Location: Rockerill, Charleroi, Belgium
Date: 2023
Programme: Concert Hall & Cultural Center
Client: Rockerill, Igretec
Status: Competition
Team:
Traumnovelle (architects)
Goffart & Polomé (architects)
Carbonifère (landscape architects)
Photography: Traumnovelle
Taking hold of the remnants of bygone eras to build new societal trajectories, or how ruins can become fertile ground conducive to encounters, exaltation and celebration. Rockerill, a concert hall and cultural space in the former Providence ironworks on the western outskirts of Charleroi, along the course of the river Sambre, is part of this evolution.
Based on the strengths and dynamics of the surrounding area, it is at the initiative of the Charleroi municipality that the project proposes to perpetuate these initiatives and, beyond that, to strengthen them through consideration of the non-human (fauna and flora) and the surrounding landscape. This desire is in line with the wider redevelopment of the area around the former Fosse n°18 to support cultural activities through workshops in the former forge storage areas.
The post-miner landscape, the main narrator of the site's genesis, is magnified through the use of broad, sweeping framings of the panorama. These are provided by the architectural features of this former industrial infrastructure and consolidated by the layout of the passageways serving the heated spaces. Flora takes over the architecture. The disrobing of the building blurs the line between interior and exterior, allowing endogenous vegetation to take over the space. Only the areas with specific programming ("studios") are partitioned off, insulated and heated, while the non-qualified spaces are covered by the existing roofs and left to informal uses, becoming condensers of social interaction.
Punctuated by the multiplicity of climates and seasonal microclimates, the uses of appropriation and human synergies are accompanied by the mobilisation of energies from the environment. The sunshine and rainwater collected by the large roof surfaces are collected and used to power the building's operations via solar panels and rainwater recovery cisterns. The use of local resources is also reflected in the use of local materials in the construction of the new spaces.
The monumental scale of this high heritage of productivism is transformed into a space for commemorating the living, similar to the vocation that cathedrals once had becomes the palimpsest of new paths, new possibilities, in a post-industrial area - too often wrongly perceived as desolate - such as Charleroi.
