Exhibition guide
Building for Brussels Architecture and Urban Transformation in Europe
Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels 9.10–28.11.2010
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Introductions 6
Foreword
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Curatorial statement
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Exhibition overview Five challenges
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Demography
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Public facilities
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Urban economy
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Mobility
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New districts
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Credits
Foreword
In 2007, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the Centre for Fine Arts organized the exhibition A Vision for Brussels – Imagining the Capital of Europe. An international team of architects around Pier Vittorio Aureli and Joachim Declerck, from the Berlage Institute, presented the results of a research into various possibilities of Brussels as capital of Europe. Today, three years later, we are continuing the thread of this reflection. Together with Emir Kir, secretary of state of the Brussels Capital Region, in the frame of the Belgian presidency of the European Union, we are presenting an exhibition Building for Brussels – Architecture and Urban Transformation in Europe. With the starting point of the challenges which Brussels as a capital is facing on the eve of an unseen demographic expansion, Joachim Declerck, from Architecture Workroom Brussels, examines a series of European urban development projects and their relevancy for the capital of Europe. Building for Brussels makes it clear that architecture and city building are more than just the aesthetic side of a city management : they are one of the main tools to answer the challenges of a capital city and to shape our social life and our patrimony for tomorrow. On the one hand, these two exhibitions show our involvement and our will to take part in the debate on the future development of Brussels as capital of Europe and on the other hand they are part of the role Building for Brussels
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which the Centre for Fine Arts of Brussels plays as a platform for the international architectural culture. As a cultural hub, Bozar is the place for local talents to be offered an international stage and at the same time, it plays the role of a go-between attracting and involving international experts. And thus we add our contribution to a capital which should develop a truly European dimension also from the architectural point of view. Paul Dujardin General Director, Centre for Fine Arts
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Foreword
Curatorial statement
Brussels today is recognised throughout the world for its architecture, more particularly for art nouveau. And rightly so. But it seems to me that it is insufficiently recognised for contemporary architecture. In contrast to other European cities, Brussels has not been bold enough. It has not fully entered the 21st century. With these words, the Brussels Secretary of State for Planning Emir Kir announced the initiative for this exhibition. It is a call to Brussels to commit to a policy of high-quality architecture in order to lead the city into the 21st century. But why should a metropolis like Brussels invest in architecture and urban planning at a time when it is faced with vast social challenges? That is the central question of this exhibition. Building for Brussels argues that high-quality archi tecture and urban design projects can offer an answer to the city’s five metropolitan challenges: 1
The population of Brussels is set to grow quickly in the coming years.
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Brussels has an acute shortage of public infrastructure such as schools and sports facilities.
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The unemployment rate in Brussels is among the highest in Europe.
Building for Brussels
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Traffic congestion threatens to bring the city to a standstill.
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Brussels’ position as a major centre of supranational governance conflicts with its quality of living.
Brussels is not alone in having these challenges. In a search for expertise and potential answers, the exhibition turns its gaze on other major European cities. Cities such as Madrid, Zßrich, Basel, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Rotterdam have faced similar challenges in recent decades and have conducted energetic policies leading to very practical outcomes. Urban transformations have stimulated economic development, made the city more accessible, succeeded in establishing sufficient affordable housing and improved the city as a place in which to live. In the five following exhibition rooms, Building for Brussels shows how architecture and urban planning are among the most powerful tools for tackling these five metropolitan challenges. These challenges are also a unique opportunity for Brussels to focus in on its ambitions and to build tomorrow’s city. Joachim Declerck Curator
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Curatorial statement
Exhibition overview
Building for Brussels addresses the five major social challenges which face the city of Brussels and investigates how architecture and planning can offer a solution. These problems are not insurmount足 able; on the contrary, part of the answer already lies within each problem. The exhibition calls for social problems to be seen as an opportunity, a chance or a challenge to remake the city. The housing shortage and the need to build new homes offers an opportunity to design high-quality housing which strengthens the urban fabric and provides an attractive living environment. The need for new schools and public amenities is an opportunity to locate and design these amenities so that they bring a new dynamism to neighbourhoods. Expanding public transport and reducing the number of cars in the city centre are opportunities to create new gateways into the city and to use public transport to connect neighbourhoods in a powerful gesture. The necessary employment policy for Brussels is an opportunity to provide a platform to the existing fragile economies, to embed them in the urban fabric and give them a new dignity. Finally, the need to strengthen the international standing of Brussels is an opportunity to build new mixed districts that blend into the existing fabric and offer high-quality public space. The central but almost implicit premise of this exhibition is that architecture and planning are among the most effective and strategic policy Building for Brussels
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tools with which to find an answer to today’s major social problems. To demonstrate this premise, we examine a large number of European projects that provide examples. Many European cities wrestled—or wrestle still—with similar problems and phenomena. Population growth, migration, the urban exodus, a lack of public space, congestion, unemployment and the expansion of the city into a regional metropolis are the great challenges of the European city as such. Yet many cities in Europe have succeeded in recent decades in finding a power ful response. The range of examples in this exhibition offers Brussels a perspective and a source of inspi ration for tackling its own problems in its own context and its own way. It must be admitted that Brussels is lagging behind in comparison with other cities. In some ways this is surprising, given that the city aims to consolidate its role as the capital of Europe, its strong international position in the network of European cities and its well-known cosmopolitan nature. But it is also understandable. Brussels is still a very young region, which has only recently been able to make decisions about its own development. After a century of top-down planning processes to modernise the city without any attention to the quality of life in its neighbourhoods, the Brussels capital region began to address the restoration of the urban fabric immediately after it was established. Neighbourhood contracts, an especially successful regional initiative to promote the liveability of the districts through local, ad hoc interventions, form the most important example. But today Brussels needs to go a step further and take the city’s development in hand on a scale com mensurate with the whole territory. 11
Exhibition overview
The exhibition seized the opportunity offered by the Belgian presidency of the European Union to focus on these ambitions and to call not just for responsibility but also for daring and courage in building tomorrow’s city. These challenges should be seen not as separate technical problems, but as important metropolitan opportunities that offer the point of departure for a bold architectural policy. A policy worthy of Brussels.
Building for Brussels
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Public facilities
New districts
Building for Brussels
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Mobility
Demography
Urban economy
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Exhibition overview
Demography How can a city respond to housing needs?
