After an open call, 30 international teams were selected to design a new building complex for the European Commission in Brussels with the offices of the Commissions, as well as childcare centres, a visitor centre, restaurants shops and public spaces with green areas.

The declared aim was to increase efficiency and reduce its environmental footprint, setting an example of sustainable construction.

The towers are cut to maximize the allowed breadth facing Loi, but their depth is also cut at 5 degrees east of the south to optimize solar exposure through the year. This results in six façade orientations.

Contradicting the brief, our proposal keeps the existing buildings of most recent construction, those on phase 2, which represent a substantial proportion of the requested surfaces.

The car park runs along Rue de la Loi, on the side of the plot, not affected by the structure of the towers. It is all underground from Loi, but is accessed at mid-level from Joseph II, providing options for sectoring, and quick flows.

Over fifty different stone and cladding varieties meet in the opaque façade, each one coming from the geological tradition of a current EU country.

The Academie MWD sits at a uniquely varied crossroads; South: the main square; North: Wolfsputten, a protected forest; West: CC Westrand, a Brutalist community centre; and East a series of quaint suburban villas.
Image and texture dematerialise the volume: the façade seems to blend into the forest.

We carefully modulate scale and form: the jagged edge of the roof mimics those of the homes across the street, growing gradually to the cantilevered auditorium at the other end, and rising up to look face to face towards the monumental volumes of CC Westrand.

The building changes dramatically as we move along the sidewalk; walking towards the forest, we see forest; walking towards the grey Westrand we see greys, whites and blue skies.

Looking straight into the façade, we see the colours of a painting by A. Hoppenbrouwers, the architect of neighbouring Westrand.

¿Cómo conseguir que un piso tradicional de infinitos pasillos y minúsculos dormitorios se convierta en un ambiente espacioso… pero sin renunciar a la intimidad de los dormitorios?

La respuesta es: jugando con los techos. Todo el techo del piso es visible desde la entrada y el salón, lo que da una perspectiva amplia y convierte toda la superficie en un generoso loft. Dentro de este espacio aparecen unos muebles de madera cálida que protegen los dormitorios, estos con su propio techo a una altura más acorde con sus dimensiones. Dentro de los dormitorios, las proporciones son cómodas, y su blancura refuerza la luminosidad de las ventanas que protagonizan el espacio.

An energy producing park, built with recycled materials. Park activities, cycle and pedestrian lanes coexist in harmony with yards for storage and the management of construction material.

The park around the building is also built with a very controlled budget, and its features are productive systems, rather than an expense.

The city's road work department material storage integrates with pedestrian and cycling routes. It is part of a European Interreg MP4 project: Making Places Profitable.

Water harvesting in two steps: the roof provides clean water for all the toilets, the workshops, and the vehicle cleaning point.

An old Madrid apartment becomes a place to live and work. The large available area is treated as a country plot, building a small house with a garden at one end, and leaving the rest as labor fields.

The house-shelter is built with lightweight and cheap materials, forming boxes that are stacked, juxtaposed or doubled, so that their interiors can be used according to precise functions.

In the fields of labor, the most subjective operation is carried out: the discovery of the landscape.

Scraping, smoothing, puffing, discovering episodes, traces, wounds, that appear before us in the distance. Distance of time: hand-painted papers a century and a half ago, overlays of different tastes, fashions, traces of different uses and ways of life. Distance in space: if we sit at a point in this open space, we have before us a panorama of episodes that invite us to approach. We get up called by a point of undefined colours, we want to see what it is, to feel its texture, its smell, to lose ourselves in its silhouettes. A sutured wound, a meeting between two times, a Pompeian red surrounded by a random mixture of vegetal, symbolic and geometric decorations. But, little by little, even the mouldy glue of the burlap was gaining our respect.

RMdP is the first C2C (Cradle to Cradle) building in France. A regenerator of a former factory, it is an economic, cultural and environmental activator.

The MdP (House of the Project) hosts meetings, exhibitions, calls for tender, as needed to reactivate the 1.000 Ha area into the circular economy.

It is also improving soil and air conditions, eating up the chemicals left over from former industrial activity.

There were no earthworks, using driven piles that may be recovered; the structure and façades are designed for disassembly and reuse.

