Proximites - The Freedom Threshold

Proximities is primarily concerned with developing an understanding of existing places be them a room, a building, a street, a district, a town or a city. The relationship of these elements to their context is of particular interest.
The aim of design is to explore the idea of threshold, an intervention which bridges the moment the inside and out meet, to create a space to facilitate freedom of speech and ideas, and explore the macro and micro of the city and suggest brave and radical solutions with the consideration of the local context of Kortrijk, and wider context of Belgium and Europe.
The project is an abundant residential building which just locates besides a gothic church. The peal of church bells rang out every hour seemed to warn residents to surrender to the religious beliefs, rules and regulations. At the same time, due to religion wars since 16th century, language and cultural conflicts between those groups who speak Dutch, French and German, between old and now generations , communication barriers were caused, which reduced the cultural and social activities, that more and more young generations had chosen to leave their hometown, new immigrants were not willing to settle down, while much of residents are old generations nowadays. This necessarily lead to the reduction of consumption and vitality of city.
I associated with the story of the Tower of Babel- humans decided to build a city with a tower that "reached to the heavens. However, God was not so pleased and decide to confuse their language, so humans were unable to understand one another anymore and could not work together- which is similar to The literary inquisition during the Qing dynasty of China's feudal society. I then thought of the library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges as well, a place would contain every possible combination of letters, thus containing nearly every book that ever has been and every book that ever could be. How to define the freedom of speech, declaring oneself publicly is generally regard as kind of freedom. Even though we are living at a time without literary inquisition and where the freedom of speech is highly encouraged, most people still feel confused and lack of freedom. I think this is due to our restricted knowledges and intelligence, that our speaking , debate and even behavior are blocked. Those context promote my definition of freedom, a place for freedom of speech should not just allow all kinds of provocative talks and debates with other residents, but also to enlighten people to explore, generate, and create new knowledges constantly through making conversation with the past, present and future, with wise man in books and themselves.
Only when you are exploring, updating, generating and creating continuously, you are accessing freedom, and achieving freedom of speech.
The first threshold Tunnel and walkway is where to experience something new, from dark/past/boundary to bright/future/no boundary. The second threshold is library, a place where freedom of speech is brought with proximities, as it is a place with no restrictions of text, as knowledge symbol the freedom. The third threshold is tower of freedom, a place where no boundaries can be experienced on top of it, past or restrictions would be the past while visitors look back to the church.
Pre-rusted metal is chosen to match up with current context Kortrijk- a city with flourishing past but fade away gradually nowadays. Transparent acrylic mixed with metal is used on the tower to create a effect that when citizens look at the tower from streets, the tower looks like disappear in the sky. Pre-rusted metal disappear little by little from the bottom to the top of tower, symbolizing the necessary of updating and creating new constantly, only in this way, no limitations and freedom can be accessed.