As we love to reflect upon the city through the eyes of artists, we invited “memymom” – the artist duo formed by Lisa De Boeck and her mother, Marilène Coolens – to make a personal interpretation of our projects and reveal unseen layers. And so they did with The Cosmopolitan, a derelict office building which got a second life as an apartment building.
We design in favour of collective living in an inclusive city. In the context of “The Cosmopolitan”, the sociocultural diversity is very high. Street prostitution is mixed with two theatres, lots of restaurants, immigrants and refugees, incubators for startups, art galleries, a new museum and all kinds of housing. In that setting, “memymom” stage the diversity of the neighbourhood through different characters played by myself. The images show “The Cosmopolitan” as part of an urban context in which different people lead totally different lives, only a few buildings apart. An inclusive city.