De Mouterij Huisvesting

A project by Bogdan & Van Broeck architects in Leuven.

The ‘Mouterij’ is a relatively large development in the centre of Leuven, whereby an existing brewery has been converted into an ensemble of five terraced houses, six lofts and six cluster houses.

The background to the project was complex, due to the delicate state of the existing buildings and its location in the inner part of a dense residential area. The various types of dwelling stand along an axis to which the most prominent volume, whose original use was the storage of raw materials, is at right angles.

The core of the ensemble is this central volume. The existing building was tall and slender, with sagging walls on weak foundations that had barely any transverse connections. Since the storeys of the storerooms were too low to use for dwellings, the architects opted to take the unstable shell of the building as a starting point. The outside walls were given solid foundations, sealed up and then pierced anew with windows that follow a pattern that, inside, allows for the creation of housing units. The sagging of the façade is countered by putting the new window openings in casements that are in the same plane but are set at varying depths in the outer wall.

The net result of this piece of technical and design bravura is that the existing façade becomes a relic that should be carefully cherished and bears the traces of a past that has been lost.

This text is based on an article by Maarten Delbeke, published in Architecture Review Flanders N°10. Radical Commonplaces. European Architectures from Flanders.