Architecture of diversity from Brussels at the Basel Architecture Museum
Published: Friday, Oct 18th 2024, 15:40
Updated At: Friday, Oct 18th 2024, 15:40
Back to Live Feed
With its urban design based on diversity, the format for promoting building culture in Brussels could serve as a model. The exhibition "Making cities the Brussels way" at the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel aims to provide inspiration in this regard.
The model in the museum is small, but the construction and conversion project it illustrates is all the larger. A museum for contemporary art and architecture is being set up in the former Citroën factory buildings in Brussels. Care is being taken to ensure that the transparent architecture of the 40,000 square meter factory halls, built between 1929 and 1932, remains visible.
The KANAL - Centre Pompidou project is certainly a flagship project based on a principle that also exists in other cities. It is part of the urban restructuring along the canal, which was driven forward by the Brussels Bouwmeester Maître Architecte (BMA) or master builder Kristiaan Borret.
This position of the BMA plays the main role in the current exhibition "Soft Power - City Making Brussels Style", which was presented to the media on Friday. It was founded in 2009 and, as a cross between an administrative body and an independent competence center, has a decisive influence on urban design, as museum director Andreas Ruby said.
Not a pretty city
"Brussels is not a pretty, harmonious city," said Borret during the tour. But with "soft power", which precedes the actual project planning with open advance planning, influence can be exerted on the building and urban design.
The Architecture Museum highlights 15 of the projects promoted by the BMA - most of them buildings undergoing a transformation process. The flagship project of the museum building in the former car factory is an exception. Other projects, such as the redesign of the former World Trade Center, are designed to be user-friendly, for example by combining office, residential and hotel uses on different floors.
Borret and his competence center do not want an urban design that resists the diversified complexity of urban life, as he says. Rather, it is about perceiving the disharmony of the urban landscape as something exciting and positive. Museum director Ruby sees this as a model that Swiss cities could also follow.
The exhibition "Soft Power - City Making Brussels Style" at the Swiss Architecture Museum Basel runs until March 16, 2025.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic