Central

Melchior d'Hondecoeter lived in a time marked by the rise of world trade and profound cultural and social changes in the so-called Low Countries - an area roughly corresponding to contemporary Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. As a naturalist painter, Melchior was a master at depicting Dutch flora and fauna. At the time, merchant ships returning back from exotic countries brought an incredible amount of knowledge that was to have a profound influence on European society in the 17th century.

The painter was aware of the new perspectives and possibilities offered by this new knowledge. Thanks to a careful study of the physical characteristics of exotic birds, he was able to select and place some of them between the local species, producing a picture where their cohabitation seems almost natural but with a certain assumed tension.

Rather than moving from the depiction of Dutch landscapes and local animals to a general exotic trend, he developed an impressive series of paintings by trying to subtly and methodically introduce these new species into the local context. Even if they look the same at first sight, each painting is different, new birds are added, others are removed, a larger canvas is used, a small piece of architecture appears at the back of the painting...

Each painting is seen as an opportunity to bring in new elements to evolve the existing context into a more complex yet better composed picture, a subtly critical image of the world. A sensitive attitude towards our ever changing environment that we share with Melchior d'Hondecoeter.

For Cedric Price the city has evolved from a boiled egg figure to a scrambled one. A state of the city that we, as architects from Brussels, particularly appreciate. Believing that our context influences directly our discipline, we consider our approach to design, architecture, city and landscape in a scrambled manner, an interdependent whole in which each bit exists on its own.

Following Joseph Beuys, by using language, thoughts, actions and objects, human activity strives to structure and give form to society and the environment. Life could simply be seen as a Social Sculpture that everyone helps to shape on his own level. We like to think of ourselves, architects, as social sculptors among other social sculptors.

Space and matter figure, produce or give rise to inter-human and non-human relationships while forming on their own the aesthetic of a time. In that sense, we like architecture that takes shape through the relationships it creates with its social, cultural, urban and living environment, while assuming bold aesthetics influenced by a large referential field.

Each project that we develop is seen as a prototype. Not an empirical application of a universal concept or the correct application of prescribed norms, but a thorough example of the formalisation of a subject, regardless of its size, scale or importance. In that sense, each project is also a seed for other contexts as it offers itself not as the solution but as an example. Time and the multiplication of different examples refines our common approach. 

In the popular tale of the three little pigs, only the brick house survives the wolf's attack. The wooden and straw houses disappear as soon as they are built by the two other little pigs, who prefer to celebrate rather than get down to the business of building. In our opinion, it is just as essential today to integrate the perennial and solid dimension of a project as that of the temporary and replaceable. In this sense, we propose a hybrid approach to spatial, constructive and circular logic: perennial (infra)structures able to evolve through their ever changing fillings. An ambiguous architecture that shouts out its presence in time while accepting in advance its inevitable transformation.