A sublimely minimalist Belgian penthouse by architecture studio Merckx-Holvoet is just the thing for those long, hot summer days when easy living and going back to basics are in order. The project, titled V Penthouse, was crafted in an existing unit by the Antwerp-based architects Marc Merckx and Sébastien Holvoet and their team, and blends contemporary chic with the glamour its established seaside resort, Knokke-Heist, is known for.

Explore this Belgian penthouse by the sea

The client, a couple and their two young children, came to the studio with the desire to create a coastal pied-a-terre, a space that can allow for carefree time over weekends and holidays. The project would acts as a refreshing counterbalance to their busy urban lives in a Belgian city the rest of the year.

As a result, the architecture team focused on opening up to the surrounding landscape and, at the same time, bringing hints of the context in. Compositions are framed towards large windows, which create long views of the beach and sea. Meanwhile, the project's materiality takes its cues from local, natural colours and materials, and the shifting hues of the North Sea.

To achieve the textures of its setting, in a refined, polished way that is befitting of 21st-century family life, Merckx-Holvoet clad the walls and floors of the main living spaces in a unifying way, using sandblasted Travertino Noce stone. The ceiling's plaster gives a subtly sandy finish.

Timber elements bring smoothness and warmth to the composition, such as the main, solid oak-built staircase at the heart of the home. Bespoke millwork also features in the kitchen cabinets and its generous island.

A balcony acts as an extension to the living space. When the glazing is drawn back fully, living room and outdoors become one, highlighting the long views across the North Sea waters.

The ultimate aim? The architects write: 'More than a temporary retreat, it becomes a quiet extension of the coast itself, a place shaped as much by atmosphere as by function.'

ericpetschek.com

At Wallpaper*, we love spotlighting incredible homes from every corner of the globe that span the spectrum of modern design.

To ensure you don’t miss a thing – and to showcase the scope of residential architecture today – we present our monthly series: The Architecture Edit. Each instalment will feature our favourite houses of the month: buildings that demonstrate creative planning, innovative methods and, of course, design excellence.

This month, we head to Mexico, North London and Norway, to name but a few, to visit several homes that are doing things differently.

Join us on our world tour as we highlight the best houses of May 2026.

An urban retreat in Mexico

Architect Taller Segovia Molina designed this family home in Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico, as a pocket of calm in an urban environment. Its street-facing facade is almost hermetic, giving nothing away, while the interior opens onto a rear courtyard garden. Inside spaces flow across levels connected visually and acoustically, with a barrel-vaulted staircase leading to private upper floors. Natural light, seasonal change and views of greenery anchor residents to nature despite the dense surrounding neighbourhood.

A reimagined care home

Formwork Architects transformed a dilapidated Edwardian care home in north London back into a generous family residence. Substantial basement excavations created a new kitchen-diner opening onto a sunken courtyard, topped by a bespoke open-tread metal staircase leading to a sitting room above. Original features – namely the stained glass and impressive main staircase – were carefully restored, while a double-height rear extension and new rooflights flood the interior with light.

A Viking-inspired cabin

This coastal cabin in Norway draws on Viking boat-building traditions, using whole tree trunks and roots as structural columns that simultaneously serve as shelves, benches, stairs and room dividers. Helen & Hard designed the undulating roof to mirror the surrounding topography, while panoramic glazing frames the ocean and locally-sourced stone forms the base. The result is a sensory space where timber scent, sea sounds and shifting daylight become central to the experience.

Brutalism in Milan

This brutalist family home in Cusano Milanino, designed in the 1970s by Francesco Castiglioni, stands apart from its Art Nouveau suburban neighbours through its raw concrete construction and sculptural massing. A monumental double-height living room dominates, with a sloping ceiling, dramatic internal ramp and double-sided fireplace. Glazed walls connect to expansive gardens, covered loggias wrap the exterior, and a 20-metre basement pool sits below. Owned by the original family, it is now listed for sale.

An Albuquerque desert home

Antoine Predock's final residential project – nicknamed the ‘dinodactyl’ – is a low-slung concrete home perched on a New Mexico desert ridge with extraordinary eastward views across the badlands. Five bedroom suites radiate from a central ‘amphitheatre’ living space, each functioning as a self-contained casita with its own terrace and fire pit. The building's orientation and form were carefully calibrated against extreme temperature swings, high winds and intense sunlight, while steel roof shingles will patinate naturally into the landscape over time.

A renovated painter’s house

Atelier Vens Vanbelle renovated this former home and studio of Belgian painter Antoon De Clerck, situated between Bruges and Ghent, into a vibrant residence befitting its artistic provenance. Drawing on De Clerck's De Stijl-rooted palette of primary colours and clean geometry, the architects layered Bauhaus and midcentury aesthetics with contemporary touches, including metallic roof detailing and a white brick fireplace. Each room carries its own distinct character within a cohesive whole.

Tetris-like Oaxaca apartments

S-AR's three-storey apartment building in Puerto Escondido treats its concrete, wood and steel grid structure as an inhabitable spatial system. Each of the three 180-square-metre apartments occupies one floor, with translucent wooden boxes providing bedroom privacy within an otherwise open framework. Each unit includes two bedrooms, social areas and a private plunge pool, with geometric detailing punctuating stairs, kitchens and storage, and few external walls interrupting the connection to the surrounding jungle canopy.

An off-grid, on-the-market home 

This off-grid prefab home in California's Eastern Sierra, designed by Linda Taalman and built over eight years by its owners, embodies the architect's desert modernism ethos, comprising open glass-and-steel forms, modular construction and minimal site disturbance. Set between Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada, the house frames sweeping vistas of surrounding peaks, including Lone Pine Peak and the Alabama Hills. Its sustainable design, wildfire preparedness and connection to the landscape reflect both the Taalman's principles and the clients' family ties to the region.

A forgotten Portuguese ruin

Pablo Pita Arquitectos rebuilt a derelict olive press in the Douro wine region into a pared-back country retreat, preserving the original footprint while dividing the plan into four quadrants – living, terrace, pool and courtyard. The house steps down the hillside, with raw concrete interiors paired with stone schist walls and timber cladding – it is deliberately minimal, material-led and rooted in the ruin's memory. Four bedrooms occupy the lowest level, while the uppermost floor offers views across the Douro River.

A robust coastal home

Hollaway Studio reimagined an existing cottage on Kent's otherworldly shingle headland, retaining its original silhouette while completely rethinking its interior orientation. Charred timber with white coating echoes the previous building, complemented by corrugated metal and Corten steel, while a salt-and-pepper concrete floor extends the shingle landscape indoors. The robust facade is built to withstand the coastal exposure of one of England's most distinctive – and challenging – landscapes.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

In the quiet countryside of Damme, Belgium, a centuries-old farmhouse sits among rolling greenery – hardly an unusual sight in this pastoral part of the world. What is surprising is what awaits you inside, and more specifically, below. In their top-to-bottom reimagining of this property, Van Damme-Vandeputte Architects has installed a Parisian-style nightclub in the basement.

The renovation itself is breathtaking. The architects set out to reinterpret something inherently rural – a historic home overlooking a tree-lined canal – and transform it into something contemporary and refined, without erasing its past.

One way the architects achieve this is through occasional, vivid bursts of colour: hallways and a bathroom are clad in a deep, clay-like red; a living space is drenched in teal, employing artisanal paint techniques that breathe new life into the home's classical bones. Slender bronze and patinated brass details weave throughout, serving as elegant connective tissue between eras.

Authentic original features like beamed wooden ceilings and an open kitchen fireplace have been left largely untouched, anchoring the home in its history. Remarkably, achieving this transition required no major structural intervention. Instead, the architects worked through a succession of carefully weighted decisions: for example, existing materials were, wherever possible, reclaimed or treated rather than replaced.

The kitchen ranks among the home's finest spaces. While grounded in a neutral palette and timeless veined marble splashbacks, it feels anything but conventional through a series of ingenious details like alabaster light fittings, generously rounded worktops and distinctive half-height curtains. Most luxurious of all is the contrast between the custom dark walnut cabinetry and solid natural stone worktops – sourced from Italy and Turkey and cut to a substantial eight centimetres – which flow uninterrupted from the washbasin into the wall, lending a monolithic feel.

The interior gains further cohesion through its curation: design icons from Molteni & C and Edra sit alongside lighting by Parisian duo Garnier & Linker and London's CTO, while artworks are drawn from the client's private collection.

