Architecture without Qualities
The Designs of Stéphane Beel

Architecture may no longer be society's scapegoat, but that does not mean that it has been freed from the straitjacket of prejudices and obsessions that restricts its movement. Young architects trying to approach their discipline with an open mind confront an almost impossible task. Either they take refuge in a dream world where they can develop splendid architectural metaphors unhindered and occasionally see them actually built, or they shy away from all challenges and produce one nondescript building after another. The Flemish architect Stéphane Beel (1955-) rejects this dilemma out of hand. He wants to liberate architecture from its cultural isolation and make it an enrichment of everyday life in a very concrete fashion.

There is no better example of this approach than one of his recent projects, the regional offices of Christelijke Mutualiteiten in Eeklo in Belgium, which were first occupied in September 1996. The brief called for offices to be combined with various public areas. More importantly, the project involved re-using an industrial complex, a large dairy in the town centre. From the outset integrating the new with the old was a basic requirement, even if the architect decided to demolish the dairy. But Stéphane Beel was not in favour of that; he hardly touched the existing buildings.

The new plan was suggested by the urban situation. The dairy building was envisaged as a screen between two squares marking out two different neighbourhoods. An internal street running through that screen would connect them. From this first option everything else follows naturally. In the internal street are the public departments and the entrance to the private area with the offices and administration. The internal street broadens out to form a space that acts as a third square, enclosed between the two others. Using hardly anything, a whole district is transformed here, and interior and exterior spaces are related.

What is true of the urban space is also true of the interior. It has been completely transformed and internalised. Light now flows playfully from all sides into what used to be dark storerooms. The bright, cheerful interior leads to a fully glazed conference room, which is attached to the building like a soap bubble, supported only by tall pillars. This room marks one of the entrances and thus differentiates the two facades in relation to the two

This continual interplay of diverse areas of meaning within an open framework linking them all together, like characters in a novel, has been typical of Stéphane Beel's approach from the beginning. The old is made new and the new old. The obvious seems unexpected and the unexpected obvious, the void is full and the fullness void, the commonplace becomes

poetry. To the extent that there is a development, it is one of ever greater control of the means, of an increasing intensification of the work. There is less and less need to accentuate anything. The means employed become ever more direct, leaving behind any reference to ‘style’, universal and free.

Going back chronologically, the new building at Kortrijk for the Catholic University of Leuven (1993) provides an enlightening comparison with the transformation in Eeklo. This too was a project in an existing situation. Stéphane Beel was given the commission, as in Eeklo, as the result of a competition. Only two parts of the original master plan had been realised, at opposite ends of the site. Here again Beel began with a proposed urban design in which his architecture would be situated. He suggested that the existing buildings should be linked by a long gallery on two levels. New buildings could be plugged into this axis in phases. The main advantage of this intervention, however, was that, while preserving the landscape, it would give the university a clear identity and a presence.

The building for the economics department was the first addition designed by Beel; it also contains the new main entrance. As in Eeklo, the centre consists of an agora, which is partly covered and partly open. It is from there that one experiences the whole building. Sharp colour fields with spaces cut out for the windows govern the spatial arrangement. The architecture is relieved of its heaviness. Severity becomes light and playful. The pleasure lies not in the additions, but in the masterly freedom with which necessity is treated. This apparently lucid and simple building is full of subtle allusions. It remains a vital and surprising landscape that can be rediscovered time and again.

The provincial offices of bacob bank beside the ring road in Bruges, completed in 1992, just before the Kortrijk project started, seem at first sight to lack the urban anchoring of the previous designs. But this impression is mistaken. For here too the whole building is a specific response to its context or, rather, turns its incoherent surroundings into a true context. These surroundings consisted of an extraordinary hotchpotch of derelict allotments, with a street coming to a dead end at the ring road, and a remnant of countryside with a wood. The building absorbs these very diverse components and makes of them a splendid entity. The architect's creed sounds convincing: there are no impossible situations; everything has a potential for life. With this project one is inclined to say: the more thankless the task, the greater the challenge and the more intense the solution. The motorway accompanies the building, presenting a taut volume on legs beneath which a fairly complex plan has been worked out and above which, like a ship's wheelhouse, the technical services form a gentle curve. The other long elevation, facing the allotments, presents a very different picture of staggered volumes, vertical accents and more homely materials. But here again, as in other cases, the miracle lies in the extraordinary unity in which these autonomous elements interact in an almost self-evident way. In contrast to the closed exterior, the interior is light and open.

These basic qualities can also be found in Stéphane Beel's other public buildings, such as the much talked-about offices of Spaarkrediet in Bruges of 1988. We recognise them too in several projects planned for 1997: the Raveelmuseum in Machelen / Zulte, the Tack tower in Kortrijk, the Central Museum in Utrecht. Again, these are cases where existing constructions are

Stéphane Beel made his debut in 1985 with a dwelling in Zoersel in which he brilliantly transformed all the factors in the surroundings into a surprising residence. He has repeated this feat several times since, in villas in Brasschaat and Rotselaar and in houses in urban settings. With the minimal extension to an old residence in Kortrijk he produced a masterpiece. But, finally, Villa M. in Zedelgem, completed in 1992, can serve as the most explicit example of his approach: an architecture that no longer proceeds from an existing image and, precisely because of that, proves able to generate new images. The point of departure is again the situation: the half-neglected

geert bekaert

Translated by John Rudge.