Reimagining Bruges' Historic Waters - with Ilse Vansevenant and Frederik Roelens

yeah very nice and you already mentioned both of you mentioned already the different the links between or not even the links but how how versatile this project is brings together sensors with archaeology and cultural heritage and so on what's something most people misunderstand about Bruges

there's like A general idea, I think it's from Belgians in general that Bruges is like a theme park, like a Disneyland, which is fake, but it's actually the other way around.

There are a few central squares or public buildings which have a certain aura of Disney, which had some restorations which are not necessarily historically correct.

If you actually go inside of the houses, there's a lot to see, a lot to spot.

And I think Bruges is actually, in Flanders, it's like the city with the most medieval houses which are still standing and still inhabited.

It's typical, if we buy a house in Belgium, what do we do? We throw out the kitchen, we change the bathroom, perhaps some flooring, and that's exactly what people did in the Middle Ages.

But structural changes, if your roof is still working as it should be, it's kept as it is.

So a lot of the timber structures are still 13th century, 14th century, 15th century.

people did like alter the facades of the houses according to the fashion but like if we buy a house we will throw out the windows in order to at the end of the month we went to spend less money on energy but if people in the 13th century or in the 18th century they had the same like single glass So one layer of glass, so it made no difference.

So they only made the modifications to the facade.

So it

was

the same back then, kind of.

The same back then.

Yeah, I was also getting past the historical setting of Bruges, but in another way, I think Bruges has also citizens that live there.

It's not only historical.

And we have a very varied public domain.

So, yeah, we have, for example, more than 120 playgrounds in Bruges.

We have also different kinds of landscapes.

We have the dense urban center, but you also have forests, agriculture and we have a harbor, a beach.

So you have everything in one city and that's what the tourists don't see.

So everybody coming to the city, they should have a deeper look.

Not only at the facade, but also behind the facade.

But if we walk through Bruges, here along the canal, we have a lovely view on that right now.

You hardly believe that there's a problem with water in the city, right? There's actually, you could feel that there's a lot of water in the city.