The Bourse in Brussels has just reopened its doors, exchanging its status as an urban fortress for that of a genuine public building, given back to the citizen. In doing so, it envisions a highly accessible, vibrant, and diversified future.  The initial request from the international competition was for an ambitious redevelopment of the monument – to improve its accessibility with respect to the pedestrian zone and the Grand Place... Read more

Situated at the head of Spoor Noord, the hospital is a hinge between the park, the docks and the city, and thus benefits from each of their qualities. The limited surface area of the site requires the hospital to be organised vertically. The hospital structure has a clearly discernible layered construction. All outpatient activities with consultation rooms, centres of knowledge and medical technical services are in the lowest section. The various... Read more

The De Konincksite project is located on the border of Antwerp and Berchem, on the edge of Albert Park. Around the existing city brewery, this area is developing into a fordable 'crafts area' (with a lively programme of small shops) and a residential superstructure (with a hotel and flats).Originally, the adjoining plot with the city brewery (the 'mother site' as it were) was criss-crossed by alleyways and squares. The present design aims to... Read more

Robbrecht en Daem architecten, together with Osar architects, has won the design competition for the Jessa Hospital in Hasselt, Belgium. The design is driven by a renewed search for the human scale of the hospital. In this search a contradictory question arises: how can a hospital with an immense surface area (135,000 m2) achieve the necessary small scale and humanity through its architecture? The response is not to put 'the patient' at its... Read more

‘No space, architecturally, is a space unless it has natural light.’ - Louis Kahn On a site on the Garenmarkt, next to the Groeningemuseum, a new exhibition hall will be erected by the end of 2024 that will house two museum spaces and opens out onto a new park. The exhibition areas will be constructed at a raised level and will be separated from each other by a public passageway (Scala Grande), so that an open, transparent and freely... Read more

Clad in a crystalline skin of structured glass and brass-coloured anodized aluminium frames, this park building is embedded in the variable topography of its site, with each side responding to a different context. Whereas the long facade addresses the longitude of the park and the frontality of the ‘Ereperk der Gefusilleerden’, a military cemetery for both World Wars, the northern volume anchors the building in the urban fabric... Read more

With the Bozar Café, Robbrecht en Daem architecten aimed to create a world in all modesty, a kind of microcosm or universe. To give the visitor an experience. A returning aspect in the interiors of the café, the book shop and the box office are the 'circles' - like the form of chandeliers and mirrors - that generate a 'kind of planetarium with sunsets and sunrises'. The choice of materials, such as the dark green granite and leather benches,... Read more

In the new clubhouse for the Winge Golf and Country Club, the relationship between inside and outside is crucial, as is the merging of the functional and the scenic. The white building envelops the entire environment, like a warm white blanket over the gently sloping terrain. Two separate building volumes are connected by a continuously sloping concrete roof, accommodating all practical functions such as tee-off and practice rooms on the one hand... Read more

Mobile radio studio that was designed for the radio programme Pompidou and set up in various places in Brussels during the Klara Festival of 2014. The studio consists of four triptychs, a table and a projection standard. Due to the flexibility of the screens, the intimacy of the space and the program is determined. The design is supposed to stimulate a conversation that happens between a few people but can be heard by thousands who do not know... Read more

In the summer of 2013 Robbrecht en Daem architecten realizes a temporary pavilion based on a competition design by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930. The design, a clubhouse for a golf course in the gently rolling countryside around the former industrial city of Krefeld, Germany, was never built at the time it was designed. Christiane Lange, art historian and curator for ProjektMIK, invited Robbrecht en Daem architecten to design an objet d'... Read more

Following two demolition campaigns for a world exhibition in 1913 and an administrative centre never built in the 60s, Ghent’s historic heart degenerated for decades into a desolate parking lot in between a suite of three adjoining Gothic towers. In two consecutive competitions between 1996 and 2005, Robbrecht en Daem architecten and Marie-José Van Hee architects proposed their own programme, countering the initial competition requirement.... Read more

The Greenwich café is an iconic Grand Café in the centre of Brussels. Following discussions with the Royal Commission of Monuments and Landscapes of the District of Brussels, a Building Permit was obtained for the restoration of this listed building which was placed on the List of Buildings of Remarkable Architectural Heritage in 2000.The ground floor façade, the stained glass cupola above the Winter Garden, and the remarkable interiors of the... Read more

In the best museums and galleries one finds one's way through a series of rooms, where the artefacts are carefully lit and set off by calm backgrounds. A degree of repetition helps navigation, some variation helps orientation.The proposals for the Whitechapel Art Gallery are bold in their restraint (someone commented: 'where’s the architecture?') and seize a simple but powerful opportunity: lower and upper floors are configured as circuits of... Read more

The Aue pavilions were temporarily built for the hundred days of Documenta IX in Kassel and formed one of the components housing the contemporary art exhibitions. Visited by six hundred thousand people, the pavilions showcased the work of twenty-eight artists. The Building was situated in the extensive baroque park of Friedrichs' Aue's. This park lies sixteen metres below the nearby Friedrichsplatz from where one could look down on the pavilions... Read more