THE HOUSE FOR COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION

With The House for Collective Imagination, Globe Aroma is building a permanent place where organisations, artists and people on the move meet, collaborate and create. Through a collective design process, we are shaping this infrastructure to be shared, accessible and usable. At the same time, the house shows how a city like Brussels can create small-scale arrival spaces where art, education, legal support, wellbeing, work and housing do not exist side by side, but reinforce each other.

A small history of bricks

Since its founding, Globe Aroma has found a home in two places in the city. What began in 2002 on the Sint-Jorissite grew in 2015 into a working space in a rented building on the Moutstraat: an industrial warehouse of 1000 m². Globe Aroma transformed the warehouse into studio spaces, a rehearsal room, an open kitchen, an inner courtyard and other meeting spaces.

In 2020, the owner decided to sell the building on the Moutstraat. This marked the beginning of a multi-year process to think through and secure the infrastructural future of Globe Aroma, pushing back against the broad pressure of market logic and gentrification.

In March 2021, a collaboration was started with the research collective WA, connected to the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven. Together with the WA team, the infrastructural needs of Globe Aroma were mapped and scenarios were explored for the short and long term. These always departed from the principle of sharing space with other organisations that, like Globe Aroma, struggle to access affordable infrastructure in the city.

The building on the Moutstraat turned out to be a perfect fit for the needs of the organisation. After four years of negotiating with the owner, inspiring and convincing partners and public authorities, Globe Aroma officially became the owner of the building on 19 March 2025. With this, we took an important step towards a permanently accessible and low-threshold place: The House for Collective Imagination is and remains a fixture in Brussels’ cultural and social life.

Sharing space

In the heart of Brussels, tucked behind the facades of the Moutstraat, lies an artistic workplace where artists, art lovers and organisations come together. Globe Aroma works from the observation that many people with a precarious residency status face specific barriers in accessing the arts sector and developing their practice. From this shared reality comes the desire to share space with initiatives from diverse sectors, so that barriers are lowered and different forms of support and practice can reinforce each other. Globe Aroma’s practice around sharing space is in full development: it is a way of connecting infrastructure, knowledge and presence in the city.

Bringing together different partners and initiatives is not straightforward. Different practices each bring their own rhythms, needs and ways of working. It requires constant attunement and care not to smooth over those differences. Not everything can coexist at the same time, and making choices is an unavoidable part of that. The house is therefore not a fixed model, but a place that keeps moving, dependent on the capacity of people, carried by alertness, care and the ability to reinvent itself time and again.

The House for Collective Imagination

The House for Collective Imagination starts from a question: how can we create places where people do not have to go from counter to counter, but can arrive, work and meet others in one place? A place where arrival and migration are not scattered across different services, but come together in one shared space?

Today, people must navigate a fragmented landscape of reception, administration, wellbeing, education and culture. These worlds exist side by side, each with their own logic, thresholds and rhythms. Globe Aroma starts from a different premise: what if those domains came together in one place?

The House for Collective Imagination wants to be a small-scale, shared place where organisations, artists and diverse urban practices meet, collaborate and create. In this shared infrastructure, we try not to organise artistic, social and educational activities separately, but to weave them together. The house brings together workspaces, studios, rehearsal rooms, an open kitchen and meeting spaces, among other things.

The House for Collective Imagination is more than just a building made of bricks. It is a place where we explore how arrival and hospitality can function as a collective responsibility, and how spaces are not only used, but can also shape relationships, care, access and community. Where people on the move are typically housed in large, often unsuitable infrastructures, Globe Aroma tries to create an affective arrival infrastructure, departing from the conviction that spaces can contribute to connection and community-building, and that the knowledge needed to design and build these spaces well is distributed across a wide variety of people.

A forward-looking renovation

Flemish, regional and local subsidies enabled Globe Aroma to carry out a number of urgent renovations (so that it no longer rains inside; so that we can heat and ventilate the space properly; or so that people with limited mobility can be welcomed well). At the same time, it became clear that a broader spatial vision for the future was needed.

In the open call we distributed in 2023 through the Flemish and Brussels Bouwmeesters, we asked architects to develop a future plan through a co-creative process. For Globe Aroma, co-creation is not a method in itself, but a way of building a place together while also being part of it, and experimenting with how living together can be organised differently.

With support from the Flemish and Brussels Bouwmeesters, Globe Aroma appointed the design team New South + Karel Bruyland to develop, in co-creation with users of the space, research collective WA (KU Leuven) and the Globe Aroma team, a broadly supported spatial vision for the future.

Imagining together

Through a collective design process, the building is gradually attuned to the needs and lived realities of as many users as possible. In this way, the house is not only shared in use, but also in imagination and form.

An approach was developed in which users are involved in rethinking and designing spaces. Concretely, everyday elements such as a door, toilet or kitchen are used as starting points for conversations about how we use and experience spaces. So with a door, it is not just about colour and shape, but about the question: “When do I feel invited to come in?” Or with the kitchen: “What does a kitchen look like that encourages shared ownership and community?”.

For each space in the building, a creative process is initiated that opens up the underlying themes, such as hospitality, privacy, gender or hygiene, and creates space for imagination. This happens through excursions, film screenings, reading groups, artistic collaborations and many informal conversations.

Co-design workshops then follow, in which the shared insights are translated into concrete designs.

What is a door?

The first collective design process What’s a door? departed from the insight that doors are symbols of accessibility in cultural spaces. We investigated which doors invite and which exclude, and documented this through photo walks past Brussels cultural venues such as Beursschouwburg and Théâtre National. We gathered experiences and images. In a photo exhibition at Kaaitheater, all doors were weighed up side by side, and we subsequently organised several collective moments of reflection on physical and mental accessibility. During two design sessions in which around fifty people took part, the door of the future slowly took shape. A co-design team of 6 people was then assembled to develop a final design. In collaboration with the metal workshop of Zinneke, the final design was realised, and since the end of 2025 that collectively developed door has become the new entrance of The House for Collective Imagination.

Phase 1: we finished the back of the house, and it’s just the beginning!

A year after the purchase, the first part of the renovation is complete, with new shared spaces, adapted toilets and a new stairwell.

At Globe Aroma, renovation is about more than bricks. The renovation itself is a shared inquiry: how do we make and use spaces? From the door to the toilet, from the reception to the kitchen: every element is collectively rethought. We are not only building a house, but ways of living together. A house for collective imagination.

In May 2026, we are gently opening the (new!) gate. Come and see what is there, and imagine what is still to come.

Phase 2: the next step? Energy-efficient and climate-resilient!

The back building has already been largely renovated. From 2027, we take a next step with an ambitious energy renovation, so that the building can continue to function sustainably. The outer shell will be thoroughly tackled: with exterior wall insulation, new roof insulation and skylights, and the installation of a heat pump. A new circulation system will enable more flexible use and improve accessibility for people with limited mobility.

And imagine: you step through the gate and arrive in a courtyard with plants, among which stands a stage. Through new glass doors you look inside, where a soft salon and a reception area await, shaped through a collective design process. Further inside, an open kitchen beckons, where scents and conversations mingle during small or large events. Opposite, a tribune invites you to rest, chat, gather around the food being prepared. A lift and staircase, woven into the tribune itself, bring you to the first floor, to the artists in their studio.

This phase again requires time, care and resources, and we continue to build with partners who want to carry and enable this journey.