Brussels faces a major demographic challenge. In recent years, there has been a continued exodus from the city. In particular young families and bettereducated people have been moving out of the city, looking for affordable housing, preferably with a garden. Despite this ongoing exodus, it appears that the population in Brussels is no longer falling but has begun to rise. Recent research suggests a growth of 6 percent, which will rise to 8.2 percent over the coming ten years, which means between 60,000 and 82,000 new residents every year. A high birth rate and high immigration, particularly among poorer sections of the population, are responsible. According to these new forecasts, Brussels will need 50,000 new homes by 2020, including many social homes. In 2007 Brussels had 39,030 social homes, representing 8.4 percent of the total housing stock. In comparison with other European cities, this figure is very low. Paris has 16 percent, London 25 percent and Amsterdam as much as 55 percent. In 2009, the Brussels government pledged to increase the proportion of social housing to 15 percent of the total stock by 2020. That means that over the next ten years something like an additional 35,000 homes, or 3,500 homes annually, must be built. Today the average annual production stands at barely 1,500 social homes. So Brussels today has two major, apparently paradoxical challenges: on the one hand, it must halt the urban exodus by providing quality and affordable Building for Brussels
map Housing stock and household needs
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Demography
housing for the middle classes; on the other it needs to build sufficient social housing to accommodate the rising population. These two aspects cannot be considered separately but must be tackled together. This requires a strategic plan on the scale of the entire region. Such a plan will translate the quantitative demand into a qualitative policy that strives for a sound mix of social and private house building. By building qualitative social housing the government can give immediate expression to its chosen strategy, and thus provide a framework for and a stimulus to private house building. Various European cities are faced with similar problems. A number of cities have succeeded in formulating a powerful response and in conducting a bold architectural policy. Madrid, for example, was confronted with steep population growth. At least 495,000 people migrated to the Spanish capital to find work between 2001 and 2006. Madrid drew up an ambitious plan to build 315,000 new homes on unused sites on the outskirts of the city, with the result that the city’s surface area grew by 50 percent in a decade. To stimulate the development of the new districts, the city built a large number of high quality social homes; the rest was left to the private sector. Foreign Office Architects of London succeeded with a very low budget project in bringing many important qualities to around 90 social homes. By building vertically and compactly, space was created for a communal garden for residents. The apartment building, Carabanchel, contains homes of different sizes and types. Every home has a large terrace enclosed by bamboo panels. Because residents can open and close these at will, the building has a constantly changing aspect. This has avoided the traditional image of social housing as
Carabanchel Social Housing Foreign Office Architects (FOA) 2007, Madrid
a repetitive piling up of identical housing units. Building for Brussels
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The Dutch architects MVRDV also aimed for typo足 logical innovation in their Mirador housing project. The architects literally gave a twist to the traditional Madrid housing block six storeys high with a semi足 Mirador MVRDV & Blanca Lleo Architects 2005, Madrid
public patio in the middle. By tilting the block on its side, a tower was built which provides a landmark in the neighbourhood, and there is room for public space at ground floor level. The residents also have a communal terrace at a height of 40 metres. Like Brussels, Amsterdam also faces two paradoxical challenges: controlling the middle class exodus and providing sufficient housing for an expanding lower social class. The city centre was renovated street by street, and old industrial sites made way for ambitious housing projects. The peninsulas of the eastern docklands area, from which seagoing ships once set sail, have been rede足 veloped as a residential area. Most harbour areas were developed according to the Dutch model, with large-scale uniform housing projects. However, on the Borneo and Sporenburg peninsulas, low-rise housing developments were preferred. West 8 designed a master plan inspired by the Belgian tradition of private house building: one house per plot, built by
Borneo and Sporenburg West 8 1997, Amsterdam
different architects for different principals. The Dutch architecture practice Rapp+Rapp here designed 4 dwellings Seinwachterstraat, four detached introvert houses back to back on two long, deep plots. The brick walls on the street side are almost completely closed. Narrow, dark lanes along the house lead to the entrance. But daylight floods the houses: at the rear there is a glazed terrace above the patios fully
4 dwellings Seinwachterstraat Rapp+Rapp 2001, Amsterdam
executed in glass. These houses demonstrate that even families with children can find something to their taste in a very dense city centre. Copenhagen has also experienced a huge rise
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Demography
in population in recent years. Copenhagen has become an attractive place in which to live, and has profiled itself as a modern, environmentally friendly city. The centre became a car-free zone, and an extensive safe cycling network was developed throughout the city. Today Copenhagen faces the challenge of building thousands of new homes. Like Madrid, the city has opened up new ground and former industrial and harbour areas to develop urban centres. In a new district between the old city and the airport, architects JDS + BIG designed a new and daring project with the appropriate name of Mountain Dwellings. Instead of stacking up housing units in a single block like match boxes, the architects constructed a huge mountainside in concrete containing a car park and topped it with a sparse layer of homes in terraced form. Every home has a private roof garden and a parking space at the same level as
Mountain Dwellings BIG with JDS 2008, Copenhagen
the unit itself. The project succeeds in combining the qualities of individual living outside the city with collective living in a densely built-up urban context. While Madrid, Copenhagen and Amsterdam have the space in which to expand, Paris has to deal with the density of its existing urban fabric. The construction of social housing played a central role. Paris currently has 183,500 social housing units, about 16 percent of the total housing stock. As in Brussels, there is a concentration of social housing in a few parts of the city. Paris has pledged to bring this proportion to 20 percent by 2014, and, from the conviction that a social mix benefits the quality of life of a district, it has also undertaken to spread this housing more evenly over the territory. Two very different projects show how Paris is achieving this. On the ﾃ四e Seguin, formerly an industrial and harbour district home to the Renault factory until 1992, Paris Building for Brussels
ﾃ四e Seguin Rives de Seine Diener & Diener Architekten, Rolinet & Associﾃｩs under construction, Paris
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is building a new urban neighbourhood. The Swiss architects Diener & Diener designed the master plan for a 7,000-square-metre plot in collaboration with the landscape architect Günther Vogt. They designed a complex of buildings consisting of around three hundred housing units, one-third of which are social housing, offices, a crèche and shops. Unlike the closed blocks so typical of Paris, the enormous block is penetrated by passageways. The various intimate squares and gardens in the interior connect with the public space and are accessible to residents and visitors. In the Eden Bio project, architect Edouard François used the space in the interior of a block in a residential area to create two new streets. On the outer side of the streets he built terraced houses, Eden Bio Edouard François 2008, Paris
while between the two streets an elongated twostorey building arose with walkways and stairways overrun with plants. The architect thus succeeded in increasing density, not by building high-rise housing or large blocks, but by erecting small-scale, low-rise, sustainable homes in the interior of a block, commensurate with the scale of the surroundings. While Paris, Madrid and Amsterdam are all trying to build a large quantity of social housing, Breda proposed to build 13,000 new houses for the middle and higher social classes over a ten-year period. One of the most important projects in the town centre is the redevelopment of the site of a former military barracks, Chassé Park. The urban design developed by the Rotterdam Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and Xaveer De Geyter Architecten of Brussels proposes a campus model, in which
Chassé Park Appartementen OMA & Xaveer De Geyter 2001, Breda
houses, offices and public facilities lay distributed over a thirteen-hectare park. This model considerably expanded the town’s public space, while achieving as high a density as in the historic centre. Within
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Demography
the campus Xaveer De Geyter constructed a housing project with five towers, thirteen storeys high. The towers are placed so as to enjoy a maximum of light and views and are sited above a car park, which links the buildings in a ring. Within this ring there is a sunken communal inner garden onto which the entrance halls of the towers give. Postwar Rotterdam, in contrast, opted firmly for modernism and high-rise building. Even today, Rotterdam is building new urban centres in the former harbour district that make spectacular use of tall buildings. For the Kop van Zuid, an old harbour site which has been redeveloped as a new urban district, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) designed the De Rotterdam project as a vertical town. The three interconnected 150-metre high towers accommodate office space, apartments, hotels, conference rooms, shops, restaurants, cafĂŠs and public amenities. Because of the mixed use, life in the towers is never still. A public hall on the lower
De Rotterdam OMA under construction, Rotterdam
ground floor forms the living crossroads where the diverse users of De Rotterdam pass and come into contact with each other. On Wijnhaven Island, architects KCAP have added a new icon to the impressive skyline. The Red Apple, a bright red building with slender towers and a daringly canted volume, is home to offices and around 200 homes, which enjoy a magnificent view over the city and the harbour. Along the street there are shops, restaurants and cafĂŠs, and the large glazed lobby is also a lively urban meeting place for the diverse users.
