Following on from the apartment blocks and office towers of previous editions, Real Estate Architecture conducted a study for its third Summer School into the commercial architecture produced by property developers. Forty architecture students offered a fresh interpretation of four case studies in Ghent, ranging from a hypermarket to a small supermarket. The project presented below is typical of property development, in the sense that it combines residential and commercial functions (the Groene Vallei by property developer Amelinckx).

Analysis of the financial results of the major supermarkets heralds the end of the supermarket as merely a sales outlet. The time has come to diversify, on both a large and small scale. The supermarket must become a living space. With this in mind, the chains are deciding to incorporate new services, such as a hotel, education, sport, offices, churches and so on. Jean-Benoit Vétillard, together with ten young architects, imagined new, unexpected ways of living together, and attempted to integrate these new activities into the existing features of the supermarket.