Where’s the reception?

Is a reception desk just a piece of furniture, or a promise of hospitality?

For the opening evening of Sea is for Stories, Tea is for Telling, Globe Aroma invites you to re-imagine hospitality through a speculative writing session. We begin with a warm apéro prepared by Nicole Woutchoko, and then dive into the idea of “the reception desk.” What if hospitality is not a desk at all, but a constellation of gestures, atmospheres, languages, and shared care?

Drawing on recent visits to places already experimenting with inclusive or innovative forms of welcoming (De Nomade in Leuven, Le Récif by Poisson sans Bicyclette, Community Centres De Kriekelaar and Ten Noey, and CC Belgica in Dendermonde), we gather impressions, tensions, and inspiring examples. Together, we write small speculative prototypes: sketches of what a hospitality space could be if we stopped designing from the rules we inherited.

This evening plants seeds for the collective design ateliers that will shape the new hospitality space in the future House of Collective Imagination.*

* About the House of Collective Imagination

 

This session is part of an ongoing imagination and design process for the House of Collective Imagination, Globe Aroma’s site on Moutstraat, which we are currently co-designing with a permanent-temporary community.

Instead of shaping a “public building” in the classical way—with fixed functions, counters, waiting areas, toilets, access gates, rest spaces, and control—we begin by dismantling the norms that usually govern public cultural spaces.

Together with artists, partners, visitors, architects, and other contributors, we explore:

• How do we want to arrive in a space?
• Who welcomes whom, and how?
• What infrastructure is needed to receive someone?
• How do infrastructures of reception (counters, doors, signage, roles) sometimes create exclusion or thresholds?
• What does a building look like when it is designed from care instead of control?

This evening is one of the first collective explorations of what “arriving” at Globe Aroma could mean. The stories, imaginations, and small provocations we create together will guide the participatory design of our future hospitality space.

Previous collective imagination and design processes explored the access gate (What’s a door?) and the toilets (How to pee?).