Living in the Bocage Landscape
We believe that sustainability is about learning to live at peace with our environment. To do this, we must understand the identities of the local landscapes and ecosystems, and appreciate their unique features so they may play a defining role in people’s daily lives.
| Location: | Denderleeuw, Belgium |
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| Status: | Competition Finalist |
| Date: | 2021-2022 |
| With: | Metapolis, Traject, IDEA Consult |
We believe that sustainability is about learning to live at peace with our environment. To do this, we must understand the identities of the local landscapes and ecosystems, and appreciate their unique features so they may play a defining role in people’s daily lives.
Our proposal, “Living in the Bocage Landscape” creates a neighbourhood of 320 new homes that aims to channel the local landscape identities of the bocage, with its patchwork of agricultural fields, arbors and hedgerows, to structure appropriate urban densification, fostering community building, healthy living, economic growth, and increased biodiversity.
We believe the site can not only be a pleasant living environment for humans, but also a qualitative habitat for all kinds of animals. The Natura2000 zone shows that very high-quality nature on a limited surface is possible here.
We want to form a stepping stone in an ecological corridor through built-up and undeveloped areas, where all kinds of species can migrate to the newly created nature areas (toads and salamanders in the wet areas, bees and insects in the flower meadows and orchards, bats and bird species in the trees).
To successfully develop the project with local expertise, especially during COVID times, we formed a team of like-minded local designers and consultants that include Metapolis as well as Mobility consultant Traject, and sustainable development and Real Estate consultant IDEA Consult.
The Site in Context
Denderleeuw is situated in between two large-scale open space structures:
In the west a vast agricultural area structured by a number of streams such as Molenbeek or Wildebeek that flow into the Dender, acting as a network of ecological corridor composed of swamp forests and poplar groves.
In the east is a lower flood-prone valley composed of marshy meadows, numerous water bodies and dense forests.
The site itself is a triangular zone of bocage (fields bound by ecologically-rich buffers), defined by residential streets (“ribbon” development) to the North and West, and by railroad tract to the East. The core of the site is prone to flooding.
There are only three access points into the site, one from the North, one from the Northeast, and one from the Southwest. Each creates different opportunities to connect the new neighbourhood to Denderleeuw’s pedestrian and vehicular networks. The North access point is a key connection point between the nearby sports facilities and the core of the new development site. On the other hand, the Southwest connection point leads directly to the promising, but currently underused urban node of Iddergem with shops, a school and a church.
The Masterplan
We believe that the following composition of spaces can promote social cohesion in the neighbourhood, with various spaces fostering diverse interactions: Around the communal lawn you are in close contact with your closest neighbours, the front gardens on the street side facilitate conversation with the neighbours across the street, etc…
The masterplan is structured around four types of spaces:
A central neighborhood park that takes the potentially flood-prone area and the latent power of the canal as a starting point. Neighborhood gardens overflow into it. Together with trees and water, they form a reinterpretation of the bocage landscape.
The outer ring is a productive edge, with denser forestation alluding to the swamp forests of the region's typical meersen. It also acts as a buffer against the noise of the railway and a view through the backyards of the local residents. A number of existing parks, groves and plots with an ambiguous status are also included. The denser green border acts as a biodiverse green zone, a suitable habitat for animals and insects. In this productive edge fields mingle with vegetable gardens, orchards and parking bays and habitat nodes.
Between the productive edge and the open park landscape, we organize the housing as a series of residential courtyards giving out on the central park. U-shaped groups of buildings with an alternating code of strips of terraced houses and park villas around a communal green zone, with back gardens that continue into the shared courtyard.
On the other side of the courtyard, the houses along residential streets, a kind of car-free residential areas where the car can drive but is not allowed to park, so that the street becomes a social and child-friendly place.
Rows of trees, water features and soft paths run through these different parts of the master plan and connect them with each other.
The site is designed as a series of overlapping ecological and healthy living systems: water management, biodiversity, production landscapes and transportation
Walkable multi-generational communities integrated within the landscape
Productive gardens build communities around the values of healthy living and sharing
The bocage landscape acts as a rich biodiverse space and water management system
Various flexible housing typologies help create a demographically diverse neighbourhood (apartments, small houses, co-housing, assisted living, etc…)
Sejong Museum Gardens - National Museum Complex of South Korea
Office Ou has been announced as the winner of South Korea's International Competition for the National Museum Complex Master Plan of the New Administrative City (Sejong City). Chosen as the winning design among a field of 81 entries from 26 countries around the world, Office Ou's Sejong Museum Gardens will play a crucial role in shaping the cultural landscape of South Korea's new metropolis. The competition entry was made in collaboration with Junglim Architecture as the local architect of record.
| Location: | Sejong, South Korea |
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| Status: | Competition Winning Entry (Under Construction) |
| Date: | 2016 - Present |
Office Ou has been announced as the winner of South Korea's International Competition for the National Museum Complex Master Plan of the New Administrative City (Sejong City). Chosen as the winning design among a field of 81 entries from 26 countries around the world, Office Ou's Sejong Museum Gardens will play a crucial role in shaping the cultural landscape of South Korea's new metropolis. The competition entry was made in collaboration with Junglim Architecture as the local architect of record.
