On 20 September 2024, arts centre Bozar hosted “Bartók in Space and Time,” a concert in which Robbrecht en Daem architecten mirrored the music of Béla Bartók in space. Conductor Gábor Káli and Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen performed Bartók's “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta” (1937), while that composition also showed itself spatially in five objects floating above the audience and orchestra. For this, Robbrecht en Daem went to... Read more

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

After an earlier intervention in the artist's studio and scenographies for his work in Initiatief 86, Documenta IX and De Dingen Die Ik Zie, Robbrecht en Daem architecten were also responsible for the scenography of the middle space of Raoul De Keyser's first posthumous retrospective. This central room became a kaleidoscopic space, a pentagonal form with different sides.... 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

The open landscape of the IJzerbroeken, which surrounds the site of the Knokkebrug, inspires passers-by to dream of a higher outlook from which to view the area. The realisation of a watchtower on this spot is an excellent opportunity to expose the strength of the site. The Friendly Tower is a strong, autonomous, pentagonal figure that provides insight from a height into the historical, geometric figures of the environment, to which the... 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

‘Route N16 – Public Places for Private Experience’ is an exhibition and a pragmatic study that explores the limits and potentialities of public space along the N16. The regional N16 road crosses what we can safely call the heart of the Flemish urban sprawl. Four communes, Bornem, Puurs, Willebroek and Mechelen, all located in the province of Antwerp, are connected by the N16. This road winds through an area that is almost exemplary for... 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

Raoul De Keyser’s oeuvre is permeated by an original, internal and inherently spatial constellation. De Keyser’s paintings do not fit within the Renaissance idiom of a window upon an illusory perspective. The paintings shift, glide, oscillate, overlap and, at times, they also fall. Even when they do in fact suggest an architectonic space, a cabinet for example, there is a certain spatial friction. It is precisely this extremely controlled... Read more

The Zwin plain is a border-crossing natural reserve located at the North Sea Coast. Robbrecht en Daem architecten were invited for an Open Competition to provide this natural reserve with new visitors’ facilities. The proposed visitor center comprised of a ticket office, museum shop, auditorium, restaurant, exhibition pavilion and observation pavilions, alongside viewing platforms, vehicle parking and a farm for the maintenance of the estate... Read more

Two new projection halls for the internationally acclaimed Royal Belgian Film Archives have been installed into the excavated volume under Victor Horta’s Centre for Fine Arts. This intervention has made it possible for the ‘Salles des Arts Décoratifs’ to be restored, as defined in the master plan for the restoration of the building. Cinematek’s prominent collection of historical film apparatus is displayed in a Wunderkammer, a free... Read more

The High Views are two observation towers along a cycling route between Lincoln and Boston, 60 km apart. They mark a place to rest on the banks of the River Witham where one can look out over a landscape that is very varied in its use. The design of the towers is in part based on the churches of the two towns. The meandering vault of Lincoln Cathedral inspired the observation tower in Boston. The stubby parish church of Boston gave rise to the... Read more

Robbrecht en Daem was commissioned by Christiane Lange to design the exhibition of the furnishings and interior spaces that Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich had designed for Haus Lange, a building designed by Mies van der Rohe himself. The exhibition was held in the place where only recently this furniture was used on a daily basis. The house has since been converted into a museum and the architecture of Mies van der Rohe has become an object on... Read more

The dovecote in the forestry area in Dorst stands in a clearing in the wood, next to a stream in which it is reflected. The way the stones are stacked leaves edges and angles on which the birds can sit. There are occasional gaps too, where a stone has been left out so that the birds can get inside to sit on bars. The dovecote is built in blocks of Pietra di Vicenza, a calcareous sandstone from Italy.... Read more

This garden house with swimming pool is a two-storey wooden structure with an irregular floor plan. The load-bear­ing wooden beams form a pattern of adjoining triangles. A sculptural hearth element runs up through the volume as a solid supporting pillar. On the ground floor there are changing rooms, a sauna and a hammam, and upstairs a flat with kitchen. The roof is fitted out as a terrace amidst the treetops.... Read more

A wooden walkway, which descends from a platform to the small valley behind a villa in southern Flanders, leads to the Woodland Cabin, a distant relative of the igloo and the small buildings one comes across in the mountains everywhere in the world. On a platform next to a pond, wooden blocks have been stacked to form a two-lobed space that is closed off with a glass wall and door. Beams that fan out support a green roof from which emerges the... Read more

The design of the locomotive depot for the collectors Hauser & Wirth is the result of Robbrecht en Daem’s longterm association with artists and artworks. The Lokremise, or Lok depot, was not initially conceived as a museum, but as a collection display. The architecture was imagined in relation to the artworks. From the start, therefore, Paul McCarthy’s toppled studio, known as “The Box”, was included in the project and the architecture was... Read more

The garden pavilion in Vosselare was the first in a series of small architectural objects. In the studio of Robbrecht en Daem, these small structures give rise to a reflection on their position as architects and the status of architecture as such. In connection with this project, Juan Muñoz wrote ‘Estimado Amigo’.... Read more

Scenography of an exhibition in BOZAR Brussels on Flemish Artists in Rome during the Renaissance... Read more

In 1992, on the occasion of the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Robbrecht en Daem architecten collaborated with Juan Muñoz to create a pavilion titled the House Where It Always Rains. Pavilions are structures where art and architecture come together in the heady pursuit of pure experimentation. Somewhere between a folly and a model, the pavilion is an actual space, constructed so it can be occupied and looked at; but it has no apparent purpose.... 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

A penthouse was built on top of an industrial building with an art nouveau facade. This glass pavilion forms a still-life on the roof together with the technical installations enclosed inside a grating, and Isa Genzken’s work of art Camera. The frame of the work of art emphasises the role the flat plays as an observatory overlooking the town.... Read more

Together with the work of Cristina Iglesias, René Daniëls and Philippe Van Snick, Isa Genzken’s sculptures form a basic component of the double exhibition Floor for a Sculpture, Wall for a Painting which was once described as Robbrecht en Daem’s ‘materialized manifesto’. In the gallery, two sturdy cavity walls were added to the existing architecture, as a resultof which a new corner was created. In one of the exhibitions, Van Snick... Read more

Thanks to the exhibitions Chambres d’Amis and Initiatief ’86, in the summer of 1986 Ghent was transformed into an international centre of contemporary art. For Initiatief ’86, Robbrecht en Daem created a space specifically to exhibit the work of René Heyvaert. A corridor in St.-Pietersabdij was divided into three compartments that kept their distance from the existing architecture. This spatial modification laid the foundations for the... Read more