Vittorio Romieri


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Public Living Room



Proposal for the Architecture Curating Practice Residency #005, Brussels (project not selected).

The province of Brussels contains out of nineteen municipalities. Within each district, the responsibility to maintain its infrastructure – private and public – is carried out by a network of different profiles, operating in an assortment of departments. This fragmentation challenges to respond efficiently to the day-to-day management of the areas. Such as the Brussels Region's waste policy, mostly based on qualitative and quantitative unreliable data [1]. In response, bottom-up participatory initiatives introduced strategies to ameliorate coordination with residents, and pursue an enhanced cooperation between workers on a horizontal level. Through sensibilisation campaigns and hands-on activities, they aim to create awareness on the role of public caretaking. Although perceived as opposite players, Bruxelles-Propreté – a governmental entity – envisions to mobilise ALL actors – governments, citizens and businesses – by 2030 to collectively contribute to the urban cleanliness. 

Ask yourself: Who regulates the urban landscape? Who decides which shared spaces to neglect, which ones to maintain? Care workers add a new meaning to and sustain public infrastructures. Yet, society does not award their contribution to everyday life. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, a New-York-based artist, recognised this "lousy status". To tackle it, she saw potential in joint forces. Since 1977, Ukeles has been the official, unsalaried Artist-in-Residence at the New York City Department of Sanitations. In her artwork, she values the endless maintenance and service work that “keeps the city alive”. In her “Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!”, Ukeles separates two contrary human instincts: the "Death Instinct" and the "Life Instinct". "Creation of the new", she says, "leads us down path of individuality and separation", referring to the first human drive. The latter, however, attempts to unify by preserving the new [2].

Thus maintenance of cities' infrastructures is not merely a discussion on aesthetics, but rather on politics. "Public space is not only a sort of free space for citizens to inhabit; it also has to do with rules, laws, city development, and ideas and hunches and aspirations", says Hicham Khalidi, director of the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. A curator, he claims, has to look at society as multilayered system in order to understand which projects reasonate with the public [3]. Their spaces shouldn't be designed as museum pieces, but rather as an urban living room.

In this project, we distinct two intentions of curating: the first refers to its original meaning of taking care and managing, derived from the latin verb curare. The second addresses the modern usage related to the selection and organisation of items for an exhibition, presentation or show.

Who are the curators of our public space? And what is their intention, taking into account the verticality of public space management?

Brussels Capital-Region, capital of Belgium and the European Union, has exceeded 1.2 million citizens in 2025 [4]. The metropolis is a hothouse of ethnicities, art and culture. Yet, the public space – the only place in the city that should be accessible to everyone at all times – does not reflect the beautiful diversity. Governmental institutions regard urban design according to the modern-day meaning of curation: they aim to formalize our shared places through over-designed visions. You see, urban development is not designed from the perspective of vulnerable social groups, but focuses instead on the productive segment of the population.

Considering this, we can roughly identify three categories of people who are related to the public space: the “city-care” worker, the user, and the visitor.

Within the user category we identify public space’s everyday presence, being them families, job holders – wether inside or around the public space – homeless, etc.

Visitors aren’t part of the Brussels population, thus without a special connection with a specific public environment.

The “city-care” worker manages, maintains and looks after (curare) our shared environment, such as garbage collectors, street sweepers, and greenery department.

Before writing this proposal, we asked ourselves: what if children could design the urban spaces as their most favourable playground? What if Boulevard Anspach would have stayed in the same condition after becoming a car-free zone? [5] How should we introduce more greeneries in the city for public well-being?

As critics of the unfinished, urban exhibition that is the city of Brussels, we call on the workers and bottom-up entities to reflect on a public living room. The mentioned groups on the map are potential candidates that we could approach for collaboration. During organised participatory moments, we invite them to our ‘studio’ to sketch and advocate for an alternative Brussels. The process of the panel discussions AND the yet accomplished actions will be documented audio-visually, without direct agency from our part. Interviews with and videos, photographs and written text of all three categories of the people will be collected, without losing sight of the most vulnerable voices.

  1. Bortolotti, Andrea (2021) Refuse of the city: rethinking waste management in Brussels. Brussels studies. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/brussels.5680
  2. Frichot, Hélène (2023) Mottos for maintenance as care work. ARCH+ Journal for Architecture and Urbanism 252, 21-27.
  3. Allen, Matthew (2019) If it’s for us, but not with us, it’s against us: Hicham Khalidi on the challenges of curating in public spaces. Harvard University.
  4. The Brussels Times Newsroom (2025, 10th of February) Which Brussels municipalities are most populated in 2025? The Brussels Times.
  5. Huppe, Léa (2025, 11th of May) The uneven impact of Brussels’ pedestrian zone between residents and shop owners. The Brussels Times.