In several recent urban renewal projects the stage is shared by good architecture, not in a supporting role, but making a major contribution to the success of the project. This is illustrated by the example of the restoration and reorientation of the ‘s Hertogenmolens in Aarschot.

noArchitects’ approach to the restoration is very closely linked to the critical, context-sensitive vision that Robbrecht and Daem generated in their urban design. In the plan for the ‘s Hertogenmolens, the architects deliberately keep well away from the reconstruction of a romanticised ideal image to which the restoration of monuments for new catering purposes frequently leads.

With a few telling interventions, they transposed the rich and eventful history of the mills to the present day. The collapsed facades of the mill houses on the south and north banks were reconstructed, including the stepped gable of the south wing, but this was done using contemporary materials. The south wing, which at the time was temporarily closed off with plywood and which decades of weathering had given the appearance of a parchment skin curling up at the edges, expressed a poetic transience that the architects did not want to lose. The thin façade sheeting in Corten steel, with which the south mill house was newly clad, keeps this memory alive. The vertical seams that mark the various stages of building and conversion are not smoothed over, but are actually emphasised.

The meticulous restoration of the impressive oak roof structure reinstated the recognisable eclectic silhouette of the façade, marked by the various stages of building and rebuilding.

Inside, the unusual, and at the same time pragmatic, history of the mills is continued by the introduction of a basic set of very varied and agreeable rooms that can be used for many purposes. Here too, simplicity and roughness guard the interior against ‘designerism’ and generic memory.

This text is based on an article by André Loeckx en Els Vervloesem, published in Architecture Review Flanders N°10. Radical Commonplaces. European Architectures from Flanders.