The project for the Citroën cultural center is part of a complex political and cultural context, at the Brussels level, but also at the Belgian and European level. It will indeed be one of the last modern art museums to see the day in a capital of the continent. The exceptional site requires a delicate heritage approach while the ambitious program pushes to a certain form of radicalism. Faced with historicity more complex than it seems of such a construction, drastic but reasoned choices were made in order to harmoniously dialogue the first built entities dating from 1933, the many additions of the various eras and a contemporary project.

Our project is organized around three entities: the Showroom, the Workshops and the Monolith, a new building. The showroom is a showroom again, now cultural and social, but especially alive thanks to the preservation of a carefully selected part of the metal structures and concrete slabs that encumbered it. The Workshops remain spatially almost unchanged and host the architectural center and a covered public area on the first floor. The monolith, blind and massive, seems delicately placed on the workshops, transparent and light. It houses four monumental exhibition slabs of 108 meters by 22 and becomes, canal side, the new symbol of a cultural center looking to the future.

The attitude towards the new elements is similar to the heritage approach and is based on a critical reading of the building's history. The new construction takes the codes of the existing and distracts them to enhance the latter. The Citroën cultural center must be a strong urban signal, affirmed but at the same time, we think, draw it as an absolute architectural abstraction. A desire to bring the museum into the twenty-first century through a subtle blend of social and cultural, past and present, the drawn and the improvised, the icon and its disappearance, the reality and the abstraction.

Client : Société Aménagement Urbain - S.A de droit public

Team : Lhoas & Lhoas Architectes, O&O Baukunst, TSAM – EPFL (Heritage), Museum Marta Herford (Museology), FSWLA (Landscape Architecture), UTIL (Stability), MK Engineering (HVAC, PEB), Transsolar (Bioclimatism), Widnell Europe (Quantity surveyor), Goldfire (Fire safety), ATS (Acoustic), Securisan (Health & Safety), Filippo Bolognese (Renders)

" o v project, conceived by Olivier Vrankenne, is located in uptown Brussels. Its ambition is to create 'projects in a room' that the Brussels-based architecture firm Lhoas and Lhoas has been invited to design a unique space.

Our main objective is to confront various disciplines and artistic languages in a shared environment to generate a sense of curiosity and critical thinking. OV aims to create interactions and previously unseen connections between different artistic fields, based on mutual dialogues beyond traditional art histories. With flexibility at the heart of its programming, OV will be simultaneously launching its off-site hors les murs projects."

The project, situated on one of the angles of Flagey square, heart of Ixelles, is the renovation of the ground floor of the building extending the emblematic « Maison de la Radio ». If you can't, from the first look, see major differences between the iconic boat-shaped building built in the 30's and its little brother born in the 60's, then you notice some variations in the façades and in materials quality.

The edifice structure is composed of concrete posts and beams on which lie slabs made with the same material. Façades are made of bricks. Windows are single glazing with very thin aluminium frames. Interior partitions are lightweight and prefabricated. Everything in this building which is now sheltering an architecture school since 1980 seems to have been conceived with a particular attention for efficiency, economy and modularity.
Trying to give a proper façade, like the one it stands by, is one of the main focus of the project. Windows are prismatic and the front door bends, as a way to aspirate the square. The new cafeteria is placed in the corner of the building, directly in contact with the public space it aspires to be animated by.

A new shed-like roof, major feature of the project, covers the large central space leaning on the impressive existent concrete structure. This space will be an auditorium for the school as well as for various manifestations organized by the town.

In order to keep costs low and to respect the building's soul, the concrete structure is left apparent and enhanced by the organic character of the new lightweight partitions marking off different rooms which need to be closed. The continuous space flowing between this rooms links both outdoor areas on which the project opens, Flagey square on one side, the courtyard on the other, and allows the building to breath again.

Following a well-established dynamic of curatoring arts & design exhibitions, the Atomium has took a step further by investing a space of 5000m², 100 meters far from the symbol of the 1958 Universal Exposition.

The starting point of the project was the acquisition of the Plasticarium, an unique collection of plastic objects, more than 1200, from 1960 to 2000, accumulated by Philippe Decelle. This exhibition will be exposed permanently, with a turnover, beside temporary exhibitions. The general organization has been thinking around these two spaces, working both together and autonomously, in a larger program with conference space, educational space, offices, shop and cafetaria.

The whole space aims to be a new strong place dedicated to arts & design, in Brussels, but also nationaly and internationaly.

The Mediathèque is now the "Point Culture".

The development of new spaces of Point Culture at Liege and Brussels project questions the new modes and activities proposed by a structure : providing flexible, open spaces and mixing different types of people all while keeping the origin of a Médiathèque; cultural informations learned by different means.

Pictures by Charlotte Delval from Visuelles

"www.pointculture.be":http://pointculture.be/