PORTEFOLIO

Piret Valentin
29 rue de Lombardie, 1060 Brussel. 0032 487 422 530 [email protected] 21/12/1984 French

Residential Building
Seraing / Belgium Studio : Housing 3rd Bachelor
Project for 23 social housing apartments in an industrial city close to Lige. The primary goal was to build housing with double orientation. Duplex and triplex houses were divided to create a distribution corridor on every 2 levels which in turn provides double orientation and light for the 2 others levels. The idea of a slice increases the cross space. To increase variety, various modular spaces are used, which render each apartment unique. The building is elevated to offer a public space and technical features at ground floor level. The facade is offset to give identity to the apartments, it also provides terraces.

Ground floor

Private House
Matapera / Spain Studio : Projectes Arquitectonics (UPC Barcelona / Ferrater) 1st Master
This house has a particular brief: the host needed very private spaces for his different activities. The answer to this request is a radical separation of functions which in turn translates into a radial plan. This division provides different patios that remain exclusive to each functions, along with optimal orientation. The envelop is opaque except for the garden side and the first floor level, the interior facade is treated with opaque or glass walls. The house adapts to the terrain and creates duality in levels.

Implantation

Section AA

Section BB

Caixia Tower
Barcelona / Spain Studio : Projectes Arquitectonics (UPC Barcelona / Bru Bistuer) 1st Master
The Caixia Bank is an office tower localised in Poblenou, on the Diagonal of Barcelona. The program requires many public spaces. The intention is to give the public the opportunity to climb the tower thanks to different types of public spaces on several levels. These functions are sometimes connected and make for interesting circulation and multiple views of the city. The plan is defined by the plot.

Implantation

Masterplan
Roca del Valles / Spain Studio : Urbanism 1st Master
This project is an urbanism scheme located next to a village in proximity with an environmental protection zone. The terrain is located between a village, a road and a river. The idea was to connect with the village using social drivers that is to say offices, shops, restaurants, public spaces. This part is evolves gradually into housing zones. Therefore high office buildings with public spaces become medium height apartment buildings with streets which in turn become small houses with gardens. The public zone evolves with urban blocs which slowly become streets leading up to the housing zone. It was important for this project to work with the green spaces and the connections with the river, therefore some blocks are open onto the river which in turn make good public spaces. Furthermore, a walkway has been created along the river where the protected plants of the region can be preserved and observed. Finally, the buildings gradually expand as they follow the river providing protection and direction to the center.

Trademart
Brussels / Belgium Studio : Space Speculation 2nd Master
The Trademart is a building from 1972 directed by John Portman and Staepels Pollak and is restricted to a permanent platform for fashion and interior design in Europe. The building is very poor due to its interior. It is the perfect example of what Rem Koolhaas calls Junkspace :a spacious interior with neon lights, ultra functional, controlled, saturated of detestable materials . The Trademart is huge, this is a large square with 200m sides, almost 250,000 m, but despite its 200,000 visitors annually, much of its space remains abandoned.

The Trademart is a building that deserves attention because, despite its use and its current state it has many advantages for future redevelopment. It is located on the Heysel and is therefore easily accessible, its structure allows flexibility in the plan and its pure form gives it a strong identity. If urban planning often limits the city to its functionality, the megastructures sometimes follows the same direction, their hyperfunctionality gives rise to a limited space experiments. The megastructure is defined as a building encompassing a "city", so I wanted to address this issue of the megastructure playing with its own definition, therefore creating a megastructure encompassing several cities in order to create different identities and space experiments. The principle of the project is to preserve the architecture by giving each level a new identity. The Trademart plan closely approximates the plans of Vauban, so I wanted to continue the exercise and see if the ground floor can retain its Vauban identity , the upper floors can create new identities with other urban plans. I used different principles of great cities like Barcelona or Chicago but also the plans of Le Corbusier or KGDVS, concentrated together inside the Trademart. This is an interesting exercise since it compares different urban principles to the same scale, it analyses different urban patterns in a new perspective. The various plans, therefore, lead singular patterns of circulation but also different densities. I represented these densities with furniture showing several possible scenarios and efficiencies that these urban systems could provide within a megastructure. The superposition is preserved and the variety is found at project level. We can nevertheless discover the different spatial properties through patios that suggest the various principles of circulation for each "city" and that blur our understanding of the building by removing all forms of rationality.

