Brussels’ Grote Market unrolls its Flower Carpet once again

The biennial event has been taking place in Brussels for over forty years but its roots go back even further. Horticulturalist Etienne Stautemas had begun seeding his native Flanders with small, experimental flower rugs in the 1950s before perfecting the concept and planting large-scale flower carpets in Antwerp, Amsterdam and even Buenos Aires. The Brussels event was established in 1971. Its current resident architect Schauttet inherited the Flower Carpet on Stautemas’ death in 1998.

Of course, Stautemas and Schauttet would have been unable to realise their ambitious designs without the raw materials supplied by the Flemish flower industry. Not only is the industry’s staple, the begonia, robust enough to weather the ordeal, it also offers a palette of colours from bright white to yellow to orange to red, with a whole range of pink hues in-between.

The flower comes in different shapes, too: single, hanging and double. What’s more, the begonia is in plentiful supply here. Belgium is the world’s largest producer of the variety and most of the country’s annual yield of 60 million tubers is cultivated in the Ghent area.

This one flower, grown in this one region provides more than enough to weave an organic tapestry to remember. The rest is up to human ingenuity. Schauttet and his team begin planning a full year in advance by brainstorming and experimenting with sketches and scale models. Once they’ve perfected the pattern, they must calculate how many and what kind of flowers they will need.

These are harvested by an army of gardeners while the team builds a life-sized turf template to be rolled out on the Grote Markt the morning of the big reveal and filled in with live begonia, like a giant colour-by-number, in just four hours. The finished product measures a full 1,800 square metres, each one containing no less than 300 densely packed flowers.

The Flower Carpet is not simply an exercise in form, however. Each edition is given to a theme plucked from history or the present day. In recent years the organisation has taken an intercultural turn. The last Flower Carpet, for example, was inspired by—and even incorporated flowers from—Africa.

This year the Carpet marks the fiftieth anniversary of Turkish immigration to Belgium. It was in 1964 that Belgium’s captains of industry officially invited Turkish workers to come work in their mines, factories and construction sites. Fifty years later the country is home to 220,000 Belgians of Turkish descent.

The immigrants brought with them their culture, making Turkish goods widely available throughout Belgium. There’s the food, of course, but the Turks are also renowned for another product: the Anatolian carpet.

The artisanal tradition began in Ottoman times, when the Turks occupied a crucial crossroads on the overland trade route between East and West. Certain regions distinguished themselves by producing luxurious, hand-made designs that were peddled as status symbols and gifts to potentates. Turkish carpets are still in high demand all over the world. This year’s Flower Carpet will incorporate elements from these various regional styles.

The Turks are no strangers to flowers either. The tulip, which so fascinated Western Europe in the 18th century, was, after all, an Ottoman export adopted by Flemish and Dutch botanists. But make no mistake: This Flower Carpet, like those before it, is still made of home-grown begonias.

Tulip or no tulip, Flower Carpet 2014 will nevertheless honour the contributions of Turkish labour and culture to Belgium in the past half-century. The Carpet is on show for three full days. While it’s a breath-taking sight from ground level, the best panorama is to be had from the balcony of City Hall, open daily 9.00 to 23.00 for the occasion.

At night the Carpet comes alive in a sound-and-vision spectacle. A light show unfolds, accompanied by an original soundtrack created by Belgian composer and violinist Grégoire Dune. Together they tell the story of an imagined group of Anatolian nomads whose collective life and travels follow the rhythm of the seasons. Winter still is followed by spring blossom (naturally) and summer tempest. The Conservatory-trained Dune combines the best of contemporary technique with traditional Turkish instruments such as the lute-like saz and the daf drum.

15-17 August
Grote Markt, Brussels