The Art of Urban Design. Post-Industrial Regeneration in the Work of Marcel Smets
The Art of Urban Design. Post-Industrial Regeneration in the Work of Marcel Smets

Summary/Abstract: The exhibition. The title of the exhibition is “The Art of Urban Design. Post-Industrial Regeneration in the Work of Marcel Smets”. Although one may be surprised by the unreserved description of urban practices as art, the levels of complexity, innovation, and competence manifested in the works are raising the results to the very level of artistic expression. Let’s look at the content of the exhibition as defined by its authors: “Encompassing three decades of recent urbanistic practice, the exhibit highlights the complex environments and co-creative processes at work in the renewal of the contemporary city. Rather than a métarécit of the prodigious career that connects the showcased projects, the exhibit occasions the opportunity of starring many individuals, organizations, and communities, grouped into professional or social constellations are generated by two kinds of gravity: on the one hand, the axiological weight of the city and, on the other hand, the undeniable attraction force exerted on contemporary subjectivity by derelict industrial and infrastructural places. The selected projects display a threefold diversity: (a) chronological – from the early ‘90s to the present; (b) typological – railway stations, port districts, urban river fronts, road infrastructure, and derelict industrial areas or public facilities; (c) geographical – projects from Belgium, France, Italy, and Portugal.”

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