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

On an old industrial site near the Leuven Vaartkom and the Small Beguinage, we find the Bottelarij residential site. The design for this residential site was strongly influenced by its historical neighbour, the beguinage. (A side note: a beguinage is a typical Flemish way of living where single women from the 13th century onwards lived in community yet retained their own individuality. It was a very early form of independent living for women that... Read more

In a working class neigbourhood of Ghent, against the backdrop of nearby blocks of high-rise flats, Robbrecht en Daem converted an existing timber yard into new architectural studios. The roof of the shed, built by the wood construction company De Coene in the early seventies, was partially dismantled. What used to be the work floor has become an outdoor space that accommodates an arboretum fringed with wild grasses, a swimming pool, bicycle... 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

Stokerij - the Dutch word for ‘distillery’ - Ateliers and Housing are part of the new urban development of the Dijledelta in Leuven. The Ateliers are located on the site of the former Stella Artois brewery, while the residential area is situated in between the former brewery and an old water tower.The original building of the brewery was a robust brick ruin refined with industrial art-deco details. The design for the renovation and re-... 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

The new Cera building positions itself carefully within the medieval core of Leuven, opposite the side entrance of the historic town hall and close to the Grote Markt. It constitutes the true ‘heart of the city’. Originally the site consisted of a complex conglomerate of buildings with the Hôtel d'Eynatten from 1760, a neo-Gothic wing from 1917 and a corner building in sober reconstruction architecture from 1948. In order to free up space in... Read more

The Halles aux Farines, situated on the right bank of the Garonne, was built along with the construction of the first railway lines and is centrally situated amidst a network of tracks. The former warehouse has been transformed into the municipal archives of Bordeaux, and forms the first link with the future eco-district of Bastide-Niel. The industrial history of the site acquires a new interpretation: the storerooms, where the archive boxes are... Read more

The general concept of the design focuses on the various ways of experiencing art. Three museological rooms, heart of the Udarnik project, differ regarding user experiences. Large differences of scale and light atmosphere stimulate the museological experience. The three exhibition rooms are modules that can be arranged differently, this ensures the flexibility and continuity of Udarnik: The Incubator on the groundfloor, a central hall as a free... 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

‘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

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

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

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

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 Antwerp City Archives are housed in the 20.000 m2 Sint-Felix Warehouse, an icon of historical harbour architecture in Antwerp. The project involved the construction of concrete containers on the upper six storeys, for the conservation of documents from the city’s archives. On the top floor, a new oak roof structure accommodates reading and study rooms around three large, well-lit light wells. Access from the city is via a semi-public... Read more

An extraordinary play of light is to be found in two of the former harbour warehouses that accommodate the Ka­toennatie in Antwerp. In one of them, domes in alabaster and leaded glass function as new skylights – designed by the Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias – and on top of the other is a roof of wooden slats through which sunlight slips in many layers. A new four-storey building connects the former warehouses. The ensemble of old and new... 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

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

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