Sergison Bates architects EM2N Architekten noA architecten   Belgium   In January 1924, industrial designer André Citroën opened the brand’s first foreign branch on Place Sainctelette in Brussels. Years later, in 1933, and following the original sketches drawn by Citroën himself, plans were carried out to include a larg

ATAMA   Belgium   This industrial-like building, built in 1940 and formerly a fire station, has been transformed into a meeting point for the community. At the base of the tower, now home for a climbing club, the central plaza forms a market hall space that opens up t

Francisco Mangado Archipelago | baev   Belgium   Fair premises resulting from a 2019 competition – in the city of Liège, in Belgium’s French-speaking Walloon Region – have opened on the banks of the river Meuse. A work of the Navarrese practice of Francisco Mangado, in collaboration with the Belgia

Studio Moto   Belgium   Modular is good. Two paired holiday dwellings and a shared small studio are fitted together in a prefabricated orthogonal grid that allows a straightforward layout and leaves the door open to possible reconfigurations in the future. Situated within a

Christ & Gantenbein OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The rectangular volumes that remain by Floralia Hall are drastically altered, making the original neoclassical appearance disappear. This huge central nave functions as an interior extension of the public space surrounding it, now transformed into a

Caruso St John Architects De Smet Vermeulen architecten   Belgium   A bold structure of steel and wood, resting on new foundations at independent points, stretches over the existing building like a bridge. Not only does it extend the area of the museum, but it also increases the headroom for the upper floor galleries

FELT architectuur Monadnock aNNo architecten   Belgium   Two barrel-shaped volumes are integrated into the layout of the park to free up more green space, preserving the autonomy of the Floralia Hall both in form and in function. The two buildings reinterpret the historic structures flanking this central r

Xaveer De Geyter ALTSTADT office for architecture   Belgium   The cores and facades of the extension are joined to form the main structure. The slabs and standardized roofs favor natural lighting through a continuous window that offers the option of controlling how much light is used in each room...

Studio Moto   Belgium   The Ghent-based practice Studio Moto has completed this viewpoint on a beach in De Panne, alongside the promenade that connects the Belgian municipality to Dunkirk (France), beside the North Sea. The structure offers a dynamic stop along the beackwal

architecten jan de vylder inge vinck   Belgium   A house that was built in the interwar period now opens out to the garden at one of its corners by means of new glass facades protected by the emphatic eave of the new roof. The traditional partitions have been blurred through alteration of the loadb

architecten de vylder vinck taillieu   Belgium   A daycare center emulates the angular gables of the neighboring church through a rhythmic succession of two-pitched volumes, tracing a silhouette that the children can easily recognize. While the facades present a brick bond that engages in dialogue

architecten de vylder vinck taillieu   Belgium   An old inn has been transformed into a private home by making the most of the meager resources at hand, thus preserving its original character without requiring much maintenance. Inserted into the original brick enclosure is a well insulated space wh

Jan De Vylder   Belgium   The renovation of a house for an artist has incorporated a sliding roof that can make the backyard an additional room between the main construction and the atelier located behind. Vertical circulation is through a metal staircase that pierces through

David Kohn Architects noA architecten Asli Çiçek   Belgium   The British firm David Kohn Architects has won the competition to redesign SMAK, the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art in Ghent, in collaboration with the Belgian practices no Aarchitecten and Asli Cicek. The objective is to redefine the museum’s

architecten de vylder vinck taillieu   Belgium   Through a simple gesture, this barn is converted into a livable space: an incision empties out a section of the volume to generate a new access and improve lighting. On one side of the cut, glass; on the other, a mirror that creates an optical effect

SO-IL   Belgium   The Brooklyn firm SO-IL designed ‘Common Thread’ for the Bruges Triennial of 2024, ongoing until 1 September. Executed in collaboration with Mariana Popescu (TU Delft) and Summum Engineering, the pavilion meanders through the courtyard of a 19th-cent

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The new municipal library of Sint-Martens-Latem, in the Belgian province of East Flanders, presents a saddle-shaped roof delimited by a circular perimeter that makes it cut a distinctive figure in the village center. The Brussels firm OFFICE Kersten

WE-S architects   Belgium   This compact and efficient building contains four classrooms, arranged in twos, back to back, around a multifunctional hall that also serves as a refectory. Each classroom has its own storage with sanitary facilities. The volume has a playful shape,

Barozzi Veiga Tab Architects   Belgium   Barozzi Veiga – in collaboration with Tab Architects, Barbara Van Der Wee Architects, and Mosbach Paysagiste – has con the competition to renovate and enlarge the casino of Knokke-Heist, a municipality in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The ne

Bart Lens Maat-Ontwerpers   Belgium   Miraculously unscathed by the industrialization that the Belgian province of Limburg underwent after coal was discovered there early in the 20th century, Hoge Kempen is an extensive land of forests and heaths that in 2006 became the country’s first –

COBE Architects Lundgaard & Tranberg Arkitekter   Belgium   The renovation wraps up the Rue du Luxembourg axis and establishes an essential connection between city and nature. The building breaks up into smaller scale elements, each with its own logic and appearance, that culminate in the public roof garden..

COBE Architects BRUT   Belgium   The plaza is designed as a series of concentric circles which, inspired by the European Parliament’s Hemicycle, continue in the surrounding paving. The iconic roof structure of the central pavilion reflects the square and the people below...  

