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ONLINE BRUSSELS HERITAGE - ONE-DAY SEMINAR - 11/12/2014
three days of deliberations by a jury of 18 people, including Anne Lacaton. The firm's project stood out from the others due to its close adherence to the idea of heritage identified in the study, including the symbolic value of the building which is part of the Brussels landscape (fig. 14 and 15). There was something odd about calling for its demolition while the Upside tower was rising from the ground on the other side of the canal. If high rise buildings were the way to go then either both or neither of the two should be retained. In addition, the project authors believed that to increase space, five floors needed to be added to preserve the proportions and elegance of the tower. Their project was just as radical in terms of the techniques to be used: although all of the other projects proposed very low ceiling heights, due to cladding of the structures, this project achieved a height of 2.6 m by proposing a system of solid wood flooring (requiring major work as well as negotiations with the fire service), combined with the use of visible engineering techniques to facilitate its replacement where necessary. There will be natural light in all of the hallways; seating areas on each floor; distribution of boilers and double flow systems to save on stairwells.
CONCLUSION
I wanted to share three short quotations with you. The first is from Anne Lacaton: “We have been too fast with the standards and are now paying the consequences: it's necessary to struggle to bring about the sustainable!”. The second is from Pierre Blondel: “Are we not in the process of over-complicating the simple fact of housing at the cost of an excess of embodied energy and, ultimately, consuming ever more in order to supposedly consume less?”. The third comes from Lao-Tzu, so as to finish on a positive note: “Failure is the foundation of success.” I believe that, in this sense, we are definitely heading in the right direction.
NOTE
1. Druot, Fr, Lacaton, A., Vassal, J.-Ph., PLUS - Les grands ensembles de logements. Territoires d'exception. Ed. G. Gili SL, Barcelona, 2007.
Translated from French.
92 | The Brunfaut tower. Presentation of the conceptual design challenges of a renovation