Materials are biodegradable or recyclable, with zero harmful chemicals

Sanitation generates nutrients, with the chimneys of three dry toilets as a main feature of the façade.

Landscaping cleans the soil; the building feeds on clean energies, with controlled solar exposure and the principle of the thermal onion.

Technology reuse is easy, the designers call it “superfurniture”: mobile equipment units to provide a specific function to any space.

The building was conceived as a "place for meeting" by brutalist architect Alfons Hoppenbrouwers (1930-2001). The task now was to challenge the very concept of a cultural centre to the digital age, reorganize the spatial arrangement according to the renewed functions, update the technical elements for modern comfort, and at the same time re-introduce colour and life as originally intended by the respected Flemish architect.

In the master plan we can distinguish three parts: technical, creative and organizational. These parts are in mutual relation with each other, so that different parts of the plan can be executed over time in a coherent way, regardless of the order.

In this set-up also small ideas are important and can find support within the framework of the bigger master plan, in order not to be left aside.

Besides, the bigger scale cannot be forgotten: integration of greenery, parking area and landscape are described as well, all with the same coherence.

The master plan that we propose is definitely not a standard architectural plan that has been made up just by architects. On the contrary, it is the result of many workshops with local experts, Dilbekenaars, users of the building, staff, municipality...

The starting point for the project is an uncompromising in-situ reciclage of the existing industrial building, including foundations, bearing structure, outer skin, waterproofing, services installations and equipment, electric power station, heating plant, water ducts, fire hoses, drainage and even parking space, fencing and accesses. This approach may be defined as upcycling.

We chose basic materials, either recycled from waste, or very light and simple materials, or plain raw materials with only basic production procedures. We then give them a twist, applying our “joyful recycling” principle.

The floor is the existing concrete surface, lightly polished. The marks and lines that were used for the placement of coca-cola pallets remain in their place, adding depth and life to the large surface.
On the outside, it is a non-building. We cover the red panelling of the former coca-cola offices with a printed vegetation screen, to optimise solar exposure in winter and summer, but also signifying the change towards a friendly attitude and a caring management of the environment

The ground floor has an active program that offers pedestrians in transit a reading of its interior, which translates into an invitation to various levels of access.

The windows multiply the contact with the outside. Its depth in space increases the amount of information that can be displayed, allowing the random passer-by to occupy an intermediate place. They facilitate the transition between the free public space and the interior space for cultural exchange. In the other sense, the windows expand the activity, making the passers-by feel momentarily part of the event.

Between shelves full of books we suddenly come across stands where we can relax for a moment while charging the mobile or having a coffee from a machine. We propose corners, places of passage where to sit until class starts, steps from which to look, and maybe say hello; meet, talk.

Velvet curtains can block light when needed, work acoustically, and at the same time give this space a theatrical character. The decision to surround the auditorium with curtains, help us manage its size, give privacy to the bathrooms, hide screens, integrate the interpreter booth, camouflage the warehouse doors …

The stage has a door that leads to the library. The library can function as a backstage. The library window stand can function as a Green room before the concert, the musicians can practice in front of passersby, announcing their recital.

The configuration of the facade is used to create reading spaces around the windows, and storage space for books in the opaque parts. A continuous element is created along the facade that varies its shape according to a specific use, reading or storage.

The teaching system used by the teaching staff of the Cervantes Institute benefits from a circle arrangement of the students, with a free space in the center to organize conversation subgroups. We propose to mark the circle in the classrooms with an element of simple construction that also works acoustically due to its recycled felt overlay.

The brief required flexible workspace for a creative agency, mutable into an events area, turning into a school of design for certain months in the year, or a place to have fun - with a very limited budget. We needed a simple and light way to transform spatial arrangements.

The agency uses honeycomb cardboard panels made from recycled paper for their presentations. We decided to use them as mobile walls, covered with a felt made from recycled plastic bottles (PET), which is sound absorbing, light, inexpensive, and good for pinning presentations on. Other panels are lined with magnetic blackboard, whiteboard, void calendars, or printed with the presentations themselves.

Two sets of rails define the potential spaces. The bottom rail is the duct for all the service cables, and the back of each panel is attached to it with a magnet. The panel is actually hanging from the top rail, which is painted in a stark colour.