Exhibition
AgwA’s main activity can be understood as making spatial structures available (‘mettre à disposition’), with all the ensuing consequences. At the same time, the term refers the notion of spatial arrangement (‘disposition spatiale’) or to the actions that can be taken to change a situation (‘prendre des dispositions’). AgwA’s architecture aspires to fulfil these three operational meanings of the French term ‘disposition’ simultaneously. While creating remarkable spatial dispositions, AgwA proposes a functional and clear architecture, emphasizing simple construction materials and structure.
The exhibition seeks to reveal these distinctive meanings to illustrate AgwA’s diverse practice, while focusing on three completed projects in Belgium: CHAPEX, the renovation of the Palais des Expositions in Charleroi in collaboration with jdviv (Jan De Vylder and Inge Vinck). The project was also part of the exhibition As Found. And also on the projects ECAM, the transformation of a former engineering school into a mixed-use public facility and a park in Saint-Gilles and SERAING, the pedestrian and cycling bridge“ as a public space, reconnecting two neighborhoods and the train station of the city of Seraing. These three projects are presented through various documents that explore AgwA’s process of thinking and building architecture. Together with an interview with the architects, drawings, scale models, and photographs, they illuminate the current condition of Belgian architecture – its roughness and playfulness – exploring and revealing the societal and cultural relevance of the materials, context, spatial gestures, and structures within architecture.
AgwA was founded between 2003 and 2006 by Harold Fallon, Benoît Vandenbulcke, and Raphaël Cornelis (until 2008) in Brussels. Benoît Burquel joined the board in 2017, Hélène Joos and Nicky Vancaudenberg in 2023.AgwA contributes to academic research and education at different universities. The firm’s partners founded the Architecture in Practice research group and have been editing the In Practice book series since 2018 (DAM Architectural Book Award in 2021). Beside the above mentioned projects the Belgium Embassy in Bejiing will be completed this year. In 2025 the INSAS theater and dance School (Brussels) will be completed and the refurbishment of an office building into a fire station and accommodation for homeless people in Antwerp is being developed.