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Maison des Médias
Maison des Médias- © XDGA, photo by Matthias Van Rossen
Maison des Médias
A new media district will be created on the former national television site at the border of the city of Brussels. Nowadays this site is somehow isolated from the rest of the neighbourhood, mainly because of the road infrastructure all around it. The future master plan aims to open up the site and turn it into a multi-functional campus, allowing it to become part of the surrounding city.
The new Media House, a combination of small institutions, start-ups, educational program and the tv channel BX1, is situated on the border of the media district site. It therefore has the potential to become the first hot spot and link between the city and the campus.The building functions as an open public platform inserted in the sloping ground, connecting the level of the Boulevard Reyers to the media campus on the other side, 2,50 meters below. The main entrance, the restaurant and the auditorium help animating the public space of the immediate surroundings and on the covered plaza, where several activities can take place during day and night.
The different programs are stacked horizontally, allowing great flexibility; they meet through different types of connecting spaces, encouraging informal interaction between the different users.
The building is fully glazed, showing the animation happening on the inside.
For technical reasons, the tv studios don’t require any openings to the outside. This part of the program is positioned in a black box on the top floors, creating a strong identity for the building. One large window allows the tv studios to have a permanent view onto Brussels’ skyline.A new media district will be created on the former national television site at the border of the city of Brussels. Nowadays this site is somehow isolated from the rest of the neighbourhood, mainly because …
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
- © XDGA, photo by Matthias Van Rossen
- © XDGA
- © XDGA
2017231 Maison des Médias
Competition,
CityBrussels
ProgramOffices
Year2017
ProcedureCompetition
ClientSociété d'Aménagement Urbain / Maatschappij voor Stedelijke Inrichting
Total floor area9.400 m² GFA
Budget16.000.000 €
ArchitectsXDGA
LandscapeInside Outside
Structural engineerUtil
Mechanical engineerBoydens
ModelXDGA
ConsultantDaidalos Peutz, City Tools, Securisan
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Statement
Ideally architecture is not about fixing activities, fluxes or programs, or worse, about solving spatial problems. On the contrary, it is about opening up possibilities: the potential of a site, the hidden opportunity of a particular situation in time, of a programmatic conflict. It is about dealing with uncertainty, about enabling different and unforeseen scenarios.
In that sense architecture and urbanism are not opposed disciplines with different outcomes, but similar mediators, on different scales and in different degrees of complexity, with the same goal of enabling life.
The basis for architecture in our way of working is to carry out a meticulous scanning of a brief, a program or a context. Context not just as that what physically surrounds a project, but the larger field of social, economic, political, administrative and also technical issues, all on an equal level. This activity of accurate and systematic reading leads to a matrix of knowledge that frames any architectural decision. Sometimes this framework functions as a backdrop for postponed intuitions, sometimes it forms the battlefield for a bombardment of architectural proposals that slowly gain self-evidence through a process of trial and error.
The scanning raises new questions, opens up unexplored fields, reveals hidden opportunities, or brings together so-called incompatibilities. Through this working method all projects are rooted in their context, but as context has a visible and a hidden part, they often surpass their physical context and they sometimes completely transform it.
This explorative approach leads to a working method, not a style. Instead, style is restrictive to exploration. Our approach saves us from dogmatic thinking, from an all too narrow agenda, from the architectural one-liner.
Team
Doug Allard, David Ampe, Vincent Blactot, Tom Bonnevalle, Maud Bouhin, Lionel Bousquet, Jérémie Brault, Karel Bruyland, Rémy Carat, Elena Caruso, Antoine Chaudemanche, Pieter Coelis, Beatrice Colaiacomo, Marie Debraine, Xaveer De Geyter, Joris De Greef, Hanne Defloor, Thaïs de Roquemaurel, Chloé de Salins, Jacqueline De Souza Luduvice, Pieter De Walsche, Nenad Duric, Eleonor Ferragu, Sandra Fol, Eric Gilham, Arie Gruijters, Annelotte Herrebosch, Ingrid Huyghe, Yannis Igodt, Ménélik Jobert, Paul-Emmanuel Lambert, Solène Le Gallo, Jonathan Robert Maj, Leo Mazurek, Philip Niekamp, Emilia Ockerman, Federico Pedrini, Anne-Sophie Rouillère, Yuichiro Suzuki, Hannelore Thomas, Foucault Tiberghien, Greta Torsello, Willem Van Besien, Wouter van Daele, Catherine Van Driessche, Matthias Van Rossen, Marie-Pierre Vandeputte, Dana Vargovčíková, Simon Vellut, Yannick Vergnaud, Samia Wahbi, Ulysse Zehnlé, Rui Zenha
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