Building from Brussels

A new generation of architects takes its work across the world

The TID tower in Tirana, Albania, designed by Brussels architects 51N4E © Filip

“51N4E” are not just the coordinates of a field west of Dendermonde. It is also the name of a young and promising international architectural practice in Brussels and of the latest in a series of exhibitions about Belgian architects, hosted by Bozar and the Brussels-based architecture magazine A+.

Architecture exhibits are never easy. Much more than with art, it is difficult to find new ways to attract the average visitor. But with the help of curator Dominique Boudet, former editorin- chief of the French architectural magazine AMC, 51N4E: Double or Nothing succeeds remarkably.

You wander in as if by accident. The three exhibition spaces are all connected to the main Horta Hall and, if you’re not paying attention, you might not even realise that you’ve reached them.

You stumble upon a large video projection of the drive from the airport to the heart of chaotic Tirana, capital of Albania. It is there, next to the city’s central square, that the architects of 51N4E have constructed one of their most well-known creations, the TID tower, which seems to be in its natural environment. You learn about the architectural plan and the concept behind it.

There are photographs of the tower in Tirana and a display of the regeneration efforts by the city’s mayor to put some life and joy into the austere, grey blocks of the communist era. “He felt the need for urgency,” says Peter Swinnen, one of the 51N4E architects and current Vlaamse bouwmeester, or architect-inchief for the Flemish government. “The people of Tirana were drowning.”

The presence of a sort of daybed in the second space requires visitors to take off their shoes, which creates an amusing, oddball airport security check feeling. There, you are witness to the renovation of a small house through the eyes of a dog strutting about the transformed space.

The third room is more conventional: plans and models of completed projects and those soon to materialise. Facing you is a gigantic depiction of the green spaces and boulevards of Brussels and how the west of the city had been forgotten by the grand schemes of Leopold II in the 19th century.

The subtitle Double or Nothing refers to this emptiness in urban care. “You have to dare to choose between 'nothing' or pursuing an enlightened vision of the building process,” says Swinnen. “Unfortunately, politics in Brussels has been afraid of contemporary architecture – of the need to go beyond the status quo.”

The traumas inflicted on Brussels’ urban environment in the past century have created an underlying sense of distrust with its people for anything modern in architecture. This series of exhibitions is a good way to get people back in touch with contemporary architecture, and 51N4E is an excellent entry.

The exhibition spaces are like private rooms in a great mansion, and the building itself becomes part of the exhibition. This simple demonstration of interaction, surprise and encounter creates a natural trajectory, like architecture should do. Change the way a space is perceived, and you change the experience of the visitor.