YIMBY (Yes In My BackYard) reworks a deteriorated 1920s garden-city block in Kortrijk through selective renovation, residential infill, and material reuse. By turning former rear gardens into a shared inner court and building new dwellings within the existing urban grain, the project increases density while restoring collective outdoor space.
YIMBY (Yes In My BackYard) Technical Information
- ArchitectsMAKER Architecten
- LocationTuighuisstraat, Kortrijk, Belgium View on map →
- Gross Area3,685 m2 | 39,665 Sq. Ft.
- Project Year2024
- Photographs© Stijn Bollaert
The project YIMBY explores how small-scale interventions can contribute to a larger transformation of the city. At a time when affordable housing, resource scarcity and social fragmentation are pressing challenges across Europe, we believe the existing city is one of our most valuable resources.
– Ana Castillo and Lieven De Groote
Reclaiming the Garden City Block
Tuighuisstraat was conceived as a garden-city neighbourhood in the 1920s, with modest homes organised around a shared green interior. Over time, this spatial order was incrementally eroded. Rear gardens were occupied by garages, sheds, and enclosed extensions, turning the middle of the block into a fragmented service zone rather than a collective landscape. YIMBY begins by treating this condition not as a reason for wholesale clearance, but as evidence of the neighbourhood’s capacity for revision.
The project consolidates neglected rear areas across 18 plots and restores the block interior as a communal court. This operation gives the backs of existing houses a new civic role: former rear facades become part of a second frontage, facing shared green space rather than residual private enclosures. Seven corner plots are reorganised into three new residential buildings, while terraced houses are inserted at selected points within the fabric. Density rises from 16 to 31 homes without extending the settlement onto additional land.
A Second Front: Courtyards, Passages, and Thresholds
The inner court operates as more than a landscaped void between buildings. It becomes the project’s primary social and spatial organiser, gathering paths, entrances, gardens, and common areas into a legible sequence. Covered passages at either end of the intervention connect this interior territory to the surrounding streets, making the court accessible without rendering it fully public. The passages frame movement as a transition between the urban street and a slower, shared domestic realm.
In the apartment buildings, open-air galleries are conceived as inhabitable thresholds rather than minimum-width access decks. Their recessed position within the brick volumes gives them depth and weather protection, while galvanised steel stairs, mesh screens, and railings maintain a deliberately open construction. The galleries can accommodate benches, planting, and small tables, allowing everyday appropriation to occur beside circulation. Each dwelling nevertheless retains a separate front door, preserving the resident’s ability to regulate contact with neighbours.
The terraced houses extend this calibrated approach to privacy. Paired dwellings share gardens and winter gardens that serve as common entrance halls, with large sliding glass panels opening these intermediate rooms toward planted outdoor space. Street, passage, court, private garden, winter garden, gallery, and home are arranged as a graduated chain rather than a hard division between public and private. The architecture does not erase boundaries; it thickens them, giving shared life a spatial framework that does not depend on compulsory sociability.
Reuse as Construction and Architectural Expression
Material recovery is integral to the construction logic of YIMBY. The original 1924 buildings were assembled with lime mortar, enabling their brickwork to be selectively dismantled rather than mechanically crushed during demolition. More than 1,000 square metres of brick and roof tiles were reclaimed on site, cleaned, tested, and returned to the project. Reuse therefore retains both embodied material and the physical evidence of the former neighbourhood, including colour variation, lime traces, and weathered surfaces.
The facades distinguish between two related brick treatments. Flush masonry combines reclaimed red, pink, grey, and occasionally whitewashed units into a relatively even surface, where irregularity is held within a controlled plane. Elsewhere, thick lime mortar is deliberately extruded from the joints, producing a rougher, layered texture that makes the assembly process visible. The contrast between these approaches gives the simple flat-roofed volumes a horizontal articulation and prevents reused material from being reduced to a decorative surface effect.
Lower-quality bricks that could not meet facade requirements are retained in galvanised steel gabion walls marking garden boundaries. These porous enclosures reuse fragments that would otherwise be discarded, while establishing a low, permeable edge between private plots and the shared court. Pale concrete block plinths, translucent polycarbonate screens, grey aluminium frames, and galvanised steel complete a restricted palette in which each material has a clear constructive role. YIMBY received the RIBA International Emerging Architect Award 2026.
Adaptable Housing Within a Shared Framework
The project introduces apartments, studios, duplexes, and terraced houses within a relatively compact intervention. This range responds to the fact that household composition rarely remains stable over the lifespan of a building. Smaller units can accommodate individual residents or compact households, while duplexes and houses allow for larger domestic arrangements. Rather than assigning one standard residential model across the site, the plan distributes different degrees of independence, adjacency, and shared access.
Adaptability is built into the dwelling framework through possibilities for future extension or internal reorganisation. A room or annex can become a workspace, a studio, or a secondary living unit as family structures change. Such provisions are significant in a housing context where multi-generational living, blended households, and home-based work place pressure on rigid domestic plans. The project treats adaptability not as an abstract claim of flexibility, but as a capacity for domestic space to absorb shifting patterns of occupation.
The shared winter gardens and paired gardens are particularly precise instruments in this framework. They provide a buffer between dwelling and court, supporting casual encounters while avoiding the exposure associated with fully communal circulation. Greenhouse-like glass facades admit light and visually extend the interior toward the garden, yet can be opened or closed according to season and preference. These spaces make collective living possible through proximity and choice, rather than through the removal of private territory.
About MAKER Architecten
Founded in Ghent, Belgium, in 2019 by Ana Castillo and Lieven De Groote, MAKER Architecten is an architecture practice with a research-led approach to circular renovation, material reuse, and socio-spatial adaptability. The studio views existing buildings as evolving material banks, prioritising selective deconstruction and reuse over demolition while addressing urban upgrading, lower carbon emissions, heritage preservation, and community strengthening.
Credits and Additional Notes
- Structural engineers: Mouton
- MEP consultants: Sweco, environmental and M&E engineering
- Client: SW+
- Construction company: Artes Depret
- Additional architect: TETRA architecten
- Technical engineering: Boydens
- Acoustics: D2S
- Manufacturer: Wienerberger
- Photography: Stijn Bollaert