It all makes perfect sense – and then you descend to the cellar. Transformed into a private nightclub inspired by a cabaret, the space has been saturated in an all-encompassing, enveloping red. At its centre stands the bar, where a marble countertop meets high-gloss tropical amara wood. The defining piece is the red sofa – handcrafted by Collett & Victor to a design by Jean-Philippe Demeyer – which channels the glamour and romanticism of 1920s Paris. Step below ground here, and you step into another time and geography entirely.

Recreate the mood

Formerly an artist's home, located between Bruges and Ghent, this recently refreshed project is a rich play of colour and composition. Previously the private residence and studio of the late painter Antoon De Clerck, it now belongs to new owners. Aptly named Painter's House, the property has recently been redesigned in a way that not only brings out the building's inherent modernist architecture identity but also pays homage to its original artist-owner.

Step inside a renovated modernist artist's home in Belgium

The Aalter-based residence was renovated by the Ghent architecture firm Atelier Vens Vanbelle. For their architectural response, studio founders Maarten Vanbelle and Dries Vens looked to De Clerck’s artistic style, which was rooted in primary colours, abstraction, and midcentury style, for inspiration.

The original house, which the painter designed himself, drew on the De Stijl movement in terms of its composition – using simple, clean surfaces and lines to form its visual identity. The architects kept the home's lines and planes in primary colours, nodding also to Bauhaus style and embracing a midcentury design aesthetic. To make sure the project still feels current, they mixed these historical styles with contemporary touches, such as the metallic detailing wrapping around the building's roof and the white brick fireplace.

As a result, the former artist's home is now defined by a fun, retro-cool look. The architects employed classic, and instantly recognisable, modernist-inspired details throughout, but in a way which feels conscious and playful – not clichéd.

This conceptual element was matched by gestures that address everyday, 21st-century needs. For instance, the carpark is fully functional, but designed with a sense of fun, designed as a composition of colours, geometries and materials, with blue-glazed brick walls.

The ground floor of the main building was completely reimagined. Alongside an additional bedroom and bathroom, more new spaces were incorporated, including a dressing room, laundry hall and office. All the areas feature a strong individual character and distinct colour schemes. Yet the overall intention and aesthetic keep the project cohesive.

The 258 sq m house contains five bedrooms and two bathrooms. Taking inspiration from the work of Richard Neutra's Kaufman Desert House in Palm Springs, Slim Aarons' 'Poolside Gossip' photograph, and David Hockney's artpiece 'A Bigger Splash', photographer Tim Van de Velde and the architects captured the project's essence in a series of images that tell the story of its concept – an artist's home that is vibrant and creative but also warm and relaxed.

vensvanbelle.be

Brusk, Bruges’ newest cultural building, designed by Belgian studios Robbrecht en Daem architecten and Olivier Salens architecten, has been seven years in the making. 'We really like that it’s not an isolated building in a park, but has that urban fabric of connection. It’s a place where you feel the city’s paths, its culture, its alleyways,' says Olivier Salens, and Paul Robbrecht agrees.

Discover the Brusk exhibition hall in Bruges

Located in the heart of the medieval northern Belgian city, a Unesco world heritage site, the 9,500 sq m new ‘exhibition hall’ occupies the site of a former school, allowing access to residents and visitors to this part of the city for the first time. It is composed of a glazed concrete building with an expansive sloping roof clad in textured dark green glass tiles and a long red brick service annexe with a sawtooth outline. The museum’s central feature is a generous and airy public passageway, dubbed the Scala Grande, which has been filled with a captivating monumental fresco by French artist Laure Prouvost. It can be visited for free and beyond museum opening hours.

Off this central space, visitors can find the ticketing hall, shop, educational spaces, an auditorium and a large, airy café that spills out onto an outdoor garden. 'We consciously decided to lift the exhibition spaces to the first floor to give the entire ground floor back to the city,' says Salens. Two sculptural staircases lead to the exhibition halls and cleverly allow for closer interaction with the Prouvost piece, which you soon realise is not just painted on the walls but also features textured and bas-relief elements made of mirror, bronze and glass.

Once inside the two exhibition halls, which measure 40x40m and 40x20m respectively, the mastery of what the architects have achieved becomes even more apparent. Both spaces are entirely column-free and soar up to 13.75m, despite the brief asking only for '5.5 m high spaces'. And both spaces feature 8m-high, tilted north-facing windows reminiscent of classic artists’ studios, which bathe the space in that prized northern light creatives are so keen to work in.

It is not too harsh, explains Robbrecht, because it comes in at an angle and has been diffused with southern light thanks to small apertures in the sloping roof on the opposite side. 'That mix of northern with a bit of southern light, which is not as cold, is important,' he says. Though the museum opened with two ‘dark’ shows that necessitated all the glazing be covered, the idea is that these two soaring cathedral-like spaces will also host large-scale sculptural installations or more experimental art or performances that are not necessarily display-based. One exhibition could also take place in both halls at once as they are connected by a wide walkway.

Given Brusk’s contemporary design, size and green glass roof, and the fact that it is surrounded by significant historic, cultural and residential buildings on all sides (including a home for over-65s), it is no surprise that the architects 'were initially worried that one of our neighbours might object to our planning application and the project could be stalled'. Luckily, this didn’t happen, in part because the architects 'went to huge efforts to talk with neighbours in the preliminary phase', says Salens.

This was also because Brusk is attuned to its surroundings, preserving historic sight lines and the Bruges skyline and lining up the central Scala Grande space with the iconic 13th-century Belfry (bell tower) to the north-west. Brusk may be a large contemporary building, but you walk up to it through a series of alleys, gardens and courtyards, and when you first come across it, it is almost an unexpected discovery.

The same approach of dialoguing with its neighbours, be they human, architectural or urban, and of bringing together old and new, is evident in the fact that two of the historic school buildings were renovated instead of being demolished as per the initial plan. A small one right next to the museum’s northern entrance has been turned into a very special ‘store room’ for local residents to put their bikes. A much larger and handsome 1930s brick building north of Brusk has also been kept. 'It was too good to demolish, so we said let’s keep it and think of a function for it,' says Robbrecht.

It has been restored and a new public square created outside and now houses Bron, the gleaming 1,000 sq m scientific research centre for Musea Brugge, the municipal umbrella organisation that manages the city’s art collection and 13 of its most historic buildings and prestigious art museums, including Brusk, centralising work that had previously been carried out on different sites across the city. ‘But also ensuring that the site isn’t just for visitors or people using the café,' says Salens, 'but that it is also a place of work.’

In a bid to further enhance operations and connectivity Bron has been joined to Brusk’s service building, which houses restoration workshops, storage spaces and offices, via a covered walkway. The two exhibition halls in Brusk are also connected to the service building via overhead walkways, facilitating the restoration and transportation of art and, importantly, allowing this nascent museum complex to remain car-free.

To the north-west, Brusk will eventually be connected at ground-floor level with the neighbouring Groeningemuseum (home to six centuries of Belgian art) and share ticket and locker facilities once the latter is renovated and reopens in 2031. 'We have already created a connection with Groeninge for artworks to come in from the service building and be transported via the northern walkway directly into the museum,' explains Salens, adding that this wasn’t part of the original brief.

Altogether these buildings and walkways are creating what will eventually become a veritable Museum Quarter, replete with a large park for art and leisure to the south of Brusk that will allow access into the building from that southern side. Designed by Swiss landscape architect Georges Descombes, the park will also offer residents and visitors restored access to centuries-old trees and a historic canal. Unlike many museum quarters, however, the beauty of this one is that it’s right in the heart of the historic city.

robbrechtendaem.com

Those drawn to Antwerp tend to look for a base that mirrors its cool nonchalance. In the heart of the Old Town, just off Groenplaats, Hotel Julien has long answered that need. Since opening in 2004, it has remained a constant for those returning to the Belgian city’s particular mix of history and forward-looking design.

Now, just over two decades on, the hotel reopens following a complete makeover led by founder Mouche Van Hool, alongside interior designer Bea Mombaers and architect Peter Ivens. The intention was never to redefine the place, but to bring it closer to its original idea, something more akin to staying with friends than checking into a hotel. ‘I started Hotel Julie with the idea of offering an intimate, welcoming place with a homely atmosphere. As if you’ve discovered a hidden gem,’ Van Hool tells Wallpaper*.

