MARKE: Mark(e) the Urban Fringe Forest (2010)

Location: Marke, Belgium
Designers: OSA/ RUA and Leiedal

Kelly Shannon, Bruno De Meulder, Wilfired Vandeghinste, Cati Vilquin, Veerle Cox, Barbara Sandra, Esther Jacobs, Jimena Garcia Galindo, Nele Plevoets, Andrea Curtoni, Huang Po-Ju, Rana Habibi, Wu Chen-wei, Pei-Chun Wen, Marleen Goethals, Bjoke Carron, Bram Lattré, Jan Schreurs.

Commissioned by: Leiedal

Period of design: 2010

Area: 870 ha (overall investigation area)

BELGIUM

Productive Periphery

The remaining open plains of Marke, a farming village that developed into an as wealthy as an unstructured suburb southwest of Kortrijk, have been earmarked for afforestation by the Flemish Government, part of the European-wide program to significantly increase the continent’s forest footprint as a response to environmental challenges of the 21st century. (Ferraris Map 1777/Hendrickx 2007/ Plissart 2010)

Afforestation Program for Marke

The remaining open land of Marke, a suburb of the city of Kortrijk anchored on an older village of Marke, is designated by the government as the site for an afforestation program (as required by European standards of minimal forestation areas and as utterly needed in this over-urbanized region).

Instead of developing the forest on this rich and fertile land (and hence that farmers perceive as a provocation) as an element in itself, the urban fringe forest has consciously been conceived as the new counterpart and simultaneously as the new spatial frame in which Marke – a not that well-ordered and not that interesting suburban environment – could densify and develop further into a more sophisticated residential quarter of Kortrijk.

Regional Landscape and Infrastructure Strategy

Large recreational spaces serve as compensation spaces in the heavily urbanized region and function as cornerstones of a regional landscape structure in the making, a counter-figure of the urban, inducing quality and structure in the substandard (sub)urban territory. Infrastructure is requalified and the “valley section” is accentuated, emphasizing the spatial quality of the landscape and ‘repairing’ the brutal intervention of the highway. Earthworks anchor a connective spine that creates a new civic space and is linked to the urban fringe forest. This way the isolation of Hoog Kortrijk south of the highway is broken. East-West oriented galettes structure Hoog Kortrijk with monumental open spaces, while soft routes realize transversals connecting to the river Leie.

Ordering Geometries of the Region

The long-term transformation of skyline of the valley with a “crown forest” gives a new reference and orientation in the landscape. The “crown forest” is developed between the 30-40m contour lines and compensates for a long history of ecological abuse (clay extraction sites for tile and brick production). It has a system of “clear cut” views of significant natural and man-made monuments embedded in its mosaic.

Ordering Geometries of Marke

At the scale of Marke, the “as found” system of property lines in the landscape and “magical spaces” in the village set the rhythm, scale and distance for intervention and become the binding element of the structure that works as both bold gestures and subtle moves. Slow routes include roads that are re-profiled and equipped with platforms and a network of bicycle routes that are hierarchically re-structured.

The Role of the Urban Fringe Forest

Simultaneously, the natural structure designed for the Marke urban fringe forest becomes the backbone of a structure that positions Marke in the urban region, by visually relating, by integrating it spatially in territorial armatures and by making connections across the manifold infrastructural ruptures that isolate it from its surroundings.

Forest/ Landscape Typologies

The “crown forest” sets the omnipresent spatial frame that is filled with a wide variety of valley forest types and open spaces that create a diversity of atmospheres that are appropriate for a wide range of uses of varying intensity and scale. The rich palette of plant types (including orchards, flowering trees, etc) and ground textures create a new public space system for Marke and its surroundings, complement the existing recreational network and generate new ecologies.

Landscape Urbanism Strategy

While the crown forest complements the Leie as a natural structure that orders the territory and frames places within this order, the variety of other forest pockets of different natures create a mosaic of qualitative spaces that inscribe themselves subtly within their context, and restructure the suburban sprawl of Marke, Lauwe and Aalbeke. Soft networks function as veins uniting urban, forest and open spaces, be it as north-south transversals that cross the multitude of strong east-west barriers (highway, railway, Leie), be it as central loop within the forest, or spine paralleling the highway.

Transformative Impact of the Forest on Marke

The plan for the urban fringe forest drastically transforms Marke. The forest gives it a new ‘context’, as much as collages fundamentally re-contextualize the elements they combine in a ‘new’ context. This is not only about constructing nature, but also, redefining the urban.

Rearticulating Historical Patterns

This new context is carefully inscribed in the geometrical patterns that have been ingrained in the territory through centuries of (agri)cultural appropriation (yet made obscure by the careless postwar suburbanization). The interventions rearticulate the pre-existing patterns.

Structures buried under and eroded by the forces of history are not so much resurrected, but rather inverted in their meaning – from organizing open fields and meadows along the Leie-valley to defining the interior of urban and forest structures. City and nature are (re-)configured in an interdependent relationship.

Marke

The central loop within the forest organizes a threshold between habitable and non-habitable (and densely forested) landscape and makes of the fringe forest a central place that connects communities severed by the highway infrastructure. The central loop becomes a promenade, acting as a balcony on which a sequence of high quality landscape sensations will be experienced. It complements the village center and the (re-naturalized) creek as the main spatial structures that organize alterations of forested and open, green and urban spaces, turning Marke into a paragon of how warp and woof enriches the environment.

E17 Earthwork

A number of earthworks along the noisy E17 highway create a sound barrier for the adjacent environment while simultaneously organizing the transition of a suburban service area of the city of Kortrijk (hospital, exhibition center, business park) to the open countryside. A soft spine (bicycles, pedestrians, etc.) anchored within the earthworks connects the major service destinations and is linked to the soft nets of the urban fringe forest, in itself a step-stone between the urban and the countryside.