BirthME, Doulas

Models, drawings and perspectives are will populate the antechambers of the Centre for Fine Arts as individual objects, together with works of art that are related to the spirit and language of OFFICE. The new structure, placed along the entire length of the house, mirrors the existing pitch roof and thereby extends the existing pavilion with a new external gallery linking the seven rooms together.
Its centripetal form collects a set of particular rooms that are easily accessible through the central space, which functions as storage. Each of them was dedicated to specific mediums such as plans, sections, models, perspectives, 1:1, and photographs. We see it as a place where city, collection and public can be interwoven; a shared space where artists and public can be active participants and not just passive exposants or consumers.This building, commissioned by the Provincial Development Company of West-Flanders, will provide rentable working and production spaces for four young companies in various fields of work. The roof functions as a shelter, and forms the perimeter of the inhabited surface. Today, the project “Kanal Pompidou” intends to resuscitate its importance and give it back its status of “city in the city”, as it was intended by André Citroën in the 30s. The cremators are located under the highest point of the building. The wrap is an inside-out glass façade, showing only the smooth, bronze-like mirror glass to its interior. Viewed from above, however, the sculptural beam game of the structure is visible: an ‘eye’ on the world.Competition, 1st prize. Its double-height floors allow passersby an extended view through the building and into the back garden. The floor of both the existing pavilion and the new ‘garden’ is covered with a layer of confetti. Its thick double walls—two load-bearing layers of standard brick, painted white—carry a concrete platform that forms the base for the inside house. Since the scenery is so impressive, we felt architecture should be invisible, merely emphasising the natural qualities of the surroundings.
It serves an institution in transition, on its way to become a metropolitan art center. It allows for the landscape to continue around the building and is accessible from all sides. The three gardens have varying degrees of public accessibility, each creating a dialogue with specific urban contexts and their users. Symmetrical and loose, it presents a compact way to inhabit this beautiful stretch of nature. Invited competition, 1st prize. The new bookshop aimed to become an important part of the identity of the future Palais de Tokyo, while also being a strong character and destination in itself. They have a band like organisation, with an increased level of accessibility towards the main square, and a logistic face towards its back. A continuous north-oriented glasshouse facade brings light until deep into the ateliers, mirroring the open backside of the building. A system of vertically sliding, perforated panels allows for the cupboards to be closed off, protecting the collection during lectures and other events, while keeping them visually present.Invited competition, 1st prize. The remaining space between the footprint of the buildings and the lot lines becomes a whimsical garden, as a complement to their regularity.Winner of the Belgian prize for Architecture & Energy 2013, non-residential categoryKortrijk XPO is a typical exposition complex: a multifarious collection of similar halls, corridors connecting them to one another and snippets of vegetation. OFFICE’s proposal, in collaboration with Christ & Gantenbein, answers this by inserting two new pertinent volumes — one a stacked series of galleries, the other a silo as a container of the archives and library — in the existing complex. In our projects we try to counter this by making direct and precise spatial proposals, formal compositions without rhetoric. Wooden bookshelf units of 2x4m, lacquered in a bright yellow colour, are simply inserted into the existing space. The volumes are created by defining an inner glass perimeter, thus creating various sets of thresholds that allow the different levels of publicness of the complex its particular place. The round base, containing studios and public functions, places itself at the southern corner of the building site. The representative façade on the street side, completely of glass, displays the organisation’s operations like a billboard in a giant concrete cabinet. The column rhythm defines plan and sequence: a set of spaces which are not functionally defined.

The glazed surfaces suspended between them can completely slide open to connect the living space directly to the landscape around it. The new house is organized as a perspectival sequence of four equal rooms, thus providing a sequence of similar spaces whose infill is always different. Under the tower, a large outdoor space opens towards the street anew, defining a new public interface for the complex: a room for Yale Union.The Citroën showroom and workshop form an urban island which dominates the north of the ring road adjacent to the canal in Brussels (BE). On each side of these two rooms one finds a garden room. The combined plan has a certain complexity without giving up a simple organisational structure.

The Master plan for this area comprises of several interventions, re-instating the existing park as a ‘Central Park’ for Turnhout. Photovoltaic panels will provide thermic and electrical energy, which will be stocked in buffer tanks. They are arranged around a concrete cross. Now dedicated to welcome Parisians, the caserne must become a porous place in the city. In this way the Cité de Réfuge reflects the powerlessness to achieve solutions to the problems occurring on this border.