Cerda

Corbusier

Vauban

Burnham

Vegas

Office

Collaborations

Houndstooth Sidewalk
Collaboration MS-Architects Brussel / Belgium Dansaert Street 2011 Client: City of Brussels
This is a collaboration between the ms-architects practice and a graphic designer : Els Vande Kerckhove. The project brief was to draw a pattern for the sidewalk on Dansaert Street. The historic functionality of the street was the main artery of a textile market, so the chosen pattern was houndstooth . There are many constraints to designing a sidewalk, we had to use a basic pavement structure that was easy to place and to change. The pavement pattern had to be with the correct dimensions and materials so as to be noticed by the public but not overwhelming to use.

European Neighbourhood Planning

Collaboration MS-Architects Brussels / Belgium 2011 Client: City of Brussels
In a neighbourhood contract condition, this project aims to connect different streets around a railroad. It's a pedestrian concourse which starts at the public space of the European Parliament and stretches until the Germoir Bridge.

Master plan Model

Collaboration MS-Architects Binche / Belgium 2010 Client: City of Binche
Binche is a small city with an historical center that evolved along the roads around it. This project consisted of enhancing the future of the city by planning interesting zones to build. The principal idea was to connect two neighborhoods separated by a flood zone. This zone has been treated as a green zone where we can find sports grounds, promenades, and vegetation. So the new buildings we propose are on an elevated zone and are open to the green zone. This new urban planning allows an highest density and new connections for the city.

The principal constraints were the topography, and the small width along the railroad. As we studied different types of passageways (stairs, slopes, bridges) we chose to design it with different materials which could provide a sequential movement to the walkway.

Master plan 3D model

Collaboration MS-Architects Namur / Belgium 2010 Client: City of Namur
This project is a study of several propositions for sport facilities. The program is regroups different installations such as an iceskating rink, a football pitch (exterior or interior), a parking lotWe made various propositions with different schemes, budgets and timing scenarios.

One section of the project was the Artisans street. This street is currently without sewer facilities and lets the water flow along the sidewalk. The intention was to keep this system but to optimise its management. Therefore the street is divided into two parts : the car side, and a mineral side which can absorb the water. Also two buffers are placed at each entrance to slow down traffic.

Housing Navez
Competition / Winner Collaboration MS-Architects Brussels / Belgium 2011/ 2012 Client: Schaerbeek
The Navez project is an apartment building on a unique site. It's located on a street intersection at the entrance of Brussels, so it's the first building you see when you enter in the city. Due to the small size of the plot, the project gets wider from the first floor level and transforms the principal facade into a concave angle to give to the facade a welcoming position. This facade has full north orientation, therefore a patio is built on the south orientation to maximise the sunlight. The patio and the north facade divide the project into two parts which hang on a vertical circulation, and which provide different levels around this circulation. All these devices generate multiple viewpoints, privacy and an interesting sense of movement.

Ground floor

Stairs section - apartment distribution

Elevation from Lambermont Boulevard

Camo Cinema Competition / Winner

Collaboration V+ architects Namur / Belgium 2012 Client : City of Namur
This is a contest in association with an contractor and specialists, which requires construction documents. The projects goal is to renovate a cinema by adding more screens and to allow for better acoustics. The old cinema has already been expanded through the adjacent house which in turn creates a complex circulation scenario in the existing building. The primary idea for the contest is to simplify and to control this circulation and to enlarge the cinemas.

Ground floor

3rd floor

AA Section

CC Section

BB Section

Facade