In Find myself a city to live in architects Henk De Smet and Paul Vermeulen examine how architectural interventions impact upon the way cities are shaped and used; a balancing act between continuity and change.
‘We want to value the ordinary, and to such an extent that it is no longer regarded as banal’, say Henk De Smet and Paul Vermeulen. The projects they have been working on since establishing their office in the late 1980s illustrate this attitude: compositions and structures in which ordinary elements acquire new meaning, and architecture that is at the service of the public space.
Urban development from the bottom up
De Smet and Vermeulen deliberately choose to work in a broad field, one that also includes urban design and advisory studies. They view the architectural project as ‘urban development from the bottom up’. In this vein, they designed and built the offices of the Flanders Environment Agency in Aalst, a model project for urban renewal and sustainable building that won the Belgian Building Award and the Client Award (2005). In Antwerp, they were involved in the Intergenerational Housing on the Left Bank project (Intergenerationeel Wonen LinkerOever, IGLO for which they designed, as architects, a crèche and residential care centre.
Opening
vernissage on Thursday 9 Feb 2017 at 8pm in the Blue Hall
Programme opening
When visiting Find myself a city to live in you can also enter the world of Microcosm, the first edition of the Architecture Cabinet. Take a glimpse of some of the treasures to be found in architectural archives and collections.
10.02.2017 until 11.06.2017
deSingel International Arts Campus
Desguinlei 25
2018
Antwerp
Belgium
Flanders Architecture Institute and deSingel