The Red Apple KCAP Architects & Planners 2009, Rotterdam
Like Breda and Amsterdam, Basel saw a massive exodus at the end of the last century. Basel has invested heavily in making the city a better place to live, not least by sending an urban motorway through an underground tunnel, and has plans for Building for Brussels
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building 5,000 new homes for the middle class. Above the new tunnel for through-traffic, there was space in which to increase the density of the urban fabric with new house building projects. One of these projects is VoltaMitte from architects Christ & Gantenbein, which closes off one of the open sides of a block. Here again, the architects wanted to develop an alternative to the typical uniformity of collective VoltaMitte Christ & Gantenbein architects 2010, Basel
housing projects. Every apartment has its own shape and character, which results in a spectacular rear faรงade that can be seen from the communal garden in the inner courtyard. A second remarkable project in Basel is the housing development designed by Swiss architects Miller & Maranta in the Schwarzpark, an urban park in the south of Basel. The homes in the park offer an alternative to secluded living on the outskirts. They combine the quality of rural living
Wohnhaus Schwarzpark Miller & Maranta 2004, Basel
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with the advantages of living in the city and make a modest contribution to halting the urban exodus.
Demography
Public facilities How can a public building transform the city?
Historically speaking, cities are economic crossroads that have always attracted new activities and people. But apart from the economic opportunities, the immediate proximity and accessibility of amenities and services of all kinds is probably the most important feature of the European city. Schools and universities, concert halls and theatres, museums, conference centres, libraries, swimming pools, public parks and squares, public and social services all make cities inhabitable environments. Today Brussels is considering the construction of a number of important metropolitan facilities, such as a new football stadium, a shopping centre, a conference centre or a new concert hall. As well as these large-scale amenities, Brussels has an urgent need for around seventy new schools, not least because of the expanding young population. The sports infrastructure also urgently requires expansion. All these essential functions must find a place in the urban fabric. This is a huge challenge, but at the same time it offers an incredible opportunity to improve the quality of life in Brussels neighbourhoods. Public amenities should not be designed as isolated objects that fulfil a well-defined programme. With carefully thought-through positioning and high-quality architecture, they can play a role as the vehicle for change in a district. They are a driving force for social cohesion in urban development. The total package of metropolitan and more small-scale facilities make it possible to strengthen the successful practice of neighbourhood Building for Brussels
map Facilities and enhanced development area
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Public facilities
contracts within a strategy commensurate with the Brussels conurbation. In recent years European cities have made a massive investment in new public amenities of high architectural quality. The examples presented here all strengthen the urban fabric in their own way, defining new public spaces and giving a new face to the surroundings. In Milan Grafton Architects have succeeded in intelligently establishing a programme in the vulnerable urban fabric that initially seemed too large for the surroundings: an auditorium and offices for the Università Luigi Bocconi. It is a sturdy-looking but very accessible building. The public space runs beneath the whole building, giving access to the campus beyond. The building creates for the first time a relationship between the university and the surrounding resi dential district. What is remarkable is that this is a private university. The project demonstrates that
Università Bocconi Grafton Architects 2008, Milan
even privately built projects are aware of the need to introduce high-quality architecture to strengthen the urban fabric. A similar project is the Cinéma Sauvenière in Liège, designed by the Brussels architects V+. On a small plot, the design succeeded in freeing an internal court, which accommodates a café and terrace, func tioning as an extension of the public space of the street. But the most remarkable aspect of this cinema is that it stands in the heart of the city, and was not, as is usual today, located like an isolated shoebox of no distinction on the edge of the town. It is these huge complexes which have supplanted the traditional city-
Cinéma Sauvenière Bureau vers plus de bienêtre (V+) 2008, Liège
centre cinemas. This even though a cinema receives more visitors than other cultural amenities and is better placed than any other to stimulate activity in the centre. Building for Brussels
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The new Universiteitsforum (UFO) in Ghent, designed by the Belgian architects Xaveer De Geyter and Stéphane Beel, is a building that not only fits into the urban fabric but actually repairs the damage. UFO Xaveer De Geyter architecten & Stéphane Beel architecten 2007, Gent
Large-scale university buildings had inflicted deep wounds on the city in recent decades. The UFO repairs the damaged frontage along an important main road in Ghent and also creates two new public squares on either side of the building. The building itself, which includes a large auditorium, is designed as a vast public lobby. The UFO and the two quads are important meeting places and provide a new nucleus to the university. These are places where two thousand students will pass every day. More and more metropolitan institutions, such as universities and cinemas, have moved to the outskirts of the city in recent years; they need more and more room, and are difficult to establish in the delicate urban fabric. The UFO, the Università Bocconi and the Cinéma Sauvenière all demonstrate, however, that such facilities can, on the contrary, act as a driving force to breathe new life into a neighbourhood. Large shopping centres and malls have also moved out to the periphery and compete with the traditional shopping streets in the city centre. In Kortrijk, the architecture practice Robbrecht & Daem has built one of the few city-centre shopping centres in the country. Shopping center K in Kortrijk has succeeded in integrating seamlessly into the existing fabric. As well as a shopping mall, the complex includes housing and a large car park, which relieves the pressure of
Shopping center K Robbrecht en Daem architecten 2010, Kortrijk
traffic in the centre. In the centre of the shopping mall there is a gigantic atrium, which acts as a new covered public square. Instead of driving out the smaller shops in the centre, K in Kortrijk strengthens the town as a shopping destination. Kortrijk, which
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Public facilities
was the first Belgian town to create a pedestrianised shopping street, thus continues its tradition as a town for shopping. In Ghent, on the site of a former cloister and hospital, architect Jan De Vylder has built dance studios for Les Ballets C de la B and LOD. By situating two volumes, which mirror one another, in an intelligent manner on an unusual plot, a part of the frontage on the street side was closed again. As in the case of the UFO, the architect made room for a public square between the two buildings, which gives access to the interior of the Bijlokesite. This has been
Les Ballets C de la B – LOD architecten de vylder vinck taillieu 2008, Gent
redeveloped into a new centre of cultural activities in the city, which now hosts the new city museum, the STAM, and the academy. While the dance studios and UFO in Ghent, the cinema in Liège and the Università Bocconi in Milan are all embedded in the urban fabric of a city, architect Jean Nouvel’s Les Bains des Docks is one of the first public amenities to be built in a new part of the town which is still under development. The swimming pool complex stands in the old harbour of Le Havre, which is being transformed into a new quarter with water sports activities, tourist attractions, shops, homes and offices. Nouvel has respected the existing industrial
Les Bains des Docks Ateliers Jean Nouvel 2008, Le Havre
landscape, imitating the aesthetic of the harbour warehouses in the area, which are slowly but surely acquiring new uses. The result is a low, rectangular volume built in dark, sturdy materials, which conceals a spectacular, almost fairy-tale maze of swimming pools and relaxation areas. The elementary school Leutschenbach designed by Christian Kerez is also the first contribution towards the development of a completely new urban district on a formerly industrial site in Zürich.