Tour the new chapter of Hotel Julien, Antwerp

Occupying two adjoining 16th-century townhouses, the property carries a natural sense of charm, pairing original features – fireplaces, beams and cornicing – with a more restrained, contemporary sensibility. Wool, stone and timber define the material palette, extending into custom pieces designed specifically for the hotel. In the lounge, painted wood panelling runs low along the walls before opening onto the courtyard through steel-framed doors.

The bar offers a more relaxed rhythm, where restored wood interiors lend a warm, familiar feel, while classic cocktails, vintage wines and locally brewed beers, including those from De Koninck, shape an extensive list. As the day shifts, the rooftop terrace becomes the natural draw, with open views towards the cathedral. Throughout, lighting by PS Lab is kept low and deliberate, softening the spaces and drawing attention to texture.

Meanwhile, the breakfast room brings in more light through wide glazing while staying within the same muted palette. For guests, mornings begin here with pastries from Dôme, alongside a selection of warm and cold dishes. Below ground, the spa occupies the building’s former cellar, its vaulted structure left intact. Access is by reservation, offering private use of the sauna, hammam and hot stone seat.

‘For us, creating the right atmosphere was essential. We wanted to strike a balance between a sense of coming home and a space that continues to inspire. I believe we’ve succeeded, and created something truly special,’ note Ivens and Mombaers.

Upstairs, the 21 rooms follow the same approach. Materials remain consistent – linen, marble, timber – while the architecture shifts subtly from room to room. The Dreamer and Experience categories sit beneath original beamed ceilings in the eaves, offering more secluded stays. For something more outward-facing, the Experience Terrace rooms introduce private outdoor space overlooking Antwerp’s Old Town. Interiors are layered with considered details: books on Belgian design and architecture, ceramics from Serax designed by Vincent Van Duysen, and Aesop products in the bathrooms.

Hotel Julien is located at Korte Nieuwstraat 24, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium

If there’s one thing that Wallpaper* does well, it’s houses – spotlighting architecturally arresting gems from around the globe and spanning the spectrum of modern design. Our inboxes are overflowing with news of the world’s most boundary-pushing architectural projects, and we strive to bring you the very best.

To ensure you don’t miss a thing – and to showcase the scope of residential architecture today – we’ve launched a monthly series: The Architecture Edit. Each instalment will highlight our favourite houses of the month: buildings that demonstrate creative planning, innovative methods and, of course, aesthetic excellence. Here are the best new houses of April 2026.

A coastal Florida home

Architect Jennifer Bonner designed this Florida home for her mother, working within strict Homeowners Association rules that demanded a traditional material palette and symmetrical façade. To get around this, Bonner redirected her creativity to the roofline, introducing daring curvilinear eaves with soft pink undersides, while two false-front porches satisfy the symmetry requirement and corrugated metal is cheekily repurposed on the façade. Interiors by Carol Mockbee carry the theme through, with custom furnishings, terrazzo floors and ombré walls mirroring the exterior's curves.

Read about it here.

A pyramid-shaped house

Built in 1981 as part of Milton Keynes' Homeworld exhibition, the Pyramid House was a bold experiment in future residential design. London studio Khan Bonshek recently overhauled its confused layout, installing a spectacular new birch ply staircase as the home's centrepiece. Light cascades from the glazed apex, animating every room. Eaves were repurposed as sleeping pods, a sauna and workspace, while ground source heat pumps replaced the original inefficient ventilation. The result is eccentric, energy-efficient and far more liveable.

Read about it here.

A curved concrete villa 

Belgian architect Magalie Munters designed this concrete villa in Oostduinkerke, which is shaped by dunes, wind and light rather than conventional façade logic. Bedrooms are half-buried in the dunes while the living space rises toward the horizon. Striated concrete recalls sand at low tide, and interiors feature lime-washed walls, built-in concrete elements and sandblasted oak furniture – creating rooms that feel carved from a single continuous material body.

Read about it here.

Modernism in West Yorkshire

Designed in 1954 as a wedding gift for his brother, Peter Womersley's Farnley Hey is one of Britain's most celebrated modernist homes, and it’s now on the market for £1.05 million. Drawing on Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, Womersley created something strikingly un-English – at the time, the flat roofs, floor-to-ceiling glazing and open-plan interiors were more akin to California than the Pennines. Camphorwood floors, York stone and lemon-yellow Formica panels add warmth, while a double-height reception room – known as ‘the dance floor’ – comprises the heart of the home.

Read about it here.

An Ontario home in the trees

Perched on a forested bluff above Lake Huron, Cedar's Kin is a sprawling 5,000 sq ft residence by Omar Gandhi Architects. Three interconnected pavilions, a guest cabin and a beach hut are threaded through the treeline, each rotated to align with gaps in the canopy and maximise lake views. To further harmonise the building with its wooded surroundings, careful planning preserved existing trees and minimised erosion, while eastern white cedar clads the exterior and white oak joinery warms the interiors.

Read about it here.

A Japanese home in London

Hagen Hall transformed this Grade II-listed Islington terrace house for a couple with ties to Japan – this connection is felt in a singular material palette of oak joinery and wall panelling and a genkan entryway, shoji-inspired glass shelving and a tokonoma-style display niche. A sunken garden dining room and moody snug complete a home that balances late-Georgian heritage with rigorous contemporary minimalism.

Read about it here.

An abandoned home revived

No Architects revived an abandoned structure in the Czech Ore Mountains – a region emptied after post-war expulsions – and transformed it into robust holiday accommodation. The studio stripped back decades of additions, burying what didn't fit and connecting the restored original farmhouse to an overhauled structure via a single-storey link. Ground source heating, a new well and remote-controlled systems ensure resilience against the brutal Czech winters, while white-painted walls, timber, terrazzo and steel roofing create a gleaming, hardwearing retreat.

Read about it here.

A Mexican brutalist villa

Casa Macahuite, a brutalist villa in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, by Studio Font, sits between ocean and mountains, accessible only by bridge over a lagoon. Designed to withstand earthquakes and hurricanes, the 300 sq m off-grid home features five structural planes and a 14-metre cantilevered pergola that shades, frames views and ventilates. Softened by parota wood, textiles and native planting, the residence blurs indoor and outdoor living – it even overlooks a protected turtle nesting beach.

Read about it here.

A boulder-supported guesthouse 

This serene guesthouse in Columbia County, perched atop glacial boulders sourced from within a 35-mile radius, is the work of Brooklyn studio Of Possible. Guests enter the sub-1,000 sq ft, timber-clad structure from beneath, ascending a staircase as the building wraps around them. Inside, two snug bedrooms, a serpentine marble kitchen island and carefully chosen vintage furniture create a warm, Scandinavian-inflected atmosphere.

Read about it here.

A serene Indian home

On the edge of Theni city in Tamil Nadu, oriented toward a nearby valley and lake, STO.M.P designed this calm, linear home. Three horizontal bands of varying texture and openness correspond to the home's functions: communal spaces at ground level, bedrooms above and a gym and suite at the top. Warm timber surfaces blend with brass detailing and bold colour accents, creating a layered journey which blurs the boundaries between interior and landscape.

Read about it here.

In Oostduinkerke, a region along Belgium's southwest coast where shifting sand dunes meet the North Sea, you might come across some slightly surreal sights, including a ship-shaped restaurant and fishermen on horseback. Joining them recently is an equally arresting villa designed by local architect Magalie Munters.

Step inside this curvy seaside villa in Oostduinkerke, Belgium

Conceived as a sculpted mass within the dune landscape, the design is shaped by terrain, wind and light rather than by façade composition. From the street, the home's curved shape resemble a protective shell, and quietly references the shape of the Normandie, the 1937 boat-shaped restaurant to the south of the seaside resort.

Nestled in the landscape, the volume tapers toward the rear of the plot to create a generous garden, while the subtle shift in geometry also allows sunlight to strike both the southern and western façades, so that light continuously wraps the building throughout the day – quite a feat in such a compact building.

‘For several years I have been working on houses with more organic geometries. Through that ongoing research, I developed a way of building in which construction and technology no longer act as a limitation to the architecture,’ Munters explains.

‘This allows me to work with curves across the entire volume in a precise and controlled way, and to carry that logic through into the details – such as the absence of roof edges, the integration of elements or the curved garage opening,' she continues. 'What might appear as a free form is in fact the result of a very deliberate construction logic.’

