Spolia

Programme: Transformation of a vacant plot on Rue de la Porte aux Oies in Liège into a collective garden and multipurpose neighbourhood space. The project provides a shared place for encounters, collective uses and citizen-led initiatives in one of the least green areas of the city.

About: Born from a citizen initiative in response to a private housing development, Spolia offers an alternative vision for one of the last vacant plots on Rue de la Porte aux Oies. Initiated by local residents and legally structured by the cooperative Les Biens Communaux, the project promotes an approach based on care for the site, reuse, participation and shared management.
The intervention celebrates what is already there in all its forms: the soil, the vegetation, the memories of the place and the materials available. It establishes a balanced relationship with the garden, limiting its footprint and preserving as much open ground as possible. In order to extend the collective dynamic that gave rise to the project, a public call for inert reclaimed materials allowed neighbours to contribute directly to the construction.
Integrated into the façade, these elements make each contribution visible and give the building a collective and memorial dimension. Once completed, Spolia becomes a common place where families, friends and residents can gather, recognising their own stones within an architecture shaped by reuse, participation and ecological responsibility.