Elementary school Leutschenbach Christian Kerez 2009, Zürich
Interestingly, the architect’s strategy gives a school Building for Brussels
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building an entirely new form. Generally schools are designed as a conjunction of different activities. Classrooms, offices, canteen, a music hall and a gym form a campus around a playground. Kerez opted to pile up the various functions in a single building, with the gym on the top floor. By building upwards, the ground floor left free a spacious area for the creation of an urban park, which can be used by school children and future local residents. The idea of restoring public space to the city and thus bringing a new dynamic to a neighbourhood is also reflected in Casa da Musica. Architect Rem Koolhaas of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) positioned the building volume as an autonomous object in the middle of an undulating Casa da Musica OMA 2005, Porto
square. The promenade around the building is continued inside, in a public way leading up to the roof. Here there is a restaurant and a bar. OMA has thus succeeded in giving a new meaning to the traditional concert hall. It is not a sacred space that people only visit to watch a performance, but a building which is accessible to everyone and which is a part of the public space within the city. Large-scale public structures such as a university, a concert hall or a museum can redefine a whole district. Such attractions can become new centres in the city. This has been the impact of the new museum of contemporary art in Rome. Like the Casa da Musica, the MAXXI is a spectacular building that attracts visitors, not just from all over the city but from the whole world. Many cities have striven for the “Bilbao effect,� where the Guggenheim museum lifted
MAXXI : National Museum of XXI century Arts Zaha Hadid Architects 2010, Roma
the city from nothing to a tourist destination. Unlike the Guggenheim, the MAXXI, designed by the BritishIraqi architect Zaha Hadid, displays a great sensitivity to the surrounding urban fabric. The building, with
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Public facilities
its futuristic maze of curved and sloping walls, craters and ravines, subtle differences in levels, footbridges and dizzying flights of stairs, is of course spectacular, but it is not obtrusive in the street scene. It is carefully integrated into the fabric of the former army barracks in the Flaminio district. In this way, it gives a new meaning to an unused area of the city. The project for a school of architecture in the former harbour island and industrial district Île de Nantes is another reflection on how to make a building public right up to the roof. Architects Lacaton & Vassal built a solid basic structure rather like a multistorey car park, connected to the public space at ground floor level by a long sloping path. Within the three-level
School of architecture Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal 2008, Nantes
structure smaller, light and adaptable structures have been added beside and above each other. In these are sited the school’s own facilities: workshops, lecture rooms, a library, exhibition spaces and a cafeteria. Between the different rooms there are interesting open spaces. The entire surface of the roof is a public space that looks out over the Loire and the old and new towns. Like the school in Zürich or Les Bains des Docks in Le Havre, the architecture school should bring life to a new urban district. The idea that public amenities have the capacity to bring a new dynamic to a neighbourhood is most clearly expressed in parks. Parks are uniquely placed to improve the liveability of a district. The Spoor Noord park in Antwerp, for example, has succeeded in improving the quality of life in the poor and densely built-up working-class areas. The park has been laid out in a former shunting yard to the north of the city. The Italian architects Secchi & Vigano designed the park not as a green space to walk in and admire, as was customary for 19th-century
Spoor Noord Studio Associato Bernardo Secchi Paola Viganò 2009, Antwerpen
urban parks, but as a park which accommodates a host Building for Brussels
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of facilities, such as sports grounds and playgrounds, a multipurpose hall, a skating bowl beneath a disused railway viaduct, barbecues and picnic areas for local people, ponds and fountains in which children can play. Spoor Noord is a sort of machine for engaging the public. The same architects are currently drawing up the master plan for a similar area in Brussels: Schaerbeek-Formation. In Zaandstad on the periphery of Amsterdam, what had been an interruption in the town has acquired a new central function. A viaduct for road traffic cut the little town in two. For thirty years, a cramped car park under the viaduct’s columns was a blind spot in the middle of the town. Beneath the viaduct NL Architects have built a new urban square: A8ernA. Just as in the Spoor Noord park, the long strip beneath the viaduct offers an extensive leisure programme: a skating bowl, sports grounds, a pond with boats, shops, playgrounds and a little park. With A8ernA NL Architects 2006, Zaanstad
very few resources, the architects have seized the opportunity to turn a gloomy place, which was a thorn in the side of residents for years, into a new focus for the town.
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Public facilities
Urban economy How can architecture stimulate local economic activity?
