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This text was written in response to a call for contributions by the interuniversity research group Practice in Research, entitled Re-mediating practices and exploring circularity's impact on representational tools and design processes in architecture.

Maintaining modern architecture and the values it embodied is no easy task in Brussels. Modernism has left a lasting impression here, ending its formal aspects to a violent transformation of the city that has been referred to since the end of the 1960s as ‘Brussellisation’¹. Throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century, the focus was on ‘repairing’ the ‘damaged’ parts of the capital.

As part of the Gender Mainstreaming project led by Karbon’ for Perspective (Brussels Planning Agency), the team travelled to Vienna to analyse how the city has structured its development around gender-sensitive urban policies and measures.

On the occasion of the Thinking-Making symposium organised by the ULB and the ULg, Karbon' proposed the ‘reflexive assembly’ of a 1:1 scale model, exploring a construction system with a wooden and straw frame developed by the craftsman carpenter Gautier Nagant. This mock-up was a life-size experiment, a moment when the act of building is shared to bring out new knowledge.