Solid Senses exhibition by URA on showcase in Groningen

Solid Senses

For more than twenty years, the Brussels-based architecture office URA Yves Malysse Kiki Verbeeck has been developing an authentic oeuvre, impressing a stamp of quality on the environment we live, work and play in today. Volume, form, colour and use of materials set the tone for a body of work that breaks with the ordinariness of the often public programmes they build: care centres and collective housing units as well as cultural and meeting centres, and now and then a private home.

In this exhibition, URA presents nine sculptures, creations based on projects they conceived. Because of their abstract form, the sculptures go beyond the function and use of the buildings. They emphasize design, material, texture. The chosen materials are not only an ode to the craft and skill of building, they also relate to the actual materials of the projects.

All the sculptures have been made on different scales so that they are roughly the same size. The pedestals bring them to the eye level of visitors, who are thus invited to touch the sculptures – yes, touching is allowed! – and feel the texture of the different materials. Displayed throughout the building, the sculptures take visitors on a walk through Hendrik Petrus Berlage’s newly restored architectural masterpiece. Their precise location is no coincidence: each sculpture seeks to connect with the material of its immediate surroundings. The exhibition thus forms a dialogue between art and architecture.

(text by Lisa De Visscher, curator)