Filter Café Filtré

In March 2018, after a Greenpeace investigation found alarming air quality in and around Brussels primary schools, a group of parents blocked the street outside their own school on a Friday morning and drank their coffee in it. They called it Filter Café Filtré. Within two weeks another 42 schools had joined; parents and teachers at 137 Belgian schools across 21 cities eventually took part, closing streets every Friday morning so children could play in them. The movement became a non-profit in 2019, and the City of Brussels appointed its Atelier — alongside Architecture Workroom Brussels and CityTools — to supervise the rollout of permanent school streets. What began as a protest about air is now the city's delivery mechanism for low-traffic school quarters.