Grau

« A visual thinking of Flanders » is the continuation of a research on the Flemish territory that was initiated in 2012 at the Belgian Pavilion at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice.

« A visual thinking of Flanders » is a film that aims to show the reality of spaces, their complexities, but also the potential that lies in each of them. Giving shape to these issues through a video (suitable media for this type of communication) feeds the debate on the development of the territory with another perspective. The purpose of this project is to be shared with a wide audience, an audience composed of both insiders and citizens.

Matters relating to territories and urban and agricultural developments are difficult to understand, first of all because they are complex but also because they relate to different scales. In this context, drawing can be used as tool that allows to give a legible form to a complex thought and to communicate these matters to a wider audience (professional and non professionals). Drawing is a means to navigate from one scale to another, to specify a condition (cultural, social, economic), to represent the unthinkable and to project a future with both lightness and uncertainty. When animation is added, different thoughts and informations start to come together.

The main purpose of this video was to show the condition of Flanders urban development, both to provoke a debate and to highlight a phenomenon which is specific to Flanders. The film focuses on three different elements.

1 Time : it shows the evolution of the territory through time by giving it an image of the past (a century ago), the present and the future.

2 Relationships : it highlights the relationship between the four main ingredients of the territory (nature, agriculture, activity and housing) through time using a simple color code, shown in the beginning, to make these relationships clear (green for nature, beige for agriculture, blue for activity and red for housing)

3 Coproduction : it starts to discuss possibilities of coproduction between these four ingredients, not as specific projects but as a general idea so as to provoke a debate around it.

 

2014
GRAU, Frankie Nowicki (narration) Forêt bleue (animation)
Client: Flanders State of the Art
See the Film