Belgium   Images of the project that has won the international competition, organized by the European Parliament, to renovate the Paul-Henri SPAAK Building in Brussels have been unveiled. Officially announced in July 2022, the winner is Europarc, a collective

1927-2022 The Belgian architect and activist passed away on 2 August, at the age of 95. Born in Brussels in 1927, Kroll studied at the Faculté d’Architecture La Cambre at a time influenced by functionalism, and this explains why, after graduating in

Sudinfo   An ephemeral installation by the French artist Daniel Buren will for a dress the high-speed station of the Belgian city of Liège, a work of Santiago Calatrava, with a play of colors. The huge undulating roof – spanning 158 meters – was built with lar

JDS, Coldefy, NL Architects, Carlo Ratti, ENSAMBLE STUDIO, UTIL cvba, and Ramboll have together won the bid to revamp the Paul-Henri SPAAK Building, main home…

The Guardian   Jennifer Rankin   Ever since he was a child, Hannes Coudenys had been annoyed by the “visual chaos” around him. On the road from home to his school in Bruges, he found a mishmash of architectural styles – haciendas, villas, farm-style houses, all mixed up with boxy ma

David Van Severen   Kersten Geers    These projects were designed between 2004 and 2019. Until now, fifteen have been built. Some of them are better known elsewhere than they are in their own neighbourhood. They have double lives – both as the main protagonist of an architectural narrat

Jean-Louis Cohen   Questioned on the appropriation of existing forms in OFFICE’s projects, Kersten Geers has affirmed in 2017: “We are interested in references, but we use them ‘lightly’.” This modest statement provides an initial orientation for the analysis of the wo

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Kersten Geers and David Van Severen write like they design, with a clear line. Their interpretative transparency – both are committed to teaching –, their visual acuity and their intellectual impact make it almost redundant to comment on the work of

Albeit decimated during the Shoah and attacked on several occasions in recent times, the Jewish community of Belgium asserts its presence and importance in the country’s history by means of a small museum which in the wake of an international competi

The British partnership of Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke – in collaboration with the Belgian firm TRANS Architectuur and RE-ST – has won the bid to build an extension to Design Museum Gent (see AV Proyectos 99) that will improve circulation and the

A screen-like building, seemingly trivial but with a scale and urban position that make it a monument, has given OMA / Reiner de Graaf the victory in the contest for the new headquarters of the National Railway Company of Belgium (SNCB), beside the B

The Citröen building in Brussels, an enormous industrial complex built in 1933, will be transformed into a new branch of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The result of a competition that was held for the purpose, the design drawn up by the team

Buildings can become missiles. An example is St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, which Luther turned into a symbol of the degradation of the Catholic Church. So is the new seat of the European Council in Brussels. David Cameron came to express “imme

Architecture parlante was an invention of French architects of the Enlightenment by which buildings explained their functions through their forms, tying up the rational with the expressive. From this arose projects of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Claude

El estudio catalán RCR junto con los flamencos Coussée & Goris ha ganado el concurso de la nueva mediateca en el centro histórico de Gante, Bélgica. La propuesta consiste en un apilamiento de losas, un volumen horizontal cuya planta baja transcurre e

Situado en los antiguos muelles de Amberes, el nuevo museo de la historia de la ciudad, llamado Museum Aan de Stroom (MAS) —por encontrarse a orillas del Escalda—, forma parte de un gran proyecto de revitalización de esta degradada zona portuaria. La

Tras ganar la Academia de Música en Dilbeek (véase AV Proyectos 27), el estudio de Carlos Arroyo ha resultado vencedor de un nuevo concurso en Bélgica, en la localidad de Oostkamp (Flandes), para la realización del llamado OostCampus, un nuevo ayunta

Doce años después de haber ganado el concurso para su adjudicación (véase Arquitectura Viva 55) y con siete años de retraso sobre el plazo previsto, se ha inaugurado la estación de alta velocidad Lieja-Guillemins, última obra de Santiago Calatrava en

Después de Rotterdam, Amberes es el segundo puerto de Europa, con más de 50 kilómetros de muelles a orillas del Escalda. Con el fin de centralizar servicios administrativos dispersos, la Autoridad Portuaria belga convocó un concurso abierto al que se

Marc Dubois   For a long time, Belgium has been a blank spot on Europe’s architecture map. This region amid France and the Netherlands has produced few noteworthy projects, especially in the area of public construction. However, in Belgium – from Victor Horta to d

Dominique Pieters   Los extranjeros se sorprenden una y otra vez de la complejidad que subyace tras la supuesta sencillez holandesa. A los oriundos de los Países Bajos se les supone un carácter acogedor, una visión liberal de la sociedad, un talante progresista, un agud

Pieter Uyttenhove   R. Dudal   F. Thiry   Bruselas se considera la capital de la Unión Europea porque acoge sus principales instituciones: la Comisión, el Consejo Económico y Social, el Consejo de Regiones, además de innumerables representaciones nacionales y delegaciones privadas. El Parlam

Luis Fernández-Galiano   We would need Hergé to outline an intelligible drawing of this at once diffused and divided country, and even then we would not know if la ligne claire serves to delimit the perimeter or to trace fractures. Transferring alpine perplexities to its fla

Brussels  2012  
A+ editions   - 208 Pages