ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the metropolitan thinking on Brussels and thus in extension addresses the notion of a metropolitan network of public space in the context of several moments of research by design on the Brussels metropolis. Two of these moments are highlighted to exemplify the ongoing shift from an anthropocentric to an eco-urban perspective. Both the river Senne valley and the Sonian forest have been most influential in the construction of the territory's urbanity. The design research conducted at the Research group of Urbanism and Architecture (OSA, KU Leuven, Belgium), unfolded in this chapter, explores the radical restoration and expansion of this natural capital to absorb all kinds of urbanity within a possible new metropolitan construct, loosely labelled ‘National park’, or ‘park territory’, imposing a re-interpretation and re-articulation of (the network of) public space.