The villa’s bedrooms are half-buried – or anchored – in the dunes. Above them is a living space rising toward the horizon, amplifying height and light. It's a particular favourite of the architect: ‘You arrive there through a vertical shaft that continues up toward the roof and then opens into the main space,’ she says. ‘The space is articulated rather than uniform: on one side, the kitchen is more intimate, with a lower ceiling, while on the other side the ceiling rises and opens up.'

‘This variation in height is essential,' Munters adds. 'In the evening, the light moves along the curved walls and becomes almost tangible where the space expands. The ceiling – and therefore also the roof – is not an arbitrary gesture. It is shaped both by its presence in the street and by the atmosphere I wanted to create inside: more openness and light toward the front, and a more intimate condition in the kitchen. The roof itself will also be used as a terrace. Toward the back it offers more privacy, while at the front it rises to create views toward the sea.’

Munters was inspired partly by the work of Le Corbusier, especially ‘in the rooftop solarium, in the way spaces expand and contract, and in the vertical shafts that structure movement through the house’. The shaft that cuts through the house towards the roof also introduces a sense of movement that recalls the logic of a vessel. ‘Underlying this is a modernist approach in which architecture and construction are conceived as one coherent system,’ she says.

The villa’s striking façade appears almost striated, its concrete surface carrying a horizontal grain that recalls the sand at low tide, when the sea withdraws and leaves delicate striations behind. Meanwhile, to the side a horizontal concrete band marks the transition between the base and the elevated living spaces.

‘Much of the technical complexity is embedded within the structure itself. This allows the architecture to remain tactile and direct: raw concrete, lime-washed surfaces, visible textures and a certain roughness in the finish,’ says the architect.

‘The concrete elements, including the staircase, are not treated as separate objects but as part of one continuous material body, almost as if the house has been shaped rather than assembled. Even the façade and finishes involve a very delicate form of handwork. This tension between a hidden, highly controlled building logic and a more timeless, almost archaic material expression is what makes the project interesting to me.’

Concrete also features heavily in the interiors, including the staircase, bathrooms, built-in seating and kitchen, which are all conceived as carved elements within the monolithic body. Sandblasted oak furniture and vintage pieces stand out against a backdrop of lime-washed walls that make some of the rooms resemble the inside of a seashell.

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

In Brussels, designer Victoria-Maria Geyer has transformed a historic maison de maître – the term for those grand, light-filled townhouses once built for the city’s elite – into something truly special. Situated near a lake in the heart of the city, the residence has evolved into an utterly elegant family home, its vision shaped by time, craftsmanship and a sense of cultural storytelling.

The project, which unfolded over five years, began when the client, a family of five, sought a home that would balance refinement with comfort. In response, Geyer conceived interiors that she describes as ‘colonial with a twist’. Unfolding in deep rust and golden yellow, the space thoughtfully weaves references to travel and artisanal craft. Egyptian wallpaper in the cloakroom, scarab motifs running along the staircase and Moroccan ottomans sit alongside Venetian canopy beds, Etro textiles and rattan kitchen detailing – cosmopolitan influences brought together with an intimate, lived-in ease.

The living room establishes the home’s aesthetic language through a carefully judged blend of vintage and contemporary pieces. Pierre Frey fabrics, a sculptural bronze work by Chidy Wayne, and a custom ‘Josephine’ coffee table from Geyer’s own ‘Heimat’ collection coexist with gold-leaf detailing on the mouldings and a curated selection of flea-market finds.

One of the most striking rooms is the billiard room, where Geyer embraces the bold with a rainbow-striped Kilim wallpaper – an unexpected yet harmonious counterpoint to the midcentury furnishings. A preserved fireplace anchors the room in its architectural past, echoing the wider restoration of original features throughout the house, including the staircase and stained-glass windows.

Materiality plays a central role in building the home’s layered atmosphere. In the dining room, Corian and oak surfaces are paired with straw wall coverings by Philip Jeffries. In the adjoining bar, a bespoke brass and walnut bar topped with onyx is complemented by raffia lighting from Natalia Brilli and Murano glassware, reinforcing the home’s global theme.

Upstairs, the master bedroom feels softer more serene. Anchored by a Venetian-inspired canopy bed, the space is defined by warm hues and richly textured fabrics. In the en suite bathroom, travertine walls and terrazzo flooring establish a spa-like calm, enhanced by sculptural ceramics.

Geyer’s approach to this home achieves something rarely achieved in interior design: it feels collected over time. Each room is composed with sensitivity, contrast and continuity, allowing diverse influences to come together in a truly cohesive way.

Recreate the mood

This Flemish house may appear monolithic and even a little mysterious upon approach – all clean, geometric shapes in a contemporary composition in brown brick. Yet stepping inside, the experience becomes cocooning, vibrant and at the same time truly expansive, as the home was designed to open up to its surroundings from the inside out. The project, designed by architect Pascal Bilqiuns and interior designer Julie Thiers, is the base of the latter's own family and effortlessly brings together the indoors and the outdoors, life and work.

Explore this new Flemish house

The property spans a substantial 550 sq m, nestled in the leafy Flemish countryside. Crafted around the owners' lifestyle and daily needs, the home features a flowing interior that unites different living spaces but is also at one with the house's context – and ensures a panoramic 360-degree view of its surrounding landscape.

Thiers heads Belgian design and product label Illus, and her home serves as the perfect showcase of her style and ethos. She treated the project as a 'living canvas', she explains, and a true 'place for experimentation'.

By being mindful when planning the internal organisation, the design team ensured there are few corridors and no 'dead space' in the home, which works hard for its brief at every turn. Open perspectives enrich internal views and allow the eye to rest – but equally, distinctive treatments and smart partitions between areas ensure different usages remain discrete as needed.

White or light-coloured walls help the spaces feel open, but bolder, tactile materials on the floors – such as the kitchen's Brecchia natural stone floor and the natural red stone with a bold pattern in the main bathroom – help anchor each room through a clearly defined personality. Timber window and door frames throughout blend effortlessly with the brick exterior and nod to Danish modernist architecture, which was a source of inspiration for Thiers.

Beyond products by Illus, the interiors feature a mix of vintage finds and contemporary pieces, such as a Nakashima table and chairs acquired at auction; a dining table by Brazilian designer Sergio Rodrigues; and an organic sofa by Pierre Augustin Rose.

pascalbilquin.be

illus-object.com

In Belgium’s Genk, a new, otherworldly site has been unveiled. C-mine, a former mining site-turned-creative hub, has opened ‘Playground’, a new space where art and play intersect. The aim behind the project is to create a physical space that invites artists to reimagine contemporary forms of play, and to design their idea of a unique play environment.

Explore Walter Van Beirendonck's extraterrestrial playground

For its first edition, C-mine invited fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck to create his version of a playground, which will remain in place for several years. Titling it ‘Welcome Little Stranger’, the designer was inspired by extraterrestrial beings.

Van Beirendonck – part of the influential group of designers the Antwerp Six in the 1980s – is known for his strong visual language and vibrant and colourful shapes. He often creates work rooted in themes of identity, diversity and fantasy, all elements that can be found throughout his playground design.

He looked to the idea of the unknown, and what else exists in the universe, inviting children to join in with this fascination, seeking adventure and fun action. More importantly, Van Beirendonck created the space for children to feel belonging, individuality and freedom.

To create the design, workshops were organised by Van Beirendonck and artist and former LUCA School of Arts student Emma Ribbens, where children from Genk were asked about extraterrestrial life and the role of play.

Ribbens, a product and social designer, is driven by the belief that play is essential to society (it's a hot topic; just last summer, 21st Europe and Spacon created a blueprint calling for playgrounds to be reimagined). With her input, the design explores how to stimulate imagination and social connection, while leaving a positive impact on children.

‘I wanted to design an environment that encourages children to use their own imagination, without screens or digital distractions,’ says Van Beirendonck. ‘Welcome Little Stranger is about wonder, the joy of discovery, and playing together – without limits.’

On a still-warm Paris day last October, sunlight streamed through the vaulted glass ceiling of the Centquatre, an arts centre in the 19th arrondissement, where guests had gathered for Glenn Martens’ first ready-to-wear show for Maison Margiela. A former funeral parlour, completed in the late 1800s, the vast main hall had been transformed for the occasion: sheathed in trompe l’oeil white curtains and lined with benches – themselves wrapped in white fabric – the scene included a 61-piece orchestra, at that point empty of its players (this was also rendered in white, from its music stands to a dramatic grand piano, a nod to house founder Martin Margiela’s favoured hue). Such was the piercing brightness, many of the attendees kept on their sunglasses or simply squinted into the light.

