Inventories#2 - Exhibition in London

Wallonia-Brussels Architectures is pleased to inform you that the exhibition Architectures Wallonie-Bruxelles Inventaires #2 Inventories will be presented at the CASS School of Art, Architecture and Design in London from April 6th till April 27th. It will take place within the frame of the season that we organize in London between April and October 2017 under the title What about Belgian architecture?

The exhibition highlights the third volume of the Inventaires # Inventories collection. Initiated in 2010, the Architectures Wallonie-Bruxelles Inventaires # Inventories collection sets out to paint an up-to-date picture of recent architectural developments in Wallonia and in Brussels and to illustrate the commitment shown by the public authorities and private individuals in the search for an architecture that is in step with its time and with concerns to improve our living environment.

This third volume, entrusted to Xavier Lelion et Anne Sophie Nottebaert after a call for projects, it identifies, appraises and reports on architectural production in Wallonia and Brussels.

The exhibition aims to present a survey of inventories, investigations and texts written for the eponymous publication. It sets out to analyze 28 projects by examining the work of 25 authors from a variety of media: writing, drawing, comics, and photography. Selected in partnership with out comic book advisor, Benoit Henken, these authors are, in some respect, ‘newbies’: they describe a living architecture through the process of discovering it. This approach develops a delicate sense of complicity and an exchange of ideas between architects and authors. The marriage of written and visual forms becomes a means of understanding the meeting of form and use, the destination. It is a project grounded in mediating, communicating and explaining architecture to a wider audience.

In London, William Mann will present a framework for the exhibition which aims to shed light on the conditions of production for architecture within our sphere of action. This sphere may be limited, but it offers a wide variety of contexts for action, for both architects and contractors of the FWB: a dense city, the conversion of industrial sites, and rural areas.

The inaugural conference will take place on April 6th at 6.30PM and will be followed by the official opening. The lecture will be introduced by William Mann of Witherford Watson Mann Architects and the curators and will feature contributions from MSA and Dessin et Construction, two agencies whose work involves town planning as well as architecture. The conference represents an opportunity to explain the process behind a building shortlisted for the Mies Van der Rohe Award within the context of ‘neighbourhood contracts’, an urban renovation project organized by a public contractor and, on the other hand, an architectural practice akin to editing in response to the efforts of residents seeking to improve their living environment.

Discover an abstract of the foreword of the publication in our posts. You can also read the texts concerning the work of MSA by Nathalie Cobbaut and of Dessin et Construction by William Mann.