- Architects
L'Escaut architectures
- Description
Based in Brussels, L’Escaut develops a vision of the architecture as the collaborative process, where the plastic approach and the definition of the uses are negotiated as equal.
Situated in a former industrial building, shared with artists of the living and plastic arts, the agency built its practice between two main themes: the cultural places and the public places.
Created by Olivier Bastin in 1989, the agency evolved little by little towards its current shape: an architects' cooperative, organized on horizontal structure and which proposes a specific language, stemming from the work of the various authors who compose it.
The agency delivered some key cultural buildings in Belgium: the National Theater in Brussels, the Museum of Photography in Charleroi, Cultural Space Victor Jara at Soignies. It also launched in processes of urban planning negotiated in various scales: from the district contract to the public space arrangement on a small or large scale.
Between the universe of the culture and that of the shared urban space, L’Escaut tries to write the architecture on a democratic mode, refusing as much the superiority of the object as that of the unique author.
- Creation
- 1989
- Associates
- Olivier Bastin, Eloisa Astudillo, Nele Stragier, Florence Hoffmann, Catherine Dohmen, David Crambert, Annelies Kums, François Lichtle, Michael Bianchi, Annachiara Eliseo, Raquel De Morais, Hans Eelens, Sinan Logie, Laetisia Franck, Micheline Hardy-Bastin
- Collaborators
Florence Hoffmann, Catherine Dohmen, Michael Bianchi, David Crambert, François Lichtle,Olivier Bastin, Annachiara Eliseo, Justine Ferry, Sophie Dessilly, Grégoire Fettweis, Ralf Vercruysen, Simona Paplauskaité
- Awards
Iakov Chernikhov International Prize 2010: Nominated.
Mies van der Rohe Awards 2011: Nominated (Cultural hall Victor Jara); 2009: Nominated (Charleroi Museum of Photography).
Les Règles d'Or de l'Urbanisme 2008: Public space Award (Ursulines Square).
Belgian Building Awards 2010: Nominated (Cultural hall Victor Jara); 2009: Heritage Award (Charleroi Museum of Photography).
Prix d’Architecture du Hainaut 2008: Special Cultural Award (Charleroi Museum of Photography).
Belgian Architectural Award 1992 (Le Yen restaurant).
- Publications