Then arrived the orchestra: a merry band of children, clutching instruments and clad in ill-fitting suits, some so large that the hemlines dragged along the ground like the train of a dress. They played with gusto, blasting through classical music’s greatest hits – from the booming Sunrise fanfare from Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 – as models, lips prised open with metal mouthpieces, began to parade around the space. The sound was deliriously off-key and out of time, but the children were charming (hailing from Romilly-sur-Seine and aged seven to 15, they are part of Orchestre à l’École, which turns local classrooms into orchestras; some had been learning for just a few months).

There is a famous photograph of Martin Margiela’s S/S 1990 runway show, held in 1989 in an abandoned playground in Paris’ 20th arrondissement, then largely populated by North African immigrants. In it, smiling local children scamper among models’ feet as guests crouch – some visibly open-mouthed at the spectacle – along the runway. These days, it has become commonplace for designers to seek out obscure settings for their shows, but back then, it was a bold riposte to the glossy, amped-up offerings of the 1980s; its uneven floor, free-for-all seating and improvised electrics (the Margiela team begged those in surrounding apartments to allow them to plug in cables for lights and music) a far cry from the gilded hotel ballrooms typical of the era’s fashion weeks.

It was a reason, perhaps, for the scathing reviews that followed in the press, but for many in the room – including some of the next generation of fashion designers, like Raf Simons, who had snuck in – it was a revolution. ‘Martin’s was the first show I ever attended,’ Simons said in 2016. ‘I was so struck by everything I was seeing that I started to cry. I felt so embarrassed. I was like, “Look at the ground, look at the ground, everyone’s going to see you’re crying”. Like, how stupid to be crying at a fashion show. Then I looked around, and half the audience was crying.’

‘I wanted to do something democratic,’ says Martens, noting that, when it comes to ready-to-wear, he wants to do something real – ‘never precious’. The children’s orchestra was part of that: after all, Maison Margiela – or Maison Martin Margiela, as it was first founded by its namesake designer and business partner Jenny Meirens – has never been about perfection. Martin Margiela’s most memorable designs were those that had been torn apart at their seams or turned inside out; daubed with paint or constructed from disparate found objects, from broken plates to old butcher’s aprons. At both Y/Project – where Martens was for 11 years – and Diesel, where he is creative director, he has favoured a similar irreverence. For his S/S26 collection for Diesel, models were scattered in plastic ‘eggs’ around Milan; fabrics came from intriguing experiments in mixing satin and denim, or bonded jersey, purposely cracked and broken across its surface.

Martens thinks there is something Belgian about this approach. Martin Margiela was born in Genk in Belgium’s east, Martens in Bruges in the west; both ended up studying at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts (the institution also birthed the Antwerp Six, which would put Belgian fashion on the map). ‘In Belgium, it is always raining, but they still walk to a restaurant in their fanciest clothes and big boots, never taking a taxi,’ says Martens. ‘They drink wine out of a plastic cup; they are so not precious. It doesn’t mean they are not gorgeous and beautiful, but they are still going to walk their dog around the park.’ It was a mood he sought to encapsulate with the S/S 2026 collection, described as ‘a series of concepts and proposals for real life’ in the press notes. ‘So even with the really beautiful gowns, I want them to feel a bit off. It’s about reality.’

The S/S 2026 ready-to-wear collection was not the first collection that Martens had designed for Maison Margiela, or indeed shown: last July, he presented an Artisanal collection (the equivalent to other houses’ haute couture lines) during Haute Couture Week, which marked his debut proper. Held in the basement of the Centquatre, where peeling trompe l’oeil wallpaper evoked the faded grandeur of country manor houses – as if models had been dragged through the tattered walls of time – the collection was one of strange, undone opulence, drawing inspiration from the architecture of medieval Flanders. Billowing gowns were rendered in molten metallic organza, while Renaissance-inspired jacquards and leather embossed with motifs from 16th-century Flemish wallpaper were patchworked together. Finally, each look came with a mask – some embellished with crystals, others in hammered metal – a nod to a Margiela principle (masks featured throughout Martin Margiela’s collections, while the designer refused to reveal his own face).

Martens had furiously drawn the collection before he had even been confirmed in the role (though he was hotly tipped to be next in line). ‘I wanted to own that moment, so I designed everything completely myself,’ he says, noting that usually a collection will be formed through discussion with his design team. ‘So when I started, I came to the office with a full line-up: all the reference pictures, all the colours, all the fabric treatments. I needed to feel that the success or failure was mine and not somebody else’s.’

He would sign the final contract just a few weeks later in a service-station Burger King, driving back from a weekend spent renovating his country house near Paris. Not long after, Renzo Rosso, chairman of the OTB Group, which owns Maison Margiela, made the announcement (the OTB Group is also the owner of Diesel, so Martens and Rosso’s relationship is longstanding). ‘I have worked with Glenn for years, I have witnessed his talent, and I know what he is capable of,’ Rosso said.

With the appointment came the inevitable weight of expectation. Only two named designers have preceded him at Maison Margiela: the eponymous founder, and John Galliano, an industry titan whose theatrical shows for Dior have become fashion lore. The latter was at Maison Margiela from 2014-2024, a period defined by critically lauded runway shows that gleefully clashed Margiela tropes with Galliano’s own penchant for historical grandeur and voracious storytelling. Martens admits he was a tough act to follow, particularly after Galliano’s final Artisanal show in 2024. ‘It was celebrated as one of the best haute couture collections of all time, so it’s hard to come into the house after that,’ he says. ‘But on the other hand, you have everybody saying that you are perfectly matched for the role. So there was a lot of expectation.’

Nonetheless, his own Artisanal collection garnered wide acclaim from critics (‘Glenn Martens has come to save us,’ read the headline for Tim Blanks’ Business of Fashion review), as well as on social media – though, as with any high-profile debut, there was also spirited debate. ‘Some people were hating on it, but then others were saying it was fantastic, and everybody has something to say, even some 17-year-old TikTok influencer,’ says Martens. ‘So after the show, I took myself to my little house in the countryside and locked myself away for five days, trying not to think about it.’

He has since learned to largely avoid social media, though he is gratified when people find ways to tell him how much they love what he is doing. And he has no regrets. ‘It wasn’t a shy collection. If you do something loud, then of course you put yourself in the position of getting loud criticism back. With social media, it’s a learning process. I’m definitely maturing.’

After the Artisanal collection, the ready-to-wear felt something of a relief for Martens – a shift in focus from the fantastical to the real. ‘It’s nice to be in a house that has both,’ he says. ‘I can have these moments where I design for the pure sake of creativity and beauty, but I don’t have the urge to do these crazy artistic things in my ready-to-wear.’ So in that first ready-to-wear collection, as the young orchestra made their way through the classical greats, Martens presented a roll-call of Margiela hits of his own, influenced by the archive but with his own signature irreverence. Like those mouthpieces: reminiscent of the house’s four-stitch motif, they were a little kinky, a little weird, very Glenn. Clothes riffed on eveningwear in undone style: tuxedo jackets were worn with torn shirts beneath, while the looping neckline of a waistcoat informed the cut of outerwear. Fabrics, as ever, were an intriguing collage: tough swathes of leather met energetic collages of sequins and crystal embroidery, while the final dress appeared wrapped in plastic supermarket shopping bags – a Martin Margiela-esque gesture.

‘It’s a blessing to me that this house has ready-to- wear – I want people to wear Margiela,’ says Martens. ‘I want my staff to wear it on the street, and even if [in the show] there’s a bit of a set, or hair and make-up, at its core it’s about reality. To me, that’s very close to Martin’s founding principles – he was really creating clothes that were ready to wear.’

At the end of the show, the young orchestra took a rapturously applauded bow, but Martens himself did not emerge through the curtain to receive his own ovation. This is to do with tradition: as one of the house’s values is anonymity, and Martin Margiela did not reveal his own identity, subsequent creative directors have also eschewed the traditional runway bow. It might not be something that Martens himself is yet fully on board with: a recent H&M collaboration, which largely riffed on his hallmark pieces at Y/Project, saw the designer undertake a multi-city tour, including a trip to London that featured a press junket on the top deck of a bus (most of the collection sold out online within minutes, so it worked). In life, at least, he is – slowly – learning to step back from work.

