Through an extended survey along inhabitants of the Kortrijk region, Leiedal mapped 120 so called ‘Ugly Spots’ in the urban environment. Ten sites were selected and ten design teams were asked to propose a creative intervention for two or three sites. With this project, Leiedal wants to stimulate creative interventions in distorted public spaces.

Latitude – together with Gijs Van Vaerenbergh – was selected to work on the courtyard of the community center of Terhand – Wervik and on the town square of Spiere. Both projects were selected by the jury and recommended to the local municipality.

Ter Hand ( in the picture above) is a ribbon structured hamlet in the Wervik region. A morphological and programmatorical analysis shows how most (small scale) public activities are generically inserted in the stretched undefined space between the road and the private properties. We propose a sequence of local interventions to derive and strengthen existing identity defining elements from the ribbon. The site is one of the four strategic locations with a public importance to the ribbon. We propose a new ground canvas that runs from the community building, across its courtyard to the other side of the street. In this way – together with two new openings in the existing wall – this wall divides a new public space instead of hiding one. A light canopy structure follows the diagonal axis of the wall and accentuates the spatiality of the courtyard. The canopy has mirror symmetry to respond to different activities on both sides of the wall and becomes a landmark in the ribbon structured hamlet.