Health care in a metropolitancity often goes hand in hand with other, less obvious forms of care, such as the treatment of people in precarious situations. For this reason, the Urban Development Corporation (SAU/MSI) of the Brussels Capital Region works on a new integrated centre for the reception and counselling of drug addicts, especially with a very low threshold. This centre will be located in the city center in order to promote the visibility of these services to vulnerable drug users.

The location next to the headquarters of the Port of Brussels and on the edge of the future Beco park will require an urban response that deals with this visibility on the one hand and respects the intimacy of the centre’s activities on the other. At the same time, the centre must be open to the surrounding neighbourhoods and contribute to social cohesion. In this way, the project must become an integrated part of the metropolitan context of Brussels.

The project will group several services in order to offer a complete range of benefits: from an accessible reception, the possibility of meeting basic needs (food, drink, sleep, washing, etc.) to general medical care.

The client is therefore looking for a multidisciplinary team with the capacity to translate the multiple specific requirements of this highly complex programme into an ambitious and inventive architectural response.