Sejong City, the new administrative city of South Korea, shifts many of the national government's functions south from Seoul. Already home to 36 government agencies and over 300,000 residents,
Sejong City's growing political and administrative importance will be complemented by what the competition promoters hailed as a “world-class cultural complex that will be on par with Berlin's Museuminsel, Vienna's Museumsquartier, and Washington D.C's Smithsonian museums.” Situated in the heart of the nascent city along the bank of the Geum River, Sejong’s National Museum Complex will be a major cultural center for all of Korea, hosting a diverse range of new institutions. Museums devoted to Architecture and the City, Design, Digital Heritage, Natural History, and Korea's Archival Traditions will join Office Ou's National Children's Museum, along with a number of smaller institutions. In total, nearly a dozen museums—an exact number has yet to be set—will be spread throughout the site.
A - Central Operations Center
B - National Children's Museum
C - Additional Museums
D - Natural History Museum
E - National Archives Museum
F - National Digital Heritage Museum
G - National Design Museum
H - National Architecture and City Museum
I - Central Plaza
K - Terracing Rice Paddies
L - Wetlands
M - Che Creek Ecological Corridor
N - Mountain and Forest Landscape
Office Ou's master plan for the 190,000 m² site combines the remarkable and diverse surrounding landscape (rice paddies, wetlands, forests, riverbanks, urban fabric), with the basic logic of Korea’s Joeseon Dynasty palace architecture. Like the palace, Sejong Museum Gardens uses a consistent architectural language throughout, but differentiates itself through changes in scale, and in response to the natural topography. Its architecture does not strive to be iconic in itself, but instead acts as a frame or vessel for landscape, drawing it into a set of courtyards and forecourts. Each museum's identity is reinforced by thematic links to an associated landscape.
For example, the productive orchard landscape that characterizes the Children's Museum invites kids to play and explore the space. The Archives Museum will be set within a mountainous topography, fostering an appropriate sense of seclusion and security. The Architecture Museum is defined by hard landscaping with a distinctly urban feel, relating to the city’s developing retail and arts district across the Che Creek. In naming the project Sejong Museum Gardens, the garden is recognized as a vital link between culture and nature. Our hope is that the project can give the people of Sejong—and South Korea—a place to understand and nurture this relationship.
The competition jury praised the project’s “exquisite control of space,” as well as “the spatial relationship between nature and built form, which is successfully anchored in human scale.” Particular acclaim was also reserved for “the interpretation of nature as an architectural element,” and the unorthodox decision to emphasize landscape over built form. The competition jury included South Korea's Sungkwan Lee of Seoul National University, Yongmi Kim of Geumseong Architects & Engineers, Junsung Kim of Konkuk University and Architecture Studio hANd, and Sunghong Kim of the University of Seoul, as well as Japan's Nobuaki Furuya of Waseda University and Studio Nasca, and Christopher Sharples of SHoP Architects from the United States.
Following the completion of the masterplan, Office Ou designed the first three buildings of the National Museum Complex, working in partnership with South Korea's Junglim Architecture. These include the National Children's Museum, the Museum Complex's Central Storehouse and Central Operations Centre.
The first phase of the project, comprised of 3 buildings was completed in 2024.
Depiction of Changdeokgung and Changgyeonggung palaces, circa 1830.
Materials and landscape combine to form unique identities for each museum
Architectural design - basic formal guidelines
Architecture Museum forecourt
Design Museum forecourt
Digital Heritage Museum forecourt
Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum
Additional Museums
Children's Museum Approach
Children's Museum Forecourt in winter
Children's Museum stair down to exhibition areas
Children's Museum exhibition courtyard
Children's Museum terrace
Soutok, A Productive "Sponge" Park
Suburban parks should have three functions: ecology, production and life.
In response to the challenges of frequent flooding and private ownership of land, the design proposes a new agricultural landscape model, which has three major benefits: ecological, economic and cultural.
| Location: | Czechia |
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| Status: | Competition Finalist |
| Date: | 2022-2024 |
| With: | Turenscape / Yu Kongjian |
Suburban parks should have three functions: ecology, production and life.
In response to the challenges of frequent flooding and private ownership of land, the design proposes a new agricultural landscape model, which has three major benefits: ecological, economic and cultural.
For ecological benefits, ponds and wetlands are introduced to improve flood regulation and increase water storage capacity. When floods come, ponds can be used to receive more water, create different types of habitats, and increase local biodiversity.
For economic benefits, a variety of livelihood options are provided, in accordance with the current situation of land ownership. Gravel and sand excavated from the pits, that can become ponds, can be sold for economic profits. In the long term, the ponds can be used to raise fish and ducks or carry out water sports. The cultivated land can continue to be cultivated, or it can be used to breed livestock, plant fruit trees or operate homestays.
For cultural benefits, a recreation ring is implanted in the farmland to connect the slow rhythms of agricultural and hydrological systems with places for recreation, forming a diversified and vibrant recreation space. As a result, the existing farmland landscape on the site will gradually transition into a new agricultural model, which has both production functions and landscape recreation functions, and can regulate and store floodwaters and adapt to nature.
The above-mentioned principles of landscape change are implemented across the site. The existing golf course becomes a floodable area, and the mine pit is transformed into a large regulation pond, so as to form the final suburban park landscape according to local conditions. This is a suburban park with an ecological regulation capacity, a suburban production function and a place for cultural recreation, which will create a new model for European suburban landscape park.
The bold, neophilic character of the design reflects the character of the site itself: “a dynamic, and ever-changing, neophilic floodplain, and in it dynamic, ever-changing, neophilic suburbanization."
