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Philippe Samyn and Partners, architects and engi-
neers (or
sai
), is a private/public partnership that
was founded in Belgium in 1980 and which took
the form of a Limited Liability Company. Its areas
of expertise cover the full range of architectural
and construction engineering, including program-
ming, planning, urban planning, architecture,
interior design, building physics, structural engi-
neering and special techniques, surveying, project
budgeting, project and site management, cost
estimating and control, and safety coordination.
sai
, created and run by an engineer, is unique in the
world of Brussels architectural companies. How does
this specificity play out in the way the office functions?
D.M. (Denis Mélotte)
Philippe Samyn’s scientific training
is clearly at the heart of how the office is run, with its
basis in research and questioning. It can be summed
up in a single word: why? Put another way, the office’s
primary intellectual capital is its methodology. We
strive to approach each project with a fresh eye, based
on the explicit, stated requests of the contracting
authority, and remain in contact throughout the design
process. This dialectical way of proceeding informs
how we organise our work – any shortcomings are
questioned and provide the basis for future improve-
ments. Such quasi-scientific methodology turns the
office into a laboratory of ideas. We strongly encourage
curiosity, knowledge sharing and the acquisition of new
skills. This may seem paradoxical, but we think that
constant questioning is only fruitful in a well-ordered
and organised context, on both an individual and a
general level. As Philippe Samyn likes to say, ‘order and
cleanliness are the first fruits of beauty’. This is even
more the case for us: a strictly run organisation is the
condition sine qua non for the creation of high-quality
architectural projects.
INTERVIEW
Interview conducted by
Samantha Crunelle and Laurent Germeau