‘When I first started at Diesel, I would do all-nighters, and was just constantly busy with my job. But now that I’m 42, I’m a bit better,’ he says. Much of the distraction comes from Murphy, a border terrier gifted to him by his Y/Project team when he left the brand. ‘The moment I come home, he just takes all the attention. If he wasn’t there, I’d probably still just be working all night.’ Nevertheless, he says, with a smile, that people in his life still protest that he doesn’t give them enough attention. ‘At both Diesel and Maison Margiela, they are always complaining that I am not there enough; and all the people in my private life say the same. But I am learning to juggle.’

Ultimately, he says he sees little point in complaining – he has ended up exactly where he wanted to be. ‘I’m blessed to be working at a job, and in an industry, that I still have a passion for. There aren’t many people who can say that their job is their passion. I’ve never complained about going to the office in the morning – it’s a joy ride.’

A version of this story appears in the March 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available from 5 February in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Models: Ananda, Constance and Asher at Girl Management, Kate at HMM Paris, Cyprien at Select Model Management. Casting: Lisa Dymph Megens at Industry Art . Hair: Rimi Ura at Calliste. Make-up: Laure Dansou at WSM using Saie. Local producer: Clara Perrotte. Photography assistant: Arthur Jung. Fashion assistant: Jaime Butel. Hair assistant: Yui Hirohata. Make-up assistant: Inès Jegham. Production assistants: Jenna Florio, Gillian Bourgeois. Retouching: Lasso Studio.

In the introduction of his new book on Belgian embassies, Bram De Maeyer starts by citing a seemingly bland bit of bureaucracy from 2016, when the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to move its embassy to a new location in Washington, DC. 'An embassy is a building that represents a country abroad,' begins the edict-like public tender to renovate the premises it had just purchased for its American mission, before continuing, 'Through this building a country shows itself to the outside world.'

Indeed, as De Maeyer wittily argues, embassies are the most tangible expressions of a nation’s presence abroad: material manifestations of identity, policy, and self-perception. 'Therefore,' the Foreign Ministry's tender continues, 'it is important that Embassy buildings show a certain style, class without exaggeration, as they are in fact a visit [sic] card of the country in question.'

Explore the finest Belgian embassies and their architecture

It is De Maeyer’s choice to hone in on details such as the use of almost incongruously subjective adjectives like ‘style’ and ‘class’ by Belgian officialdom that makes his work so unique. It opens the door to a thorough examination of both the post-war statecraft and diplomatic architecture of this small Western European nation. That cited public tender from 2016 makes it very clear that for the client (the Belgian State itself, no less), this [Washington DC] 'embassy project was by no means a mundane commission,' De Maeyer argues.

Pivotal to the author’s method is the constant contextualisation of embassy building design as a whole, globally. In many ways, an embassy is never, or at least should never be, ‘a mundane commission’. It is through rich case studies in America, Poland, Australia, Brazil, Japan, the DRC and perhaps most spectacularly, in India with the New Delhi embassy (Satish Gujral, 1980-83) that De Maeyer successfully makes the case that Belgium has consistently and decidedly invested in architecture as an act of international self-representation.

As a recipient of American aid through the Marshall Plan and as a founding member of NATO, understandably, Belgium’s diplomatic building machine paid massive attention to Washington, DC, in the immediate post-war years. But De Maeyer reveals the remarkable impact of Baron Robert Silvercruys, who was appointed as Belgian Ambassador in 1945 and whose intrepid gusto in selecting sites, architects, materials and artworks led to an outsize Belgian presence in a crowded centre of world diplomacy.

Fresh in the post, the Baron managed to convince the war-torn and cash-strapped Belgian State to acquire the palatial Hôtel particulier-style residence at Foxhall Road. De Maeyer cites an article in the Washington Times Herald at the time: 'Belgium is in good shape; Silvercruys lives in one of the most magnificent estates in Washington.' When it came to Belgium’s Chancery building, with the help of his chauffeur, Silvercruys scanned the local real estate market and chose a prime 5000 sq m plot next to Edwin Lutyen’s opulent British Ambassador’s residence. The book delves into the fascinating science of the geographical positioning of embassies within the world's capitals. Location, location, location, only on a diplomatic scale.

For De Maeyer, however, as much representational force resides indoors; 'As the metaphorical home of the nation abroad, embassy interiors tend to be carefully orchestrated decors where material objects serve as instruments of identity-building and national representation.' At the Washington Chancery, Silvercruys selected Belgian marble, Congolese timber and a monumental tapestry linking Belgian and American histories and combined them with the height of midcentury modernist craftsmanship to produce a carefully orchestrated whole.

The book attests to the fact that these interior spaces, from Washington to Tokyo, are difficult to reconstruct. Documentation is scarce; photographs are often taken from grainy press cuttings of staged portraits, where interiors act as mere backdrops. Rooms and halls were routinely stripped, and furniture was unceremoniously disposed of, erasing the work of the informal interior designer, who was usually the ambassador’s wife, says De Maeyer, highlighting the ephemeral and often gendered nature of the material in question.

The book is all the more valuable as it gives a picture of embassies as liminal spaces between home and state, where hosting, ritual, and social choreography (often shaped by the ambassador’s partner) reveal diplomacy as something enacted through atmosphere as much as architecture.

De Maeyer argues that Belgium’s embassies are especially intriguing in contrast to a weak public-building culture at home, where architectural ambition was often blunted by bureaucracy and political patronage. Abroad, by contrast, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs operated largely independently of the public works ministry, enabling a surprisingly bold and diverse body of work. This allowed a small, internally divided Belgium to present itself architecturally on the world stage. The clearest expression of this is the embassy in New Delhi, widely regarded as the jewel in Belgium’s global portfolio crown.

Designed by the artist-turned-architect Satish Gujral, the building is a sculptural, brick-clad composition that draws on local fortresses, traditional Hindu forms and regional craft traditions. Rather than exporting a recognisably Belgian aesthetic, the ministry granted Gujral unusual creative freedom. For De Maeyer, this openness is not accidental but strategic in the absence of a singular Belgian national architectural identity. The author likens asking ‘What is Belgian?’ to the opening of Pandora's box; the question only exposes linguistic and cultural fault lines. Abroad, therefore, Belgium’s strategy became one of adaptability, flexibility and trust in strong architectural voices.

Despite this admirable built output, the book also tells the story of various challenges faced along the way. The positioning of an embassy – whether central or remote, monumental or discreet– is itself politically charged, a tension traced from Washington to its starkest expression in Kinshasa. The prominent positioning of Belgium's embassy in its former colony, the Democratic Republic of Congo, has made it hard to shed colonial symbolism.

Despite the bilateral and cooperative spirit intended (the building being shared with the Netherlands), the embassy became the target of an attempted attack during protests in January 2025. It is a reminder that diplomatic architecture operates within specific and evolving social and political landscapes. De Maeyer notes that the building was originally shaped by prestige politics, part of an architectural one-upmanship with France, whose own imposing embassy in Kinshasa sought to reaffirm French influence in the region.

More broadly, Belgium’s reliance on rented or adapted buildings and its lack of a fixed doctrine for embassy construction has produced an ad hoc policy driven by circumstance and individual actors. Crucially, De Maeyer frames this not as a weakness but as a quiet strength. Free from exporting a single national style, the book concludes, Belgium has repeatedly tailored its embassies to local contexts from Washington to New Delhi and beyond. It is this flexible, decentralised approach that is the unlikely key to Belgium’s architectural successes in the world of diplomacy.

'Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)' by Bram De Maeyer, published by Leuven University Press, November 2025, buy on amazon.co.uk

In the attic of a former almshouse in Hasselt, a city in eastern Belgium, pink-cheeked architecture students chat over laminated wood tables and perch on deep window seats beneath new dormers while tea brews in the kitchen. On the floor below, a series of old bedrooms have been renovated with alcove beds for student residents. And on almost every wall is an old decorative stone hearth, with chairs gathered around it.

The scene seems distinctly domestic for Hasselt University’s Interior Architecture programme, an English-language diploma focusing on adaptive reuse. But for the architects who repurposed the building, London’s David Kohn and Dirk Somers of Bovenbouw Architectuur in Antwerp, it proves their theory. 'Institutions can be happy in slightly awkward buildings,' says Kohn, standing in front of a Delft-tiled hearth. 'We’ve acknowledged all traces of the domestic architecture here, and communicated the value of historic architecture for contemporary use.' That the project itself is a striking example of adaptive reuse makes a tidy coda for the story.

