On Emile Grysonlaan in Anderlecht, on the former industrial site of the plastic company Elkaplast, which went bankrupt in 2007, there is a new group of buildings. CityCampus is a mixed-use project that includes social housing, ground-level homes and student studios, as well as production workshops for light industry and small or medium-sized enterprises in the food sector. The architecture, which mirrors the immediate surroundings in terms of scale, texture and materiality, was designed by Binst Architects and Org Permanent Modernity.

Citydev, the Brussels regional development company, realised CityCampus in collaboration with the Brussels Regional Housing Company (BGHM) and Anderlechtse Haard. They organised a Design & Build competition, which was won by the architectural team Binst Architects – Org Permanent Modernity, engineering firm VK Engineering and estate agent and contractor Van Roey. The project comprises 70 social housing units (including 26 individual ground-level houses), 293 student units, 18 workshops, 119 parking spaces and 406 bicycle parking spaces – on almost 5,000 m². “The biggest challenge in the design was the multitude and diversity of the programme, on a contaminated site with a relatively modest surface area,” says Dirk Engelen, architect and COO of Binst Architects.