Dansaert in the sky

I started as a kid who loves playing basketball outside with his friends in the North of Brussels, aiming to discover new areas and new basketball players in his city and all around the world. It soon became obvious that it would make sense to help organization to reshape their spaces in order to let and encourage human beings doing sports in harmony. Dansaert in the sky is the perfect vue of my vision.

Pedestrianized zone

The nouveau marché aux grains square will be totally transformed into a pedestrian zone in few years. Our proposition for the public authorities, stakeholders and neighbors consists to position this spot as an unique sport area in the world open 24/7 with notably a running track, a padel court, a street workout zone, a petanque court, several chess and checkers tables and last but not least our basketball court. Everything decorated with an artwork. You can observe hereunder the current square (2020).

Gentrification process

First of all, considering that the gentrification process in Dansaert is a threat, our project aims to maintain low social classes with a migration background and to improve its interactions with the other social classes. The reinforcement of the sport fonction of this square, will increase the interplay between the new and the oldest inhabitants. They will meet each other through sport practices.

Method & observations

Based on an ethnographic method, we pursue multiple objectives with this project. We studied the legacy of this area, studied the demands of all the stakeholders and analyse the Brussels prospective regarding the big cities dynamic.

Regarding the number of schools surrounding this square, we observed that there is a large number of students who do sport on this area. The sport teachers used to ask to their students to run around the basketball court. However, this space is not favorable to this sport. The ground is hard, sandy and granulated. That’s the reason why we designed an athletics track composed with a rubber floor.

Materials, sport courts and potential effects

We suggest to use an ecological rubber for the floor. It’s a magnificent material for the following reasons (non exhaustive list). It decreases the noise pollution (1) and the sport injuries (2). Indeed, this material absorbes the impact of articulations and basket balls. It decreases the skin injuries risks when athletics fall. (3) The rubber floor used is the result of rubber wastes in other sectors (e.g. tires).

We want to offer for free to the population all kind of sport infrastructures from a padel court to a street workout area. The idea is to facilitate the access to all sports whatever the economic background of individuals. The presence of a padel court (right court on this 3d design), considered as a sport for high social classes, will allow to all people with an interest to try to do this sport.

This 3D video allows to watch, on the one hand, the illumination of the lines during the night and, on the other hand, the streets beautified with art. It constitutes an originality which has the potential to attract the attention of a lot of people, physically and virtually. The idea is to create an artistic homogeneity in the whole zone, from Dansaert to the « Grand place », the most famous historical square in Brussels.

In other words, this project will :

Attract multiple profils of people (national and international tourists), artists, potential clients for the shops;
Position Brussels as the world epicenter of creativity related to sport and art;
And make proud inhabitants of their neighborhood.

As you can see at the end of the video, we conceptualized an underground parking spot at the « nouveau marché aux grains » square and a car mobility plan around and on the square. Indeed, a significant number of stakeholders need this automobile mobility plan. For instance, the De Mot-Couvreur institute, the beer producer and the police office located on this square need an access for their providers and their employees. In addition, according to the municipal public authorities, it’s mandatory to plan at least around 70 parking spots under the square for the inhabitants.

The team involved in this project is composed by

Dr Mehdi Ould Kherroubi Hacine-Bey, bball in the sky founder

Mehdi Hattabi, 3D Designer - Visual Archs