighbourhood?”, “What differentiates the people of this neighbourhood from others?”, or “What is it exactly that Manneken Pis is doing here?”, were all visualised and transformed into touchable matter. Today, over a length of 120 metres, the sidewalk of boulevard Jacqmainlaan is covered with the postcards in 3-D, in the form of 3m³ cubes. Each cube is created by a different group of students, and contains aspects to make up the identity of one of the 40 selected neighbourhoods.

Each group’s Manneken Pis duplicate is pimped out according to what neighbourhood it represents, but they are sadly enough no longer exposed in the cubes. In addition to the visual purpose of the exposition, there are some of the cubes that can be entered or/and have an interactive aspect to them. Each cube is different, just like each neighbourhood is different. The 3-D postcards are on show until 12 April. For whoever wants to get into the skin of Brussels in less than an hour, this is the solution.

Esquisse Commune 2013: Manneken'skis > 12/4, gratis/gratuit/free, boulevard Emile Jacqmain, www.facebook.com/esquisse.commune