Although Brussels is one of the wealthiest and most productive cities in Europe, the region suffers from sky-high unemployment rates. With unemployment standing at 19.5 percent, principally among young people, Brussels is far above the European average. This paradox is due to the fact that wealth in Brussels is primarily produced in the service sector, which represents 90 percent of all economic activity in the city. More than half of employees in the service sector (53 percent), mainly the better educated, are commuters from outside the region. There is thus an enormous discrepancy between the existing economic activity and the qualifications or educational levels of the residents. The fight against unemployment demands a powerful approach, not only in terms of education and training, but also in terms of creating new jobs. Architecture can provide a solution here, through strengthening informal activities locally, creating new economies and building new training centres for young people or business centres for new entrepreneurs. A number of European examples demonstrate how architecture can be put to work to make the urban fabric the background to a new economic dynamism. One of the tried and tested ways of strengthening creative and craft industries in the city is the establishment of business centres with offices, workplaces and workshops for young companies. Since the 1970s, Paris has conducted a Building for Brussels
map Unemployment rate in 2007
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Urban economy
policy of setting up “hôtels industriels” throughout the city. These hotels offer a temporary place for new economic activities, in the hope that they will grow and move on to a more suitable site. Architect Dominique Perrault designed such a business centre on the outskirts of the city, on a difficult piece of ground squeezed between the heavy infrastructure of the Paris ring road, the quays of the Seine and a gigantic area of railway tracks. To fit into this difficult inner city location, Perrault designed a powerful building on the scale of the site: a large glazed box nine storeys high. Just as in a real hotel, the Hôtel Industriel Berlier sees a constant coming and going of businesses and people. The activities are visible behind the glass façade and the building is consequently always changing in appearance. Brussels has also established a number of start-up business centres in recent years, but while these were mostly created in existing or older buildings, the
Hôtel Industriel Berlier Dominique Perrault Architecture 2005, Paris
Hôtel Industriel Berlier succeeds in breathing new life into a difficult area of the city and in bringing a new dynamic to the surroundings. Training is also essential to stimulating a new urban economy. A youth and culture programme in Zürich makes a very small-scale but effective contribution to the training of young people. Next to the youth centre, in an area frequented by many young people, phalt Architekten have built a metal workshop. The workplace is not tucked away in a backstreet shed, but stands in the centre of a public space that can be caught up in its activities. This training blends into the cityscape, easily accessible to young people. Apart from developing new economies, architecture plays a strong role in giving existing,
Metal workshop Dynamo phalt Architekten 2008, Zürich
often informal activities a new status. This is the Building for Brussels
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case in the project for the Santa Caterina market in Barcelona. Architects Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue of EMBT built a covered market hall, with a colourful undulating roof consisting of thousands Santa Caterina Market Enric Miralles & Benedetta Tagliabue – EMBT 2005, Barcelona
of ceramic tiles. The renovation of the marketplace was an opportunity to launch a much more widereaching urban development project, with new social housing. Building the market hall created a central public space in Barcelona, which gives a place to an activity that normally falls between the folds of the urban fabric. In Zürich, EM2N completed a project Im Viadukt that combined a marketplace with the stimulation of new creative industries. The architects transformed a 500-metre-long railway viaduct, which had formed an insuperable barrier in the city, into a connecting element with a central role for economic activity. Under the arches of the viaduct the architects erected shops, cafés
Im Viadukt EM2N 2010, Zürich
and restaurants, along with a large number of workshops and workplaces for creative and craft industries. In between the two railway lines a new market hall takes place, the first covered market in Zürich. Market activities once again fulfil a prominent urban function. The way in which urban development can go hand in hand with strengthening the local economy is also illustrated by the new use given to a former flourmill standing on the canal banks in Leiden. The flourmill lies in the former industrial ring around the centre, which is now finding a new use as a green zone. Peter Zumthor’s design proposes a blend of
De Meelfabriek Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner study phase, Leiden
functions: housing, student accommodation, a hotel, workshops, a training institute, workshops and offices. The central theme of the Meelfabriek is the boosting of an already well-represented
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communications industry in the city. Publishers, photographers, advertising bureaus and filmmakers acquire a central location in the city. So there is contact and exchange between the different businesses, and the city can present itself as the regional centre of the creative economy.
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Mobility How can transportation infrastructure make a more cohesive city?
For many years mobility was regarded as a purely technical issue in Europe: a matter of building roads and motorways, viaducts, traffic junctions and tunnels, or of providing adequate public transport. This technical approach to mobility reached its high tide in Brussels in the 1960s and 1970s. Bringing motorways right into the historic centre made Brussels quite literally the “crossroads of Europe,� as contemporary advertisements put it. Easy car access into the heart of the city was meant to guarantee the future of Brussels as a European centre, or even as the capital of Europe. The fact that this also had damaging consequences for the city as a place to live was a disregarded argument. Brussels today still has two different planning mechanisms: a regional development plan and a mobility plan. These two policy instruments are insufficiently articulated. In addition, the administrative divisions of the Brussels metropolitan area make a coherent mobility policy that addresses real challenges impossible. Yet examples from elsewhere in Europe demonstrate that mobility today is both more than ever a matter of architecture and urban development, and the reverse: that urban development is driven by mobility. In September 2010 the Brussels government approved the new Iris 2 mobility plan. The plan sets out various measures to bring a halt to the Brussels traffic congestion. Car traffic in Brussels should decline 20 percent by 2018, and public Building for Brussels
map City and networks
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transport will be considerably expanded, with new tram lines and a new metro line to Schaerbeek. The ambitious plan is a unique opportunity to redevelop many public spaces, both underground and above ground. Mobility sites, such a metro stops, railway stations, car parks and bus and tram stops are among the most visited locations in a city. In Brussels some 350,000 commuters use these places every day. They are contemporary city gates and for many commuters the only contact they have with Brussels. For residents too, the mobility infrastructure is a part of daily life. Mobility does not only make the city and its amenities accessible but is also an important backbone which links and unites the different parts of the city. The quality of mobility sites contributes greatly to a city’s image. So the quality of these transport hubs is important. A number of European examples demonstrate how their quality can reflect upon the city as a whole. Furthermore, these places are also uniquely placed to give a new impetus to the development of the urban fabric. Hardbrücke Station in Zürich clearly illustrates the way in which architecture can determine the experience a station offers. The railway station stands on the edge of the former industrial area Zürich West, which is currently under development to provide a new urban district. The original station was hidden in a tangle of infrastructure beneath a 1.5-kilometre-
Hardbrücke Station EM2N 2007, Zürich
long road viaduct. The EM2N architects created a new and smooth link between the railway station and the bus stops on the viaduct. They also installed clear and striking signs which give the station an identity and an immediate readability. This makes the station an urban orientation point and gives new meaning to the hard infrastructure. The station and the viaduct have been transformed from an insuperable break Building for Brussels
