The city of the future is on display in Hasselt
Composite Presence proves it is time to revalue Flemish architecture
When it comes to architecture, we are—in good Belgian fashion—often our own worst critics. Internationally, however, we score better than we realise. This was proven by the success of Composite Presence at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The agency Bovenbouw Architectuur showed a fictitious city there, composed of 50 recent Flemish and Brussels projects. The expo is now flying over to Z33 in Hasselt, where the impressive model is being meticulously rebuilt.
It is bon ton, even among architects, to berate our ribbon development and thoughtless urban planning. Renaat Braem’s 1968 modernist pamphlet The ugliest country in the world is still eagerly quoted, and photo projects such as Ugly Belgian houses make us both laugh and cringe. Yet the mix of styles here creates a layered cityscape that you will not easily find anywhere else in the world, and what’s more, the difficult context is a breeding ground for creativity.
Dirk Somers of Bovenbouw Architectuur, curator of the exhibition (commissioned by the Flanders Architecture Institute), explains why. “If you walk around the Netherlands, you see a logical relation between the depth and width of each building block. Many projects in our region end up on plots that are absurdly deep or wide, or you have to put a three-storey house right next to a high-rise building. The selections we made for Venice are 50 buildings that recover these difficult conditions as a strength.” In short: these are projects where urban planning problems fuelled creativity.
The central question at the Biennale was ‘How will we live together?’. Composite Presence reinterpreted that question as ‘How can we design our cities together?’. That will always be a matter of negotiating with what is already there, because after all, we never start from a blank slate. It is a process in which the Flemish Government Architect plays an important role today. When architects come up with new buildings, it is crucial that they land harmoniously in their surroundings.
This exhibition makes the process concrete. Even though the 50 buildings are far apart in reality, they come together here in a new puzzle, a fantasy—or with the beautiful Italian word, a capriccio. The scenography is on a human scale: as a visitor, you walk between the buildings, you can look through the windows, you can see how meticulously the model builders worked to build this ideal city.
