0173 Florair housing, Brussels, BE
Atelier Kempe Thill has recently won the European tender for the transformation of two apartment blocks with more than hundred units in the Brussels district of Jette. The existing buildings are well-designed examples of the Belgium modernism of the fifties with generous, well-composed prefabricated concrete façades in combination with elegant steel frame windows.
In order to preserve these qualities the façade will be entirely wrapped with thermal insulation according to contemporary low energy standards and covered again with a new layer of prefabricated concrete elements. Thickness, colour and alignment of the concrete vary to find a reinterpretation of the decorative works of the original façade. Paradoxically, to reach again elegance the façade is thus oversimplified and coarsened. To save this architecture, it in fact has 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