engineering

Zebrastraat

Zebrastraat is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Zebrastraat rather than just read about it. In short: The Zebrastraat (Dutch for "Zebra Street") is a small street in the Belgian city of Ghent. The first worker housing building in the country, designed by the architect Charles van Rysselberghe in 1906, is located in the Zebrastraat.

Key takeaways

Zebrastraat belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Zebrastraat to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Zebrastraat from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Zebrastraat (Dutch for "Zebra Street") is a small street in the Belgian city of Ghent. The first worker housing building in the country, designed by the architect Charles van Rysselberghe in 1906, is located in the Zebrastraat. The building, also named the Zebrastraat after its location, remains a private project dedicated to housing, entrepreneurial, and cultural initiatives.

History The Zebrastraat is located on land formerly occupied by the Ghent Zoo, which opened in 1851. When the zoo closed in 1905, the land was purchased by the city of Ghent, which used the land to create a new neighborhood. In recognition of the previous use of the land, several streets in the area were named after animals that were once housed at the zoo, including Elephant Street (Olifantstraat), Tiger Street (Tijgerstraat), Lion Street (Leeuwstraat) and Zebra Street (Zebrastraat). At the beginning of the 20th century, the textile industry in Ghent was booming, but many workers nevertheless suffered from poor housing conditions. The city council, along with some notable charity organizations, established the Ghent Workers Housing Company (Gentsche Maatschappij Der Werkerswoningen) which built and later rented higher-quality houses for the working class. Their plan to improve housing on the Zebrastraat centered on a building project designed and supervised by Charles Van Rysselberghe, the officially appointed "City Architect" of Ghent. Since accommodation in the city was very expensive, Van Rysselberghe decided to construct an apartment-styled building with three units on top of each other. This housing project is widely known as the first social housing apartment building in Belgium. The building never had an official name, but it was popularly called "The Circle" (De Cirk) because of its circular central square. A 4th story was added in the 1930s. By the 1990s, the Ghent Workers Housing Company had evolved into the Ghent Housing Association (Gentse Huisvestingsmaatschappij), but they had trouble maintaining the decaying building. In 2001, the barely inhabited ruins were put up for sale and sold to the Liedts-Meesen Foundation. Between 2002 and 2005, this new owner reconstructed the exterior of the buildings into its original state and design, while profoundly reshaping the interior. It was the beginning of "The Zebrastraat project". The goal of the new Zebrastraat project is to create an urban climate by combining and mixing art, business, and housing. People can rent short or long term apartments, companies can book meetings or events, and artists can display their performances. In 2012, the Zebrastraat project expanded with the building of "New Zebra", a brand new extension to the original building, housing several life-size public artworks of artists such as Ned Kahn and Nick Ervinck.

Initiatives The projects of the Zebrastraat project concentrated on interactive and experiential digital art. The foundation has favored less well known forms of artistic expression, especially those that reflect technological changes. The first initiative was the exhibition Stippels en Pixels in early 2005, linking new digital art forms with the pointillism of Theo Van Rysselberghe, brother of the original Zebrastraat architect. The success of this exhibition led to follow-up in 2006 with Update, a bi-annual exhibition for interactive and digital art, and to the creation of the New Technological Art Award in 2008. The award is presented to the individual who displays Outstanding Work in the World of Digital Art, after the evaluation by an international jury. The project has also begun naming an "Artist of the Month," which allows a promising young artist to present his or her work to a broad and diverse public audience in a non-commercial context. In 2010, a second Update exhibition was organized, in the form of Body Sound, in cooperation with the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The Update events always conclude with an exhibition by an established provincial artist. The Zebrastraat project also owns its own permanent art collection, with works by Nick Ervinck, Panamarenko, Thomas Huyghe and Honoré d’O, among others. In addition to artistic endeavors, the foundation is also engaged in projects promoting diversity and opposing fragmentation between people, such as Habbekrats, a service for disadvantaged young people and for transgressing initiatives.

New Technological Art Award The New Technological Art Award is an biannual award and exhibition first held in 2005.

Exhibitions at Zebrastraat 2005: Stippels en Pixels 2006: Update I (curator Jean-Marie Dallet) 2006: 40 year of paintings by Henri Vandermoere 2006: Wonderland - Fluxus and the game 2007: Cabinet portraits 1962-2006 Pjeroo Roobjee 2008: Update II (curator Peter Weibel, ZKM) 2009: Picture Palace Hans Vandekerckove 2010: Update III (curator Christine Van Assche, Centre Pompidou) 2010: Verlangzamingen Michel Buylen 2013: Expo Etienne De Smet 2016: Update VI 2017: Dream Box Deluge Ben Bubb

References

External links

Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Zebrastraat

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Zebrastraat claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Zebrastraat before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Zebrastraat ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Zebrastraat

In research: Zebrastraat appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Zebrastraat in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Zebrastraat is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1906 establishments in Belgium, Buildings and structures completed in 1906, Buildings and structures in Ghent, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Zebrastraat outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Zebrastraat in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Zebrastraat means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Zebrastraat out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Zebrastraat in simple terms?

Why does Zebrastraat matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Zebrastraat?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Zebrastraat.