Hasselt, like most Belgian cities, has a strong record in adaptive reuse. Less than a decade ago, the architects NoAarchitecten restored and extended a decommissioned prison into a warm and airy hub for the university’s Faculty of Law. The architecture faculty is part of a wider transformation of the city’s medieval beguinage, a campus of sorts for devout women who lived for God without actually taking the vows. The last Hasselt beguine died in 1886, not long after the enclave was rebuilt with 13 housing blocks orbiting a neoclassical church, which was the tallest building in town. The housing blocks took a beating over the decades, and a massive Allied assault in 1944 decimated the church.

It took 80 years to recast the bombing into something resembling a blessing. Other Low Country beguinages have been preserved for tourism. Hasselt’s was repurposed for public service. After the university acquired the property in 2016, the province held an open call for an architectural reimagining. Four of the proposals, says Kohn, 'wanted to work on the ruined church. We suggested working around it.'

The original cloister was walled and inward-looking. Today, the 2.5-acre site opens on all sides with vast rounded portals cut into the ramparts. And for the first time in its existence, the world is invited to cut through the newly public grounds. At the southern corner, the architects designed a lookout tower in clinker bricks from Germany, cleaner than the originals but equally ruddy in colour. Visitors can climb a spiral staircase past circular openings in the brickwork – a campus-wide motif – to look out over the old city.

'With the geometric forms, it doesn’t seem like a defensive structure,' says Kohn. 'There’s something slightly decorative and folly-like about it.' Similar in scale and appearance to Kohn’s gatehouse tower at New College in Oxford, it climbs to the same 30 metres as the bombed church steeple, reestablishing the beguinage on Hasselt’s skyline.

Within the perimeter, the architects were light-handed. They stabilised the ruined church walls and levelled them off with an icing of render. Within them, a new reflecting pool can be drained and events staged in its place. The uneven surface of the walls draws as much attention to the negative space as to what remains. 'The restoration and reconstruction show layers of memory,' says Kohn.

He’s referring not only to the church but to the faculty’s interior, where the team discovered gaps in the surviving tilework and panelling. Their new scheme doesn’t let you forget what was lost. 'Where there was once a fireplace, we brought back the memory with a silhouette,' says Kohn of one particular doorway bearing the contours of an elaborate crow-stepped mantel – like a cartoon character that’s run through a wall (the mantel was actually discovered intact after the project was completed, but remains in a back room).

In typical Belgian fashion, this new neighbourhood nexus doesn’t clamour for your attention but rather quietly guides you on a pleasant stroll through town. 'Belgium is very misunderstood as boring, because it doesn’t shout about its success,' says Kohn. 'But it’s false that compassion can’t have passion.'

davidkohn.co.uk

When the owners of Woodstock House first approached Brussels studio BC Architects & Studies & Materials, they asked for a sustainable spin on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House – an off-grid home that would hover above a river and blend into its woodland surroundings. While this Belgian vacation home takes cues from the terraces and stone towers of the 1930s Pennsylvania classic, it has a material palette and lightness that merge far more naturally into the landscape than the concrete-heavy original.

Explore Woodstock House, a new, sustainable Belgian vacation home

The house sits beside a river that often floods, within an isolated valley in the Ardennes in southern Belgium. 'Most people wouldn’t build here but there’s something beautiful about a landscape that’s constantly changing,' says BC Architects’ co-founder Wes Degreef.

He designed the project using the practice’s bioregional architecture philosophy: timber, stone and earth were largely sourced within a 30km radius and the project draws on vernacular building methods. 'In every project, we always take cues from local materials and crafts, while showing that you don’t need concrete to build a house.'

BC Architects demolished the existing stone ruins on the site, giving their components – windows, tiles, furniture and roofing – away to local housebuilders, neighbours and building merchants, but they reused some of the stone, crushing it to form gravel. This was compressed into layers on the schist bedrock, using an ancient building technique, to eliminate the need for concrete slab foundations.

Woodstock House’s three vaulted stone towers are built from a hard Belgian sandstone called Grès du Condroz from a local quarry, using a lime and sand mortar. The towers hold functional spaces (such as bathrooms) and spare bedrooms, which are insulated with hemp. Main living areas and family bedrooms are housed on a diaphanous glazed deck that bisects the towers and appears to float above the river.

'You enter on this level from the road behind, so it’s like you’re boarding a ship,' says Degreef. It is built from untreated larch from a local saw mill, which will change colour over time – the supporting pilotis echoing the trunks of the surrounding trees. Steel feet protect them from rising water levels, and the structure has a roof clad in thin stone slabs, recalling the local vernacular.

BC, which stands for Brussels Corporation, is a highly experimental hybrid organisation including BC Studies (a non-profit educational laboratory) and BC Materials, which transforms excavated earth into building materials. It is pushing for systemic change in the construction industry with what it calls ‘acts of building’ – each project being a prototype for challenging norms, reimagining what is possible with local materials and rethinking the architect’s role.

Past projects include Lot 8 at Luma Arles in France – a collaborative renovation of the Magasin Electrique with Atelier Luma and Assemble Studio, using earth and biomaterials from the local Camargue region – and Usquare Feder in Brussels, which used the city as a quarry.

Woodstock House draws on the hybrid practice’s material expertise: walls of the stone towers, for example, are lined with humidity-controlling rammed earth, made by mixing local clay with crushed waste from the quarry where the stone was sourced. ‘The project has given us added conviction in our bioregional approach,’ says Degreef. But the house – which is warmed by a ground source heat pump and will soon be powered by a water turbine – is more than a sustainability prototype: it's a richly textured, inviting and highly liveable one-off.

The high iron content in the local clay gives the rammed earth walls a warm, terracotta tone, and almost all of the furniture and cabinetry was made for the house from local oak – even the slender pendant lights, which were created by Degreef’s father-in-law. Woodstock House is born from the landscape, while being a finely crafted vessel from which to view the ever-changing surrounding scenery.

bc-asm.org

Through the lens of American filmmaker Sofia Coppola, girlhood appears dreamlike yet tinged with melancholy; her intricate coming-of-age stories are softened by honey-lit portrayals of enigmatic characters. By contrast, French-American artist Louise Bourgeois channels something far more cathartic: her work is a dark allegory of gendered oppression, shaped by the searing memories of an alienating childhood. Japanese photographer Fumiko Imano, meanwhile, strikes a more playful register with self-portraits alongside her imagined twin: a tender, gregarious meditation on youth refracted through cultural dissonance.

The truth is, girlhood resists definition. It is at once singular and collective. Glimpses of it surface in art and in memory. It informs who we are, but more often than not, we want to rebel against it. It is complex, but it’s also beautiful.

In ‘Girls. On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between’, showing until 1 February 2026 at MoMu, Antwerp’s fashion museum, girlhood is framed less as an answer than as an open question. Curator Elisa De Wyngaert describes it as ‘delicate, subversive, volatile and unresolved’. She admits to a flicker of anxiety about how audiences might respond, whether the binary boundaries of the word will be challenged. ‘I keep reminding myself that girls deserve this space,’ she says.

The exhibition poses questions rather than offering conclusions: ‘When do you stop being a girl? Is it a choice you make, or made for you? Is girlhood just a phase, or something more lasting: a mindset, a feeling, an aura you carry? Which memories, emotions, or impulses stay with you, shaping who you become?’

‘Girls. On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between’ at MoMu

Themes such as ‘the lingering years of girlhood’, ‘boredom’, and ‘coming of age’ are traced through the exhibition's constellation of works across art, fashion, film, and photography. It is a relevant and timely field study, especially since, in the last five years, social media has repackaged girlhood into a stream of micro-trends and endless vocabulary: girl dinner, girl walks, girl maths. It feels apt, then, that the exhibition opens with Maya Man’s Love/hate (2022): a punching bag cradling a phone that scrolls endlessly through gendered performance in the theatre of internet culture. From this starting point, the show unravels the sartorial, iconographic, cultural and psychological associations tethered to the figure of the girl.

For much of art history, the female subject was cast as a passive subject. Only in the late 20th century did its portrayals begin to carry emotional and psychological depth, paralleling the emergence of distinctly gendered children’s fashion.

Japanese-Mongolian painter Arisa Yoshioka frames growing up as an ongoing negotiation of belonging, while Nathanaëlle Herbelin’s Charlotte (2023) captures her neighbour’s fragile courage in choosing whether to present as a boy or a girl. American artist Alice Neel’s Memories (1981) offers a piercing portrait of her only surviving daughter: an image that confronts the turbulence of balancing young motherhood with the demands of an artistic career. Meanwhile, Italian fashion stylist and visual artist Sofia Lai’s morphing sculptures embody the bodily anxieties of growing up.