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in the urban fabric to a new hub which joins the two halves of the city. Like the Hardbr端cke Station, Hoenheim-Nord in Strasburg is also a gateway to the city, this time not for travellers by train but for drivers. To keep traffic out of the city, Strasbourg has developed an extensive Car Park & Terminus Hoenheim-Nord Zaha Hadid Architects 2001, Hoenheim
tram network. Commuters can leave their cars at specially designed connection points around the city and continue their journey by tram. Often these parkand-ride areas are drab and unappealing car parks. However, Strasburg opted to give these connection places the grandeur of a contemporary city gate. The Iranian-British architect Zaha Hadid designed a car park for 800 vehicles as an artificial landscape of concrete, steel and artificial light which directs the visitor towards the station under a concrete awning. The parked vehicles, arranged on the extensive car park along the curves of a colourful magnetic field, become part of the landscape. In fact, just driving into Strasbourg, parking and taking a connecting tram has become an attraction. As the Strasbourg example demonstrates, reducing traffic can only succeed when an alternative is offered in the shape of an efficient public transport network. Brussels has also proposed to expand the provision of public transport in the Iris 2 mobility plan. This presents an opportunity. The expansion of the tram and metro network and the creation of the Regional Express network can be the starting point for redefining the whole territory. The mobility network can thus develop into the backbone of an urban project commensurate with the region and its sphere of influence. A number of European cities, such as Bordeaux, Bilbao and Porto, have shown that a mobility project can give the whole of a city a new identity. Mobility brings coherence to a city, unifies a
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city into a single whole. Residents rediscover a pride in their city and have the feeling that they are part of a shared urban society. Bordeaux had long intended to build a metro system. After many years of public and political debate, it was decided to install above-ground tram lines. With the budget that was available for a metro system, a tram network could be created as a comprehensive urban development project. To reduce car traffic, the tramway was given a dedicated track taking precedence over all traffic. The route of the lines was also chosen with care. The tram was seen as a way of rejoining the vulnerable outer districts to the city centre. Large existing and planned urban projects were also drawn into a transport system by the tram project and made accessible. The most spectacular aspect of the tram project is the fact that the careful design of the tram—the tram itself, the station furnishings, and the landscape along the route—has given a new identity to the city. Trees have been planted along the tram route, and public spaces have been redesigned. Where the tram runs through
Tramway Urban design tramway Brochet, Lajus, Pueyo architectes Agence Signes, paysagistes Elizabeth de Portzamparc mobilier urbain Bordeaux
the streets, corridors open up neighbourhoods again. About 20,000 new homes have been spontaneously built along the tram route. The city has decided that, along with the extension of the tram network, a further 50,000 homes will be planned. In Bilbao too, the introduction of a public transport network—in this case a metro—was seized as an opportunity to bring a new coherence to the diversity of urban neighbourhoods. The British architect Norman Foster was given the unique task of designing the entirety of the metro line. All the metro stops were designed as vast tube-shaped halls. The same materials and shapes recur in the passages,
Metro Foster + Partners 1995, Bilbao
stairways and lifts. The underground programme also Building for Brussels
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has a powerful presence above ground. At the entrance to the metro stations, glazed tubes like hoses emerge from the ground. These “fosteritos” have become a new icon in the city. While the underground metro stations in Brussels are often dark and cheerless spaces, we can see in both Bilbao and Porto that there are many opportunities below ground. Particularly in Porto’s city centre, the metro runs underground for much of the time. Unlike in Bilbao, the stations were designed by several architects, all under the supervision of the Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. Metro Edouardo Souto de Moura 2002, Porto
He established a number of guidelines which the architects had to follow. These ensured that the deeplying metro stations were pleasant public spaces and that the transition from the street to the underground area, and thus the surrounding public space, received particular attention. These connections between the street and the underground were given revolutionary form in the Souterrain tram tunnel in The Hague. The Office for Metropolitan Architecture built an underground street 1,250 metres long and with 500 parking spaces on two levels. At each end of this enormous
Souterrain tram tunnel Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) 2004, The Hague
construction there stands a tram station at level –3. Taking the tram line underground and combining it with a large car park meant that the shopping street above could be made a car-free zone. The three underground levels are linked with the surface shopping centres over the entire length of the street. The Souterrain is no gloomy metro station or car park, but a dynamic and safe public space in which daylight penetrates down to the lowest level. It is an urban space full of movement and activity, which is experienced as a vast urban lobby. Like the previous cities, Lyon translates its
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policy decision to reduce urban traffic into some very practical measures. The city has developed a parking plan with a number of new multistorey car parks. To ensure the success of these interventions, Lyon did not opt to simply pile the cars up in dark boxes. The car park beneath the Théâtre des Célestins so called Parking des Célestins was designed by architect Michel Targe and the artist Daniel Buren. They took their inspiration from the famous sixteenth-century Pozzo di San Pietro in Orvieto. Just like this well, the car park is designed as a double helix around a central void. Light openings in the helix look out over the central well and bring daylight into the car park. At
Parking des Célestins Michel Targe + Daniel Buren 1995, Lyon
the bottom of the well, Daniel Buren placed a mirror which rotates on its axis day and night. On the square in front of the theatre stands a periscope that looks onto the bottomless bottom of the well. Thanks to this theatrical, illusory effect, parking the car becomes an experience in itself. Despite the arrival of alternative forms of transport, the car will never be completely banned from the city. Certainly in a city like Brussels, which has been made to measure for cars, motorways will remain an undeniable part of the city. Often the road infrastructure forms barriers that cut the urban fabric in two. A project in Turnhout from the Brussels architecture practice Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen demonstrates that these barriers do not have to be insurmountable and can even offer an opportunity for new urban development. Turnhout wanted to take the southern part of its ring road into an underground tunnel, so that through-traffic would be faster and a safe crossing could be created
Central Park Turnhout Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen & Technum ongoing, Turnhout
between the centre and a park on the outer side of the ring. However, the architects proposed to construct an embankment over the road. This embankment Building for Brussels
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forms a powerful architectural feature, being at once a crossing into the park and a clear boundary to the town. What was seen as an infrastructure project has been reformulated by the architects into a project for urban renewal: the Central Park is attached to the town, and receives a new frontage in the shape of five tower blocks along the embankment. As in Brussels, the large-scale introduction of motorways in the 1960s made a severe impact on Barcelona. Road infrastructure was then regarded as a purely technical matter, without considering its effect on the urban fabric. In the last two decades Barcelona has systematically converted the breaks in the city into major urban public spaces which connect neighbourhoods with each other. Space-hungry traffic junctions and intersections are being redeveloped to integrate them better into the urban fabric. In the north of the city, architects Enric Battle & Joan Roig have converted the spare space inside a gigantic traffic interchange into a neighbourhood park. The Trinitat park is connected to the surrounding districts by tunnels, bridges and a metro station. The architecture of the landscape reflects the curved lines of the traffic Trinitat Park Enric Battle & Joan Roig Architects 1993, Barcelona
intersection and screens the park from the bustle of the motorway. Thanks to the construction of the park, the infrastructure has been transformed from a blind spot in the city to a lively central place.
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New districts Which form will we give the city of tomorrow?
