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

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

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

reconversion of an old classroom (in current residential context) to a living space and archive for the work of artist Jef Verheyen... 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

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 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 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

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

On top of a polished concrete base raised slightly off the ground, a light, gleaming, green-painted steel construction unfolds to form a shelter to protect delicate works of art. The diagonal lines of passage through this new pavilion interweave Middelheim Park with the Hortifloria Garden, a recent extension of this well-known Antwerp sculpture park. Four vertical recesses provide the entrances to the pavilion, divide the space into four and... 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

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

Rubens Square is a triangular square with a large opening towards the sea. Two long benches oriented parallel to the water are bordered by a wall of tempered glass which acts as protection from the wind. It is a particularly social place where elderly people often watch children play. The square’s tiles have a mosaic-like pattern with maritime tones that refer to the nearby sea. Blues, grey-greens and whites are interwoven like an abstract... 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

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

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 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

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