WHAT WE DO
How to improve the quality of urban projects? In order to fulfill its mission, the BMA has a series of tools aimed at supporting project owners throughout the process of definition until the completion of their projects.
Thus, competitions, research by project, opinions and project meetings are the main tools for stimulating and helping project owners, supporting their projects as well as possible and raising their quality.
COMPETITION
The organization of competitions is the main tool of the BMA. They allow a healthy and transparent opening of the architecture, town planning or public space markets and push them to the quality of the projects.
This tool allows project owners, whether public or private, to benefit from support towards a competition procedure that is the best possible.
DO YOU WANT TO ORGANISE A COMPETITION?
RESEARCH BY DESIGN
Drawing is at the heart of project research. This tool, present since 2016 within the BMA team, intervenes as early as possible and thus contributes in a specific way to the quality of the projects. Whether defining questions, clarifying the framework of a competition, improving and optimizing projects by designing credible alternatives, project-based research works in a contextualized way. and in collaboration with all the actors involved.
This method thus makes it possible to focus the debate on concrete elements of the project (volume, templates, program, etc.), to maximize the quality of the project, all in a win-win perspective with the project leaders.
ABOUT
DESIGN REVIEW
The more the dialogue on the quality of a project is initiated upstream of it, the more this dialogue will bear fruit. Indeed, seeking an opinion on the eve of a permit application does not allow a useful discussion about the project. It is in this line that the Brussels Spatial Planning Code (CoBAT) wishes to stimulate project promoters to provoke a discussion on architectural quality early enough.
Therefore, since September 2019, the BWRO stipulates in Article 11/1 that for all permit applications for projects with a total floor area of more than 5000 m², advice must be requested from the BMA to be added as part of the permit application file.
In addition to this official advice, applicants always have the option of entering into a dialogue about the quality of a project on their own initiative by organizing a project meeting. The purpose of the project meeting is to stimulate the quality of projects, to bundle as much communication as possible transparently and effectively, to organize a professional dialogue between the architects/clients and the government, and to receive advice from the various bodies most closely involved in the project. coordinate the quality assessment. In this way we save time thanks to anticipatory consultation and coordinated operation.
How can BMA advice be requested in the context of a permit application?
For projects with a total floor area of more than 5,000 m² (in the sense of the GBP), the application for planning permission must include an opinion from the BMA.
To this end, the applicant must send an application electronically with the information necessary to obtain an appropriate understanding of the project. We ask that you enclose the following documents with the request for advice:
- the permit application form*
- an explanatory note on the project
- the whole of the plans
- relevant photos
The application and all these documents must be sent to avis-advies@bma.brussels.
* Since the introduction of online permit applications, via the “MyPermit” platform, the form in Annex 1 can only be downloaded after the permit application has been submitted. Therefore, the most important data from this form (contact details of the applicant and the architect, project address, object and description of the application, total existing and planned floor areas per destination, …) may be added separately to the file of the request for advice.