Industrial Landscape between Modernity and Tradiion: What Meaning to Accompany Change by the Project?

The metaphor of the city as an organism, while referring to renowned and common urban interpretations, has produced a very diverse level of knowledge of the territory. The reading of tissues brought about by the anthropization often seems outdated, or even inefficient by virtue of the complexity of materials which characterize the various spheres that nowadays escape us to the point that they become extraneous. Nebulae, emergences (R. Koolhaas), places of anthroposages (A. Corboz), sprawl or diffuse cities (B. Secchi), are the denominations given to the territories which have neither body nor time. These places are nothing more than the cumulative amounts of corporeality reduced to the status of the plan. This reduction of substance, in correlation with the condition of otherness which provokes a distancing of the contexts we have nonetheless had a part in creating intrigues us and constitutes the triggering event of our approach. Thus, the attention paid to what has emerged is too often limited to the simple description of the situational analysis. Based on this observation, we were interested in the case of the city of Liege, and more particularly in the dynamics between the city´s growth and the mutations of the geomorphologic characters of its location. The observation was primarily aimed at those parts of the territory that are nowadays rejected, also known as «junkspace» (R. Koolhaas). In reality, the research covers vast hybrid areas affected by the industrial decline, leaving them between a state of abandon and a state of future expectations at the same time. This situation today characterises the landscape of the Meuse Valley, upstream and downstream of the city of Liege (BE). Since the XVIIIth century, the human being has, in these places, accumulated materials, machines, different products, production surplus and waste as if he were seized with a fever of change or carried away on a path leading towards an ideal of modernity which becomes more and more elusive. The territory drawn by the rural patterns disappeared in line with the advancement of the industrial tissues which for a very long time represented an entire region´s pride over its economic prowess. However, when the production fever started fading away, and then vanished altogether, the loss of activity gave the landscape the appearance of an injured body, with certain parts amputated. It was soon filled with scattered objects, as ignorant witnesses of new incongruous spatial organisations. The diversity of theses tissues and their abundance of fragments, carrying past and forgotten logics, forced us to reinterpret the process of formation simply to understand what has happened. And hence, maybe also to understand the roots for the forgetfulness and the current lack of interest. This way of acquiring knowledge has helped us re-establish a narrative which nobody keeps the memory. It has also highlighted both the lack and the need for more open means of interpretation of urban and landscape materials. All this is done so as to stimulate reinvention which is essential to re-launch and nurture a transformation process which contains a plethora of new acceptable, distinctive and sustainable solutions for the future.