Positioned on the side and certainly not willing to interfere in Rubens’ famous lines of sight, the new reception building for the Rubenshuis - the house, studio and garden of artist Peter Paul Rubens - is a discrete extension to this historical site. Besides the reception function, it also contains a multimedia experience centre, a museum café, a reading room and the library collection of the Rubenianum, known as the world’s most extensive... Read more

The Louie Almanak is a calendar of time and space, linked by pencil. Building on the Louie number series (a numerical system that plays an important role in the work of Robbrecht en Daem architecten), the contours of time were plotted like a strict score in which the seasons move. The numerical thinking that already so often defines the lines of a design here builds up a day, a week, a month, a year.... Read more

In order to arrive at a thoughtful strategy that proves itself to be sustainable and intelligent in the long term, a master plan vision for the entire building block was first developed. The proposition of a new wing offers the opportunity to better organise the entire site, to relieve pressure from the interior block and to complement old and new in a targeted way. The ambition was therefore to increase the quality of the 'building as a whole'... Read more

For the redevelopment of the Boerentoren in Antwerp, the central question was how this tower - which previously served mainly as an office building - could optimally exude culture in the future and house the patrimony of The Phoebus Foundation. Robbrecht en Daem's design was built around the democratic idea of making art as accessible as possible. To make art and 'life' coexist.Encounters with art are far from obvious. On the completely open and... Read more

Xavier Hufkens – a leading contemporary art gallery in Europe – reopened its Sint-Jorisstraat gallery in Brussels in the summer of 2022, following a spatial reformulation of the existing flagship gallery with an important new extension by Robbrecht en Daem architecten. The project holds a special connection to the building’s history: thirty years ago, Robbrecht en Daem – in collaboration with Marie-José Van Hee architecten –... Read more

This corner building houses an exhibition and event space for Katoen Natie, combined with residential units above. The project is situated adjacent to the company headquarters. The headquarters - which consists of several former port warehouses - was previously renovated by Robbrecht en Daem architecten. The new project visually relates to it as a sort of continuation of the earlier work. The choice of a concrete façade and an aligned cornice... Read more

Park Abbey is a 12th-century heritage site that is undergoing a complete restoration by Studio Roma. For the design of the circulation within the abbey's eastern (and primarily public) wing, Studio Roma called on Robbrecht en Daem architecten. Within this design, two tower volumes with a pentagonal footprint were chosen as circulation cores. The larger tower in exposed concrete is part of the museum route, and the smaller tower in steel serves as... 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

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 extension of the Royal College of Art at Battersea is a piece of art infrastructure. Free ‘platforms’ for creation allow current and future flexibility. As a terraced extension of the street an additional collective space – ‘the Stoa’, encourages interaction between staff, students and researchers. The hybrid nature of its design makes it the focal emblematic space the whole RCA community can associate with – a new identity... 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

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

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

A dairy at the foot of the historical castle of Gaasbeek has been converted into accommodation for musicians, with a chamber music hall. The late nineteenth-century front building was transformed into the accommodation; the hall replaces the original small factory shed but adheres to its original outline. The volume is dug deep into a slope into which an open ramp has been cut which then bends over the hall and climbs upwards like a ziggurat and... Read more

A complex but recognisable setting is composed of a church, a vicarage, a glebe, a brick silo, a brewery, and above all a set of large trees. In short, an idyllic and typical Flemish landscape that somehow predates the Second World War neither touched nor spoiled. In all its aristocratic allure, the 18th-century vicarage exudes a forgotten past that poses a real challenge to all things new. The humble garden walls form a dominant role in the... Read more

The Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam is a complex amalgam of sections all built at different times. The extension by Robbrecht en Daem makes the museum into a single entity again. Green-tinted glass sheets introduce a rhythm into the façade that looks austere and elegant, but its layering also gives a hint of the complexity of the building. Inside, there is a striking link between Adrianus Van der Steur’s 1935 brick building and the... Read more

On ‘t Zand, an open urban space near the station in Bruges, Robbrecht and Daem built a concert hall for Bruges when it was the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2002. Alongside the Halletoren, the Church of Our Lady and St Salvator’s Cathedral, this ‘Concertgebouw’ has become a landmark when driving into the city. A uniform external cladding in terracotta tiles hangs like dignified drapery over the volumes of the concert hall, fly tower and... Read more

The nineteenth-century, rather dark mansion with a narrow, long city garden in the center was transformed into a contemporary light-filled residence with a pharmacy. Above the renovated pharmacy and between the volumes of the main building, a patio gives a view of the tower of the 18th-century baroque church through wall-high windows, while a skylight brings daylight into the pharmacy workspace. The patio is like a heart between the various... Read more

The building trade and the social situation in the early years of our practice were such that the majority of our commissions consisted of interventions to existing buildings or spatial redesigns of building complexes. In this way we contributed to the sum total of the building activity which - in an on-going interrelationship of action and reception produced a considerable material output at that time. We perceive that totality as primary matter... 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