Firm： Philippe SAMYN and PARTNERS, architects & engineers

Type： Commercial › Office

STATUS： Built

YEAR： 2009

SIZE： 300,000 sqft - 500,000 sqft

Photos： Marie-Françoise Plissart (10)

The original

building was a traditional construction dating from the 1960s, which had become

obsolete and needed far-reaching renovation in order for it to meet the users’

new requirements.

The building’s

structure was stripped bare. The façade’s decorative interfenestrations were

all removed in order to provide a panoramic view of the Royal

Park and the whole of the south of Brussels.

The old

non-insulated stone-clad façade with aluminium window frames made way for a new

façade in wood with abundant glass surfaces and fitted with adjustable bamboo

sun-screen Venetian blinds. A curtain of fixed glass louver blades in a

stainless steel frame protects the wood on floors 1 to 5 from the rain, and is

supplemented by a continuous glazed canopy on the sixth storey. On the ground

floor, as well as at the corner of the two front elevations and at the party

walls, the protection afforded by the louver-blade curtain is broken and the

façade is clad in stainless steel.

Contrary to the

pre-works situation, it is now the very structure of the building that provides

the directing line of the façade, in the form of a large wooden grid. The

frames of the door-windows, also in wood, are set back – an arrangement that

visually detaches the grid from the structure and creates small balconies that

can be accessed from inside and are protected from the wind and rain by the

glass louver-blades.

The sun-screen blinds, fitted on the outside but

protected from the wind and rain, remove any risk of overheating due to solar

radiation. They also mean that the incidence of natural light can be adjusted

efficiently, whilst nonetheless avoiding blinding light.

The fitting out of the interior is also characterised

by the abundant use of wood. The bamboo of the exterior blinds is also used in

the superstructure floor covering of all the floors, and in all the interior

wood finishings.

The interior stairwell, of a triangular arrangement

with rounded corners, is kept in its original state with its terrazzo facing.

Parking places, of

which there were none in the old building, have been created in the rear

courtyard on the ground floor, and in the buildings’ basements. The former are

accessed via a carriage entrance, and the latter via the building next door,

which belongs to the same owner.