Street Design Challenge 2023 - Overview

2 objectives about the post:

• Inform our audience that we participate in international education projects with other cities of design
• Stimulate the participation next time.

The team from Howest Kortrijk had the opportunity to work on the city of Curitiba in Brazil. Curitiba is the capital of the state of Parana in the south of brazil. Relatively close to the ocean, high up and surrounded by jungle in a subtropical highland climate: This means there are cold, drier winters and hot wet summers. This climate makes it one of the coldest cities in Brazil, yet very humid.

Curitiba in particular has the issue of humidity, which functions as a greenhouse gas, further trapping the heat in the city. Which makes curitiba’s heat islands most noticable at night. Team Howest wanted to focus on cooling this hot air. This would have a positive impact on sleep, mental health and general wellbeing.

Their solution tries to incorporate a shading and even reflective aspect, to keep solar radiation from heating up materials. Cooling the air directly is hard, especially using plants, because the air is already saturated with water. Therefore they would let the air lose moisture by letting it condense against cool metals. Existing winds in the area aren’t usually very strong, they tried to use them as effectively as possible. Team Howest was inspired in it's design by the busy street and city life as well as the architecture and history of the city. Our design functions as a bridge between the two natural and cultural hubs at both ends of the street.

Team Kortrijk Howest:

Léa Schmitt
Vincent Vandeweghe
Cedric Anne
Luca Missiaen
David Griffioen
Yani Vandenbranden

We're looking forward to the next edition. More news on that soon!