In the past fifty years, the European city has been transformed from an industrial city to one based on a service economy. Brussels is no exception. Nineteenth and twentieth-century industries have left a huge mark on the city. Large parts of the territory, such as Schaerbeek-Formation, Thurn and Taxis, the Brussels harbour area and the canal zone are relics of an industrial era that are still waiting for a new purpose. Just as the industrial economy largely determined the appearance of the city, so too a new type of city has emerged with the service economy. The transformation of Brussels into a service city has so far resulted in the rise of property development, which has provided the city with the necessary square metres of office space. The most visible examples of this are the office zones around the Nord and Midi stations, the European district around Schuman station and the Rue de la Loi, and the CAE project at the Botanique. These are monofunctional office districts with poor public space, where there is no life outside office hours. These one-sided property developments reflect an old ambition for Brussels. Since the 1950s Brussels has been fostering an image of itself as a central hub, the logistical crossroads or the administrative centre of Europe. That the price for this ambition might be high was illustrated by the ease with which whole residential districts had to give way to office areas. Brussels is still carrying the scars. Now that Brussels has assumed its role as European capital, the city is faced by a major Building for Brussels
map Priority development areas
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New districts
challenge. On the one hand, Brussels needs to strengthen its international position still further; on the other, it must organise its transformation into a service city with as much quality as possible and bring it into harmony with its roles as a city in which to live or to visit. This is something that Brussels, with its young government, has so far found it difficult to come to grips with. While other cities in Europe have been at work for some decades at transforming the urban fabric, Brussels is hobbling along behind. A number of examples illustrate how various European cities have taken the transformations firmly in hand. The old industrial fabric is used as an opportunity to build a new city with distinguished public space and a balance between housing, offices, work places, shops, culture and leisure. When port activities ceased on the Île de Nantes in the late 1980s, a gigantic land area became available: a 350-hectare plot which is almost eight times the size of Thurn & Taxis in Brussels and almost twice the size of Schaerbeek-Formation. The government gave the impetus to the redevelopment of the island in the Loire by building the Palais de
Île de Nantes l’Atelier de l’île de Nantes – Alexandre Chemetoff 2011 (phase 1), Nantes
Justice, designed by Jean Nouvel in 2000. Architects Alexandre Chemetoff and Jean-Louis Berthomieu were appointed to direct the development of the area over a ten-year period. They did not design a detailed master plan but rather set out a number of guidelines to get the development, which is largely dependent on private sector initiatives, onto the right foot. This led to an open project that can be constantly adapted to the new initiatives and opportunities which may arise in the future. Tirana, the capital city of Albania, is the odd one out among European examples. The city still bears strong traces of the former Communist government. Building for Brussels
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While the centre of the city was planned in a very rigid and monumental fashion, Tirana has experi enced uncontrolled expansion in recent years. To bring back order to the chaotic city, French architecture practice Architecture Studio designed a master plan in which a series of ten towers restores coherence to the urban fabric. The Belgian architects 51N4E constructed the first tower close to the city’s central square. Thanks to its unusual shape—a rectangle that gradually converts into an ellipse— TID tower is a symbol of transformation in the city. At the ground floor of the tower there is a public gallery in which a half-dome is cut away, sheltering the tomb of Sülejman Pacha, the founder of Tirana. Skanderbeg square is being renewed as well by 51N4E and relaid in the form of a pyramid. In the centre of TID Tower / Skanderbeg Square 51N4E under construction, Tiranë
the square, at the top of the pyramid, visitors look out over the communist architecture of the city, so that its oppressive monumentality is undone. This subtle intervention acknowledges Albania’s past, while giving the city a new perspective. Like Nantes, Hamburg had the opportunity to redevelop an old harbour area into a new modern district. This gigantic project is focused on the development of a compact, sustainable and vibrant city with mixed functions. After a century of largescale port activities, Hamburg can at last redefine its relationship with the Elbe. Traditional planning tools are inadequate to the successful completion of such a large-scale project. Hafencity is a long-term project. After ten years of building, only half of the area is complete. KCAP and ASTOC, which designed the master plan, have therefore opted for a combination
Hafencity KCAP/ASTOC under construction, Hamburg
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of set principles and operational rules that can be constantly adapted to each other and to the changing economic circumstances. The carefully designed New districts
public space in the first phase, designed by Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue (EMBT), gives unity to the new city district and draws the historic centre to the water. Living, working, shopping, culture, leisure and nightlife all come together here. The squares and streets are the stage for vibrant activity, day and night. London, too, is exploiting the potential of the old industrial sites along the Thames to develop new urban districts. The More London office of the Thames area has been erected on the south bank. The city authorities gave the green light with the construction of the new City Hall, while Foster & Partners were commissioned to design the master plan. Despite the many commonplace office buildings that the project developers have built within the master plan, the architects have succeeded in developing outstanding
More London Foster + Partners architects Townshend landscape architects 2003, London
public spaces in collaboration with Townshend Landscape Architects. Next to the City Hall there is a central square containing the “scoop,� an open-air amphitheatre which hosts all kinds of cultural events. The office area creates a clear facade to a tourist walk along the riverbank. Like Brussels and London, Basel is a city with big international ambitions. The city stands at the point where Switzerland, France and Germany meet and is accordingly an ideal location for many businesses, including the pharmaceuticals manufacturer Novartis, which has opted to move its headquarters, research laboratories and production centres to a former industrial site along the Rhine, where it commissioned architect Vittorio Lampugnani to design the master plan. An interesting feature of this project is that the Campus Novartis had neither the ambition nor indeed the potential to be a new neighbourood. In the first place it is a private Building for Brussels
Campus Novartis Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani 2008, Basel
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company area, closed to the public. Nevertheless, it does give something back to the city. The buildings stand back from the water, so that along the banks of the Rhine there is now a public promenade. The various buildings on the campus will be designed by internationally famous architects such as Frank Gehry, Rafael Moneo or SANAA. The first buildings have already been completed; the architects Forum 3 Diener & Diener Architekten 2005, Basel
Diener & Diener, Helmut Federle and Gerold Wiederin designed a colourful office building, Forum 3, that marks the entrance to the campus. In contrast to Brussels, Lille grasped the arrival of the HST train in 1994 as an opportunity to put itself on the map as a new metropolis. A new town arose around the HST station. After Euralille 1, Euralille 2 is now under construction and studies are under way for Euralille 3. The result is a city with a dual nature: on the one side the old centre, on the other a hypermodern town with high-rise buildings and sparkling glass facades. On the outskirts of Euralille, the Brussels architect Xaveer De Geyter built the new ﾃｮlot St. Maurice, making a bridge for the first time between old and new towns. Xaveer De Geyter designed a series of buildings that follow each other in parallel bands. The buildings house
ﾃ四ot St. Maurice Xaveer De Geyter Architecten 2005, Lille
homes, workshops, offices and shops. The undulating terrain was used to provide access at different levels, so that all the shops, homes and car parks are immediately accessible. This very dense occupation is offset by a network of public spaces between the buildings, and with roof terraces and hanging gardens which are accessible to all and which overlook the towers of Euralille. Like Nantes, London and Hamburg, Zﾃｼrich is a formerly industrial city that has seized the opportunity to absorb its abandoned areas into the
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city. However, in the case of the Zürich West industrial district, the city took a firm decision not to build a totally new urban fabric, but rather to retain the industrial character of the area as much as possible. Industrial sheds and factories are finding a new lease on life as housing, offices, workshops and work places. Existing infrastructure is reused and acquires a new meaning. Zürich West succeeds in another way in forming a bridge with the past: the new city sets out to stimulate craft and creative industries. The Zürich city-planning department has developed a new, collaborative planning methodology which closely involved more than a hundred different private owners in the decisions. They formulated twelve
Zürich West Amt für Städtebau Stadt Zürich under construction, Zürich
basic principles regarding the extent of public space, the infrastructure, the scale of the buildings, the accessibility of the district and the redevelopment of the industrial heritage. These basic principles form the key themes of an urban project that is always open to new developments, investments and opportunities. The Prime Tower was constructed on the borders of Zürich West, a landmark and an important stimulus to the development of the new district. The office tower, with its glazed façades constantly changing colour, is circled by public space which connects the surrounding new and renovated buildings. The immediate environment is the site of countless new
Prime Tower Gigon Guyer Architekten 2011, Zürich
and ambitious building projects.
