(IN)HABITER LA FLEUR MAIGRE
Profile: Spectrum // Research and exhibition design
Location: Borinage region, Belgium / 51º32' N , 0º04 E
Season: 2023 - 2025
Collaborators: Lorraine Wauters, Marie Pirard, Mathias Elaerts
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(In)habiter la fleur maigre is a multidisciplinary research and artistic project investigating the legacy of Belgium’s garden cities in the post-industrial Borinage region. Born from 1920s hygienist ideals and paternalist mining policies, these planned neighborhoods built between the 1920s and 1980s—were once touted as antidotes to urban squalor, blending low-density housing with communal gardens.
More than a year and a half of fieldwork yielded an immersive 3.2 x 1.6 meter observational carthographic drawing, photographs, and videos that map the area’s fractured present: where crumbling modernist blocks and verdant plots collide with the ruins of coal extraction. The work interrogates spatial stigma and resilience, weaving archival material with residents’ voices to reveal how these "utopias" endure amid unemployment, disrepair, and the slow erasure of workers’ housing as a public good.
The result was embedded in the format of a nomad exhibition that took place at the Notre-Dame du Travail church in Bray, the Molenbeek Visual Art Academy in Brussels and the UCL Architecture School in Louvain-La-Neuve during the first half of 2025.
The research project was funded with the support of Université Catholique de Louvain.
Click here to listen more about the project ✾(꒡.̮ ꒡)✾
