Award-winning architecture: an apartment building in Brussels offers spacious social housing with an open floor plan and a sophisticated access system. The project is part of the Contrat de Quartier Durable, a project cycle initiated by the City of Brussels in the form of urban acupuncture, which moves through various low-income neighborhoods and aims to strengthen their social ties. From a wide boulevard in the north of Brussels […]
Award-winning architecture: an apartment building in Brussels offers spacious social housing with an open floor plan and a sophisticated access system. The project is part of the Contrat de Quartier Durable, a project cycle initiated by the City of Brussels in the form of urban acupuncture, which moves through various low-income neighborhoods and aims to strengthen their social ties.
From a wide boulevard in the northern Brussels district of Schaerbeek, I look up at a white brick building. The building is located at the corner of a triangular block of streets, the top of which encloses it like two hands. On one side, along Rue François-Joseph Navez towards Brussels North Station, there are abandoned warehouses. The sidewalks are empty. On the other side, the stately green boulevard Lambermont winds its way southeast into the more affluent parts of the city. This stark contrast is bridged by the white brick building that seems to connect these two different worlds.
I look up. Directly above me flies an airplane that is just leaving Zaventem airport. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon and I still have a little time before my appointment with one of MS-A’s partners. They designed the building I’m standing in front of.
I walk around the block for a while and look at it from different angles. It is angular, with sloping edges carved out of an urban “prima materia”. This gives it a completely different appearance depending on where you stand.
I walk north along Boulevard Lambermont over the railroad tracks, stop, turn around and walk back. From this perspective, at the end of the street axis of the wide boulevard, the building looks like a large empty sign with a bend in the middle. In the background, you can see Jules Wabbes’ high-rise tower, which seems to echo the white concave fold of the brick building. Viewed from the side, it looks almost figurative, like a creature standing on a sloping leg and raising its head.
If you look at the building from further south, its white mass stands out between the façade lines along Boulevard Lambermont and Rue François-Joseph Navez. The arrangement of the windows reflects the rhythm and dimensions of the openings in the neighboring buildings along the street. From further away, it appears like a very thick book that is almost, but not quite, closed. The windows and balconies fill the resulting gap along the south side.
Due to its characteristic shape and quasi-anthropomorphic character, a symbolic nickname seems entirely appropriate to me. When you look at it, you keep thinking that it looks like something. But it’s hard to say exactly what – a kind of mixture of billboard, fortress tower and sphinx. The architects simply call it a “passive house on the Navez”.
In the midst of these considerations, I notice a man in black jeans and a black polo shirt. I immediately assume that he is an architect. He walks quickly towards the building. I get up from the bench, walk towards him and introduce myself. We shake hands. It’s Jean-Marc Simon, one of the three directors of MS-A. He is friendly and I like him immediately.
He rings the bell at the front door. A woman answers. Simon explains that he is the architect of the building and would like to have a look around. The voice on the intercom sounds enthusiastic. The lock buzzes, Simon opens the door and we go inside. The entrance hall is located below the raised structure. There is something unceremonious about it, as if you were entering under a raised curtain. Once there, Simon explains that MS-A was able to convince the city to approve the extension of the cantilevered building volume beyond the property boundary.
Spacious apartments
“You carried out this project in collaboration with V+ Architects?” I ask him.
“We did two competitions together. The other competition was an urban planning study for the redevelopment of prisons in other parts of the Brussels region. We used their portfolio for the competition in Navez, as we had never built a project before.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Up to that point, we had only done urban planning projects. We won both competitions with V+. That was the first design project we were commissioned with. Since then, we have implemented other projects.”
“Not bad for a start!”
We walk up the stairs to the second floor, where a door to one of the apartments has been left open. Simon knocks, introduces himself to a man in a white T-shirt and points to me, the journalist. We are led into a spacious living room. Another man in his fifties is sitting at a dining table in front of a bottle of rosé. He is wearing a suit, his tie loosened, grinning and nodding politely. The warm smell of spices wafts into the middle of the room. We walk around a core into the kitchen, which is open to the living room. There we are greeted by a middle-aged woman in a lime-colored Congolese dress. A girl carrying a small child in her arms stands in front of a television on the other side of the living room. She gives us a shy look.
“How do you like the building?” I ask the man in the white T-shirt.
“I really like it, but there’s a problem with the vibrations.”
“What vibrations?”
“From the train tracks.”
Simon walks with the man along a corridor that leads in the opposite direction from the front door. The tenant eagerly describes a problem with the toilet flushing. I follow them. A window cuts a large hole in the left wall of the corridor and opens onto Lambermont, this side of the railroad tracks. I realize it’s one of the larger panes of glass you see from the outside, which I thought was in the common stairwell. (…)
You can find the complete article about the award-winning project in Brussels in our current Baumeister issue 10/2019.
