Frans Masereel Centrum

LIST's new pavilion building ‘enters into dialogue’ with the existing building designed by Lou Jansen (1935-2019). The Frans Masereel Centre is a hub for graphic designers and artists who are intent upon working with gravure, relief and screen printing as well as lithography. The centre accommodates workspaces and residences, but the new pavilion adds studios, an archive, workshops and a new exhibition space to its programme. The new pavilion is not intended to praise or criticise the existing building. It primarily tries to introduce complementary links with its existing environment and inject new possibilities into the surrounding space. The shape of the structure is based on a circle, similar to the original building, but slightly larger. The circular plan accommodates a vertical glass cylinder with a conical dome shaped roof. Like cutting a cake, the designers have cut out sections from the cylinder and divided the spaces with sharp angles in between. This design leads to a non-hierarchical relationship between the spaces, making them both dispersed and connected.

This text is based on the project text provided by the architects.