Expanding Architecture: From Build Space To Lived Space

Research by Petra Pferdmenges

|| Alive Architecture is a research-based practice situated in Brussels. All projects contribute to knowledge within the ongoing discussion about the expanded role of the architect, enlarging the discipline from built space to Lived Space.

To do so we engage with multiple stakeholders, mediate beween top-down and bottom-up actors and enable the local to co-produce the city. By observing and transforming the existing spatial, social, economic and cultural situation we trigger the location’s unique identity. As such, we consider the process of each project as being essential to its outcome, stimulating urban transformation in a playful and artistic way!

The method to produce knowledge is practice-research: We act, we observe and we reflect upon our work. To produce knowledge we position the process and the output among similar projects, defining differences and similarities to reveal a gap through our projects that does not exist!

Keywords: Co-production, Lived Space, Public Realm, Inclusion, Social Design, urban process