Collectief kunstencentrum 019

The 019 project can be seen as an example of the latest generation of temporary use, and was initiated by Ghent city council. In anticipation of the redevelopment of the Old Docks, sogent, Ghent’s urban development company, wanted to breathe new life into the former harbour area by temporarily reactivating a factory building that had fallen into disuse.

Smoke & Dust had the opportunity to set up an artistic meeting-place in the former welding workshop for five years, with an adjacent space for silkscreen printing, a sound studio and a wood and metal workshop. Smoke & Dust is a collective that originated as a recording label on Ghent’s hard-core punk scene and expanded into the 019 artists' collective, which includes a graphic designer, an artist, and the architect Olivier Goethals.

Smoke & Dust targets an exclusive niche audience that would not be catered to, or hardly at all, elsewhere in Ghent. The interventions in and around the building are both restrained and provocative. Flagpoles have been fixed to the edge of the roof on the front façade, with artist-designed flags that often feature political messages and slogans pertaining to current affairs. An oversized billboard is ostentatiously hung alongside the commercial hoarding, for which no permit was ever requested. Reused concrete traffic barriers, originating from surrounding building sites, serve as benches and a buffer for the entrance zone. Inside the building, a wooden box, which is painted black and resembles a sculpture, has been placed at an angle in the high central space.

By twisting the volume with regard to the enclosed area, it is not corridors that are formed, but spaces. The result is the opposite of a panopticon: once you enter the volume, it is no longer possible to gain an overview. The organisers of the talks, performances and exhibitions are requested to make active use of the box, which generates unexpected inversions and atypical user experiences. For example, during one performance the musicians stood in the corners of the building while the audience listened to the music in the box in the middle. After the interval, the roles were reversed. The fact that Smoke & Dust, as a collective, sets itself up as curator, co-user and co-designer of the building makes it possible to take a different, incremental design approach. There is no longer a fixed final image. It is, rather, an unplanned, accumulative, step-by-step way of creating architecture.

This text is based on an article by Els Vervloesem, published in Flanders Architectural Review N°12: Tailored Architecture.