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46
of the new bus terminal (designed by Solà-Morales)
and the public area at the front. At the Université Libre
de Bruxelles, the site of the Erasmus Hospital (dis-
cussed in Chapter 3) contains one of the rare Brussels
metro stations
(01-283)
whose architecture is much
more than a simple ‘box’ dreamt up by a design office
and then decorated by sculptors, painters and cerami-
cists.
1
Erasme station (described in the anthology)
is a long, narrow structure juxtaposed with elegant
metallic ‘saddles’ connected by a polyester textile roof
and facades of stainless steel wires. Anyone who fre-
quents airports knows the extent to which their spatial
organisation is generally poorly handled. Illegibility,
confusion and wasted space appear to be the common
fate of these types of buildings and their inevitable
extensions (which are sometimes carried out whenever
land can be purchased). There are, of course, excep-
tions. The old terminal at Orly is very easily navigated.
More recently, Stansted airport near London, built by
Norman Foster between 1981 and 1991, is a model
of clarity and simplicity. Philippe Samyn’s projects for
concourses at Luqa airport in Malta
(01-168)
, Ponta
Delgada airport in the Azores
(01-199)
and the project
for an extension to the airport at Deurne, built before
the war by Stanislas Jasinski
(01-406
; not included
in the anthology
)
display perfectly rational arrange-
ments. One can compare them to the many service
stations that the architect has dreamed up through the
years – projects that, given certain aspects, appear to
constitute a new degree of focus, particularly in the
landscape-like organisation of the parking areas.
In this respect, the succession of parking areas
designed for GlaxoSmithKline, the last of which elegant-
ly resolves the difficult problem of how to cover them,
bears witness to constant research. Perhaps this is one
of the reasons why the preliminary drawings for this
construction appear in the 2007 edition of Collection
d’architectures.
2
One of Philippe Samyn’s principal con-
tributions to urban planning is this clarification of circula-
tion and its integration into the territory as a whole. No
doubt constant vigilance is needed to keep spaces from
being invaded by parasitic signs, poorly designed and
ill-proportioned billboards – the often clumsy signature
of users. We are ‘only’ talking about design here, but
Venturi has clearly shown, in his famous Learning from
Las Vegas,
3
how in certain cases, architecture, urban
planning and landscape can be reduced (or magnified)
by advertising supports of all types.
1
The talent of the artists is not in question: Pierre Alechinsky,
Serge Vandercam, Rik Poot, Pierre Cordier, Paul De Gobert and Camille
De Taeye, all gave the best of themselves under deplorable conditions.
In the Brussels region, only two metro stations – Alma, designed by
Lucien Kroll (1979), and Erasme (1992) – have received a complete and
coherent architectural treatment. In both cases, it is clear that that archi-
tectural and structural ideas prevailed, although in very different ways.
2
Collection d’architectures, Brussels-Paris, a16/ Centre Wallonie-
Bruxelles, 2007.
3
Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from
Las Vegas, Cambridge,
ma
, The
mit
Press, 1977.
01-199
Ponta Delgada airport,
Azores, 1988
01-197
Renovation, restructuring
and extension of the Petrofina
research centre: bridge
and project for the reception area,
Feluy, 1988–1989