0173 Florair Housing, Brussels, BE
In 2016, Atelier Kempe Thill won the European tender for the transformation of two apartment blocks with more than 100 units in the Brussels district of Jette. The existing buildings are well-designed examples of the Belgium modernism of the 1950s with generous, favorably composed prefabricated concrete façades in combination with elegant steel-frame windows.
In order to preserve these qualities, the façade is being entirely wrapped with thermal insulation according to contemporary low-energy standards and covered again with a new layer of prefabricated concrete elements. Thickness, color, and alignment of the concrete vary to attain a reinterpretation of the decorative works of the original façade. Paradoxically, to reach elegance once again the façade is thus oversimplified and coarsened. To save this architecture, it in fact had to be destroyed and recreated.
0173 Florair Housing
Project
refurbishment of two apartment blocks of one hundred apartments in the Brussels district of Jette
Co-designers
architectural office Canevas, Liège
Status
under construction
Client
Le foyer Jettois