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 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

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

The project involves the redevelopment of an inner-city block in the centre of Ghent to provide ninety residential units, some new-build and others partially housed in the protected monuments of the former Royal Academy of Fine Arts and fire station. These existing buildings flank a new semi-public interior street that serves as the backbone for the redevelopment of the entire block. The interior walkway connects with two new apartment buildings... 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

‘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 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

The volume for the State Archives, located in the city center, is meticulously matched to the scale of the surrounding buildings. The sturdy corner building respects the pattern of the street onto which it fronts, while the long horizontal volume behind adheres to the cornice height of the surrounding streets and alleys. At the end of the horizontal wing, the facade is set back from the plot boundary. This makes space available for a small public... Read more

In the redevelopment of the city centre, the restored relationship with the River Lys forms the starting point. The presence of the Lys generates an enormous quality for the city: the watercourse is the bearer of urban identity. The course of the river defines the structure of the city centre. Contact with the Lys is made possible by the construction of a mooring quay, a promenade and a square in front of the Church, located on the bend of the... 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 shopping centre at Sint-Janspoort is a more sustainable counterpart to the large shopping centres on the outskirts of towns and cities and covers a whole block in the historical city centre of Kortrijk. With its interiorised street pattern and monumental atrium – the garden of light – this shopping centre forms a diagonal link between Steenpoort and Veemarkt. The tower closes off one end of the Romeinselaan. The volumetry of the block,... Read more

Making a Masterplan for the City Zoo of Antwerp. This included a multitude of housing for animals, a central children’s pavilion, visitors facilities, an office building, an entrance square, a restaurant and a shop.... 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 conservation project for the Book Tower aims at restoring the historical site of the University Library, situated in the lively quartier Latin of Ghent, meanwhile at transforming it into a library for the 21st Century. The design unites the ambitions of the University to respectfully repair the monumental site to its original condition, but also to render it a contemporary house for a great diversity of users and for the valuable own... 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

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

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 design for the square reconciles two aspects: on the one hand the heavy traffic is dealt with by two roundabouts, one at each end, and on the other a public forecourt is laid out for the Museum of Fine Art. Several works of art have been installed on the square: recovered fragments of the Loos monument by Auguste Rodin, a bench designed by Ann Demeulemeester and a fountain by Christina Iglesias, which forms the heart of the forecourt, gives... 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 white-plastered façades of the Canal Houses have a tripartite structure reminiscent of Italian palazzi: the ground floor with its own fenestration rhythm and façade cladding is distinguished from the rest of the building; the three storeys situated above are crowned by a pronounced cornice; above this is the fourth storey together with the slightly setback penthouses. The proportioning of the entire complex, the continuous cornice and the... Read more