This project explores a mode of living based on collective life and coexistence with nature. The building is organized around a circular courtyard, with all residential units arranged along its perimeter. In each unit, the living and dining areas face the courtyard, ensuring equal visual access to the shared landscape and maintaining continuous visual connections in daily life, fostering a collective atmosphere.

A ring-shaped corridor surrounds the courtyard and is designed with generous width. Through slight setbacks in the plan, semi-circular cantilevered platforms are formed in front of each entrance. These platforms act as transitional spaces between private dwellings and the courtyard, enabling everyday interaction and informal activities.

On the southern side, the courtyard opens toward the adjacent wetland, visually extending the landscape into the building. On the second floor, a transverse platform connects the stair cores, improving circulation while also providing a shared space within the courtyard environment.

The Social Hotel accommodates 124 residents, including 32 dormitory beds and 92 individual rooms. The dormitories are located on the quieter eastern side of the ground floor and are raised by one meter to ensure privacy. The second floor mainly contains duplex units for two to five residents, with double-height living spaces facing the courtyard. Each room has a private balcony and bathroom, balancing shared living with necessary personal boundaries. The top floor consists of single units, with every two units sharing a semi-circular platform.

At the urban level, public functions are placed on the ground floor to increase openness. Classrooms face the main street, economy spaces are located to the north, and a social canteen occupies the southeast corner. The main entrance opens toward the wetland, while a secondary entrance strengthens the connection between courtyard and city.

The structure uses radially arranged thick cavity walls as the primary load-bearing system supporting concrete slabs, while lightweight interior walls provide flexibility.

The Social Hotel aims to offer temporary living units for vulnerable groups of various backgrounds in Brussels, as they try to create or recreate roots in the city and society in large. The design tries to address this by following two general principles – allowing the users a great amount of autonomy in their living spaces, as well as trying to establish multiple layers of social networks for each individual, regardless of the length of stay.

The first principle is mainly addressed in the living units themselves: a compact, efficient wall of basic residential functions leaves an open space without predetermined furnishings. Hiding or opening up the functions into the room, just as light, movable furniture allows for easy appropriation of the space. This furthermore means that the space offers the flexibility to develop alongside the guests, as their living situations change during the stay.

The idea of social networks is addressed within the organisation and layout of the hotel. Instead of long, impersonal hallways, the living units are mostly organised in collective clusters, creating tighter social bonds and support systems in sharing domestic responsibilities. Typologically the clusters are arranged in two opposite bars, between which a shared distribution zone extends. The outdoor staircases in the courtyard work as an extension of the living units, creating a sense of neighbourhood.

Given the temporary nature of the stay, integration into the wider neighbourhood and Brussels as a city is essential. The compact placement of the building answers this by creating a setback to the intact neighbourhood in the north, which opens up a new urban plaza in an otherwise dense surrounding. The new urban space continues the theme of social support and offers existing players in social work a platform to reach a large target group by bundling their important activities.

The project explores how architecture can respond to different durations of stay and diverse social constellations. At its core are temporality, flexibility, and community—without compromising security and privacy.

The historical Begijnhof serves as a reference: a communal housing typology from the High Middle Ages, widespread in Flemish and Dutch cities. Small, nearly identical houses were arranged around a protected inner courtyard. This principle is reinterpreted as a continuous outer structure with a central entrance leading into a semi-public courtyard—a social buffer between private living and the urban realm.

A key design element is the transformation of the party wall. It becomes an inhabited service wall integrating essential functions such as bed, kitchen, bathroom, storage, and circulation. Architecture and furniture merge, while the spatial volume remains open and flexible.

The housing structure is organized according to duration of stay into three user groups: short-, medium-, and long-term residents. The longer the stay, the greater the adaptability of the wall system—from fixed niches to foldable elements and modular components that allow units to expand or merge.

To maintain the principle of the historic Begijnhof—a compact, community-oriented housing system organized around a shared courtyard—circulation cores are not internalized into private units but remain visibly articulated. This creates visual and social connections between residents and reinforces the collective character of the courtyard.

Structurally, the project is based on a hybrid timber–concrete system that enables prefabrication, reduces construction time and costs, and supports long-term adaptability. The “Social Hotel” is understood as a flexible housing system for temporary living that fosters community while adapting to the changing needs of its residents.

Challenging traditional domestic models, the Brussels Social Hotel envisions a temporary accommodation typology that supports a variety of tenants in precarious life situations as well as those who fall outside the conventional housing system. The typology responds to the lack of social housing in Brussels and questions the importance of alternative housing models, which reflect on the current housing situation.

By proposing a simple base structure and a customizable inner structure, the building itself can become a sort of infrastructure, that can adapt to the complex requirements of the Social Hotel. It abandons traditional shared corridors, to redefine how spaces are shared, so that every transitional space becomes a place for interaction. Fitting the spaces with individual furniture-like service elements and capsule boxes, the conditions can be adjusted for the requirements of each unit and/or situation. The movability of the capsules enables maximum flexibility to nurture self-expression in reshaping the home as a space of mutual care, visibility and shared identity. By giving the same condition to everyone, it can become a possibility of adaptation and customisation.

Reimagining the idea of temporary non-nuclear forms of households and communities, the Brussels Social Hotel aims to create a structure, that embraces each individual while providing rehabilitation through visibility and social interaction between the tenants to nurture solidarity while supporting difference.

It thinks about the accommodation as a collective space of mutual care and visibility to shape a shared identity and community.