5 Feb '15

Six architects to compete for Beurs conversion into Beer Temple

Summary

The finalists to design the planned Belgian Beer Temple, which will be installed in the Beurs building in downtown Brussels, have been chosen, with a winner announced in June

 

Beer museum

Six architects from a field of 35 applicants have been selected for the next round of a competition to design the new Belgian Beer Temple. The museum dedicated to local beer is to be installed in the Beurs (pictured), the former stock exchange building on Beursplein in Brussels.

The six were selected on the basis of their experience with listed buildings and their overall vision, as well as their proposed plans for the Beer Temple. Stéphane Beel, based in Ghent, is best known for M Museum in Leuven; Polo Architects from Antwerp worked on the Belgian pavilion at the Shanghai Expo; Arter from Brussels worked on the Grand Casino in Brussels.

Kempe Thill, based in Rotterdam, was responsible for the Maritime Academy in Antwerp; Imagination, with offices in London and Cologne, specialises in restaurant and hotels; while Ghent’s Robbrecht en Daem is known for its numerous high-profile projects, including the Concertgebouw in Bruges and the renovation of Antwerp Zoo.

The final six will now go into more detail on their proposals, and a winner will be chosen in June by the two contractors for the project: the city of Brussels and the Belgian Brewers federation.

Photo courtesy Ben2/Wikimedia

Now read this

Belgian beer

Belgium has a beer-brewing tradition going back centuries and is known around the world for both its beer culture and hundreds of craft brews.
History - Beer culture has been recognised by Unesco as part of Flanders’ Intangible Cultural Heritage. The local beer culture dates to the middle ages, when farmers brewed their own beer from the rich harvests of local grain, later transferring brewing to local guilds and abbeys.
Beer styles - The main styles include lambics, white beers, fruit beers, Trappists and abbey beers. The Trappist beer Westvleteren 12, brewed by a dozen monks in a small West Flanders town, is regularly rated by various sources as the best beer in the world.
Exports - Sixty percent of the Belgian beer production is exported abroad, with France, Germany, the Netherlands and the US the largest markets.
74

Litres of beer annually consumed per person in Belgium

100

breweries in Flanders

19

million hectolitres of beer produced in Belgium in 2012

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