A design for the Ambrassade, a youth organisation established in the centre of Brussels, Belgium. Brussels is a multicultural city, which is in the favour of the organisation. The Ambrassade works for the government, as a contact point for every other youth organisation in Belgium. For the upgrade of the building, the staff wanted to make the building a place for everyone.
As a first step I stripped the inside of the buildings, maintaining the different levels and its connections. Inside the open spaces a standard structure could be introduced and multiplied, to create a working space for example. To attract more people on the street, tourists and inhabitants of all ages, I aimed to work on a design for the façade of the building. As a typical rowbuilding, the Ambrassade is squizzed between two other buildings. I introduce a double-layered façade composed out of a slender steel frame and a mix of polycarbonate glass and panels. From the outside the façade functions as a map, which shows the connection between the different levels on the outside and inside. When it gets dark, the light from inside the building would show the contours of the staircases on the inside even more. A courtyard in the middle of the site leads to another building in the back. I connected the two buildings by several bridges, which are fixed to the side walls of the neighbours. The façade design of the building in the back is based on the same principles. The rooftops of both buildings, one flat and one pitched, were made safely accessible.
The design of the façade was made to kind of play with your mind. The staircases are placed in such a way on both sides of the polycarbonate, making it difficult to know at a glance which way to go to get to the desired location inside the building. By doing this, the Ambrassade takes you on a journey, to discover the building, the different activities and the different tasks of the organisation. Due to time efficiency, especially for the staff, the different levels are also connected by a staircase in the middle of the buildings.