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a volume with a triangular base, freeing up the end of
Montois’s building. This concern with climate regulation,
which had already been proposed in earlier projects, can
be seen in the Brussimmo offices
(01-225)
, built in a
context of heavy traffic alongside the rue de la Loi and
the rue Belliard. The composition’s mixture of simplicity
and great complexity is especially marked in the semi-
cylindrical roof of this small, narrow building, and the
appearance of the pipes at the penultimate floor. The
proportions of the neighbouring buildings are relatively
constant. They are sufficiently visible in the facades of
glass and metal designed by Philippe Samyn that the
building’s radical modernity is not seen as aggressive.
This modernity is here expressed by contrast and coun-
terpoint, with technical means that are entirely Samyn’s,
particularly in the use of double facades – among the
first ever deployed in Belgium.
Solvay, the
bbl
and Brussimmo all thrust Philippe
Samyn into a context of difficult surroundings. Today,
this is where a significant portion of architectural
constraints is to be found. It is increasingly rare for
isolated works to be built in a protective landscape;
rather, one composes within the existing city or suburb.
At the corner of avenue Michel-Ange and avenue de
Cortenbergh in Brussels, with a direct view of the parc
du Cinquantenaire, Philippe Samyn designed a building
(01-260)
whose size subtly exceeds the small scale of
the North-East residential quarter to match the taller
and more monumental scale of the European quarter.
Although the projects cited above were not designed
as solitary installations, the urban context did not, in the
case of the first two projects, permit a complementary
exterior development. A limited architectural ‘projection’
could provide an answer to this problem, as long as it
does not do so to the detriment of neighbouring build-
ings. In the lucid and merciless book Belgio, published
in Milan in 1993 by Marc Dubois,
1
the
ocas
research
centre for steel applications designed in 1989
(01-223)
is named one of the fifty best Belgian creations of the
past twenty years. This serene work – along with its
extensions, which were designed in 2006 – draws its
purity from the almost invisible way it resolves the
complexities of its own structure, despite the structural
demonstration linking the passageways’ framework
of beams and the almost iconic parabola shape of the
central buildings. The building’s surroundings on an
industrial highway in Flanders are deplorable: a disparate
group of architectural objects crowded together without
any sort of cohesion or organised landscaping. This
type of situation, which occurs quite frequently in the
Western world, requires a highly autonomous construc-
tion – like the structure chosen here – that carves out
its own space in an architectural no-man’s-land, or, as
the architect was later to do with several service sta-
tions, is protected by a semi-transparent wall.
Other formulae have been used to create a structured
transitional space between the city and the construc-
tions of which it consists. In several projects, Philippe
Samyn has imagined a dialogue with the urban space
by creating deep facades, reformulating traditional sys-
tems of loggias or bow windows. This is particularly the
case with the current development for social housing
units in the rue des Minimes, in the Marolles quarter
of Brussels
(01-421)
, in the project for renovating
the Eurofer offices in Brussels
(01-405)
, in the tower
project for the Sint-Amandscollege in Kortrijk
(01-510;
in
progress
)
and in the project for the Dialogue Museum in
Louvain-la-Neuve
(01-376;
not included in the anthology
)
.
In the last two, the depth of the facades allows for the
incorporation of temporary exhibition elements in order
to enliven the urban space.
In extreme circumstances, Philippe Samyn has created
an interior world that is virtually independent of any
urban characteristics, when these are thought to be
excessive or when he sees a need to create a particular
space, designed like a Greek or Egyptian temple, in
which the passage from the public to the private sphere
is established in successive vertical layers or ‘strata’,
to use Samyn’s own vocabulary. This is particularly
the case with the Nara convention centre in Japan
(01-262)
. As for the ‘iconic’ shape of the parabola,
01-421
Foyer Bruxellois,
Brussels, 2001–2007
01-517
Ikra factory,
Nizhni Novgorod, 2006