Royal Belge Brussels features in Casabella

Casabella 951

There is a theme that insistently returns in the practice of contemporary architecture and the discussions that take place around it: how should we intervene in historical buildings, reusing them and assigning them new functions? Casabella 951 approaches this subject by comparing experiences located at its limits: on one side, the project Paolo Zermani and Eugenio Tessoni have built, organizing the pathway of visitors to one of the greatest monuments of modern architecture, the complex of San Lorenzo in Florence; on the other, the reuse of a typical office building from the 1960s completed by Adam Caruso and Peter St John in Brussels, a provocative statement of principle: “nothing of what has been built should be replaced.”