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Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels
Exhibition
Chief Executive Officer – Artistic Director Paul Dujardin
Building for Brussels Architecture and urban transformation in Europe 09.10 > 28.11.2010 Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels
Deputy Exhibitions Director France de Kinder Coordination BOZAR ARCHITECTURE Iwan Strauven, Marie-Cécile Guyaux Collaborators BOZAR EXPO Axelle Ancion, Joris Erven, Nicolas Bernus, Roger Van Der Meulen
Translations Dynamics Translations (FR / ENG), Anne Baudouin (ENG), Nathalie Callens (FR), Walter Provo (ENG) Brussels Timeline Sarah Levy
Initiative Brussels-Capital Region
Graphic design, Brussels Timeline Pleaseletmedesign, Brussels
Co-production Architecture Workroom Brussels, BOZAR ARCHITECTURE, A+ Revue belge d’architecture
Exhibition installation Aorta Transport Art & Exhibition Services
Collaborators BOZAR STUDIOS Lucie Moers, Vera Claessens
Curator Joachim Declerck, Architecture Workroom Brussels
Table production Kaesemans Metaalbouw
Collaborators BOZAR COM Géraldine Jonville, Bettina Saerens, Annelien Mallems, Sabine Jonckheere
Co–curator Roeland Dudal, Architecture Workroom Brussels
Exhibition printing Antwerp Digital Print Pelegrie
Project team Nathanaëlle Baës-Cantillon, Elise François, Pieterjan Gijs (Architecture Workroom Brussels)
Visitor’s guide printing Drukkerij De Cuyper
Cartography Alexandra Dierick, Simon De Waepenaere, Liselotte Vroman (Architecture Workroom Brussels); Prem Krishnamurthy, Chris Chenghuan Wu (Project Projects)
All the participating architects and photographers.
Advisory board Olivier Bastin, Jean-Didier Bergilez, Hans Ibelings, Pascale Ingelaere, Michel Jacques, Andrea Mariucci, Thierry Mercken, Michel Steens, Iwan Strauven, Anne-Sophie Walazyc Exhibition design Bureau vers plus de bien-être (V+), Brussels Graphic design Project Projects, New York Video The Office for Nonfiction Storytelling, Rotterdam Text Joeri De Bruyn – Joachim Declerck Copy editing Gracienne Benoit (FR), Joeri De Bruyn (NL), Michelle Gerard Ramahlo (ENG) Building for Brussels
Thanks to
The persons interviewed in the film: Olivier Bastin, Pierre Blondel, Kees Christiaanse, Frans De Keyzer, Vincent Feltesse, Christoph Gantenbein, Daniel Hilfiker, Cathy Macharis, Cornelia MattielloSchwaller, Shelley Mc Namara, José Menéndez, Benoit Moritz, Frank Schneider, Bernardo Secchi, Guido Tabellini, Benedetta Tagliabue, Paola Viganò. ADT-ATO, AATL, IBSA-BISA Jorn Bihain, Noémie Beys, Bart Canfyn, Patrick Crahay, Sabine De Vijlder, Wim Embrechts, Salomon Frausto, Ariane Herman, Annabelle Guérin, Pierre Huyghebaert, Prem Krishnamurthy, Gery Leloutre, Jean-Baptiste Levée, John S. Moerland, Paul Mouchet, Nathalie Pelegrie, Sabine Ringelheim, Curt Otto Teich, Carole Thays, Sandrine Tonnoir, Ab van der Wiel, Roel van Tour, Sergio de Vincenzo, Victor Vroegindeweij, Benjamin Wayens, Bety Waknine, Chris Cheng-huan Wu. 54
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Image credits Carabanchel © Duccio Malagamba Mirador © Rob ‘t Hart Borneo and Sporenburg © West 8 4 dwellings Seinwachterstraat © Kim Zwarts Mountain Dwellings © JDS Île Seguin Rives de Seine © Diener & Diener Architekten Eden Bio © David Boureau Chassé Park Appartementen © Gilbert Fastenaken De Rotterdam © OMA The Red Apple © Rob ‘t Hart VoltaMitte © Tonatiuh Ambrosetti Wohnhaus Schwarzpark © Ruedi Walti Università Bocconi © Università Luigi Bocconi Cinéma Sauvenière © Alain Janssens Ufo © Hans Werleman Shoppingcenter K © Griet Ollivier Les Ballets C de la B – LOD © Filip Dujardin Les Bains des Docks © Roland Halbe Elementary School Leutschenbach © Dario Pfammater Casa Da Musica © Phillipe Ruault MAXXI : National Museum of XXI century Arts © Roland Halbe Ecole d’architecture © Lacaton & Vassal Spoor Noord © Stad Antwerpen A8renA © Luk Kraamer
Hardbrücke Station © Roger Frei Car Park & Terminus Hoenheim-Nord © Roger Rothan Tramway © Cristian Désile Metro © Nigel Young Foster + Partners Metro © Luis Ferreira Alves Souterrain Tram Tunnel © Hans Werlemann Parking des Célestins © Guillaume Perret Central Park Turnhout © Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen Trinitat Park © Luis On Île de Nantes © Arnauld Duboys Fresney TID Tower / Skanderbeg Square © 51N4E Hafencity © Thomas Hampel, Elbe&Flut More London © Nigel Young Foster + Partners Campus Novartis © Novartis Forum 3 © Christian Richters Îlot St. Maurice © Hans Werleman Zürich West © Juliet Haller Stadt Zürich Prime Tower © Gigon Guyer Architekten
Hôtel Industriel Berlier © Georges Fessy Ferronnerie Dynamo © Dominique Marc Wehrli Santa Caterina Market © Roland Halbe Im Viadukt © Ralph Hutt De Meelfabriek © Atelier Peter Zumthor & Partner
Building for Brussels
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Notes
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Alexandre Chemetoff
A+
© arnauld duboys fresney
belgisch tijdschrift voor architectuur revue belge d’architecture
Architecture Workroom Brussels
the forecourt of the naves seen from the quai de la fosse île de nantes, september 2008
lezing | conférence | lecture
15.11.2010 – 19:00 in het frans | en français | in french inkom | entrée | ticket 8 eur / 5 eur (red. –26/60+)
Peter Zumthor
A+
belgisch tijdschrift voor architectuur revue belge d’architecture
Architecture Workroom Brussels
lezing | conférence | lecture
29.11.2010 – 19:00 in het engels | en anglais | in english inkom | entrée | ticket 8 eur / 5 eur (red. –26/60+)
In the context of the Belgian Presidency of the European Union.
Building for Brussels
Architecture and Urban Transformation in Europe