The theme of sleep is central here. Bedrooms, after all, often mirror the intensity and fragility of adolescence. Within the exhibition, three rooms are reimagined as installations, each evoking a different form of yearning, whether for shelter or escape.

The first references Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (1999): Lux Lisbon’s clothes are scattered across the bed, a stark contrast between the shapeless, conservative feedsack dresses enforced under parental watch and the clandestine outfits meant for nights out.

Taiwanese designer Jen-Fan Shueh, of Jenny Fax, reconstructs her own teenage bedroom: an austere space defined less by her desires than by her mother’s vision, notable in its absence of clutter. The final room, created by Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena of Chopova Lowena, draws on their Bulgarian-American and British heritage.

Guest curator Claire Marie Healey brings a cinematic lens to the exhibition, selecting films that lend the theme a vivid, visual dimension. Works such as Marie Antoinette (2006), Girlhood (2014), and Bonjour Tristesse (2024) challenge cinema’s patriarchal gaze, portraying restless, resilient characters who resist containment. This leads into ‘Picturing girls’, a section that spotlights three photographic narratives shifting between documentary, portraiture, and autobiography.

Rituals of girlhood emerge as recurring motifs. In Girls Shopping (2001), British-American photographer Nancy Honey captures the simple joy of an adolescent outing: ‘They didn’t buy much that day – they tried on endless pairs of shoes and clothes and ate sweets. That was the joy of it,’ she recalls. By contrast, Leticia Valverdes’ Brazilian Street Girls (2000) reflects her lifelong commitment to documenting those on the margins of society, while Eimear Lynch’s Girls’ Nights (2023) traces the charged anticipation of Irish teens preparing for discos.

Archival works also resonate. Jim Britt’s Sisters (1970s) and Nigel Shafran’s Teenage Precinct Shoppers (1990) occupy a special place, alongside zines (notably Bikini Kill, Riot Grrrl, and Femzine) that summon memories of collaging teenage icons, riot slogans, and anti-commercial mantras. A curated library of texts extends the dialogue; literary volumes by Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir, and Bernardine Evaristo offer new ways of mapping girlhood’s elastic borders.

Increasingly, in the realm of fashion, female designers have reclaimed archetypes and paraphernalia linked to the hyper-girly figure, which were once dismissed as infantilising: white socks, hair slides, glitter, nail art, hoodies. Case studies include how Simone Rocha reframes communion as a ritual of dress, Veronique Branquinho reimagines the prom queen and the schoolgirl, and Molly Goddard draws on the silhouettes, textures, and playfulness of childhood clothing. Earlier examples include Miuccia Prada’s ambiguous renderings of girlhood through both Prada and Miu Miu, and Maison Martin Margiela’s 1992 Artisanal collection, which deconstructed 1950s debutante gowns. ‘Perhaps it’s a way for designers to go back to their own adolescence,’ De Wyngaert suggests.

‘Girls’ concludes with a museum-produced film: a focus group of women across generations, each offering an intimate reflection on girlhood. Leaving the exhibition, it’s hard not to recall that scene in The Virgin Suicides, when the doctor tells young Cecilia, ‘You’re not even old enough to know how bad life gets,’ and she quips back, ‘Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a 13-year-old girl.’ At MoMu, ‘Girls’ is brilliant at capturing – or reminding us of – exactly that.

‘Girls. On Boredom, Rebellion and Being In-Between will be on display at MoMu until 1 February 2026. For more information, visit momu.be

Landscape architect Bas Smets is currently collaborating on a book with Emanuele Coccia, a lecturer at the French research institute EHESS. The Italian-born philosopher’s work centres on ideas of landscape and our connection to nature; his own 2018 book, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, was innovative in talking about the fundamental role of flora in our relationship with the world.

We met with Smets and Coccia to discuss landscape, its meaning and potential.

Emanuele Coccia and Bas Smets discuss

Wallpaper*: How did you two meet?

Bas Smets: I was in [artist] Philippe Parreno’s studio in Paris, and he told me, ‘You really have to read this book, The Life of Plants.’ I invited Emanuele to be in conversation at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, where we had an exhibition in 2018. [Before the event] I took his book to the Boboli Gardens in Florence, and I had an afternoon to myself, underlining passages from it to form questions for our conversation.

Emanuele Coccia: That was the first time we actually met, but it is important to say that we also saw each other in a bar later, and then had dinner and a longer conversation. But we met because of Philippe, who is a very close friend of both of us.

W* Emanuele, can you explain about your connection to landscape?

EC: When I was young, I had agricultural training, which led me to work a lot with topics around ecology and biology. As a child, I wished I could become an architect, but I knew I couldn’t draw. So if you put together those two elements, you arrive at landscape architecture. I quickly realised, when I started to study ecology, that the word ‘ecologist’ should be replaced by ‘landscape architect’, because what we need is new landscape architecture and not just ecology. One of the biggest problems with ecological thinking today is the separation of human and non-human. Whenever we encounter a problem in ecology, we think the solution is to leave non-humans alone. What we have to do is form a good relationship with the rest of the species.

W*: So it’s about symbiosis?

EC: Not just symbiosis. It’s also about forming space for us to live together. This is a good definition of landscape. Ecology often thinks of the relationship between humans and non-humans in terms of allotment gardens: everyone must have their own space and stay where they are, otherwise they become an invasive species. Landscape architecture, on the other hand, is the discipline that manages to find a way for as many species as possible to coexist in a single territory. There are very few practitioners who are aware of that, and Bas is one of them, which is why we immediately connected.

BS: I agree. I got into landscaping as I have always asked the philosophical question: how to live on this planet? We have all these life forms, how do we share this planet? Landscaping for me is not decorative. It’s a systemic question. [French philosopher] Alain Roger wrote, ‘land becomes a landscape’. Landscape is an act of organising natural elements. It is linked to actions that change the biosphere in which we live. Ultimately, it is about biospheric thinking.

W*: It sounds like the definition of landscape has changed over time.

BS: We live in a time of crisis. Biospheric thinking is using landscape projects to make climates, understand climates and organise microclimates, to find solutions to climate challenges. Landscape has come a long way from garden design. Hopefully, it helps us make cities more resilient to climate change.

EC: Still, there is an embarrassingly low bar on our understanding of landscape, in comparison to architecture, where we have produced a huge amount of theoretical thinking over time. Very few landscape architects are writing; Bas is one of them. As a result, the canon is incredibly biased and limited. There are no publications talking about exciting landscape projects happening in different parts of the world. Schools need to make landscape architecture a bigger discipline. This is a huge cultural tragedy. It is a problem of training and a lack of awareness.

BS: Emanuele and I often say we need to start a publishing house for landscape architecture books. I started teaching at Harvard three years ago. Landscape architecture is a difficult thing to teach; you need a basic knowledge of many things, such as pedology, geology, ecology, hydrology, meteorology and architecture. It is not a field you can learn in five years. Working with living material is incredibly complex; you need experience and to develop intuition. Another thing is that landscape architecture has been neglected for many years by both architects and artists. So it’s not only difficult to become a good landscape architect, but you are also not looked at in the right way. What we can do is territorial transformation, like [in designing the Luma Foundation’s Parc des Ateliers] in Arles, where we made profound changes with the help of plants. Plants are our agents.

EC: Even from a legal point of view, it implies a change in the way we do contracts, as with landscape architecture, when the building project ends is when the landscape one begins. It can last up to ten or 20 years.

BS: There is this interesting theory that landscaping changed its status after the Second World War. Before the war, the modernist movement considered landscape an essential part of its social programme and valued the importance of being outside. After the war, with the necessity to build a large amount of housing in a very short time, suddenly all the attention went to building, and landscaping became an afterthought. That is not too long ago.

EC: The problem is that now, having a roof over your head is not enough. Cities today are dying because they were not built in a way that frames the entire landscape, but only think about the human elements. We need to rewrite the theory of the city and transform it into a theory of the new planet. Every city must become a kind of interspecies magnet, a place where the entire planet conspires to breathe better. It is a task that landscape architecture should take on.

BS: I think landscape architecture is, by definition, a collective intelligence. It’s biospheric science, everything is linked.

W*: Landscape is linked to the climate crisis, wellness and a sense of place. What is the most urgent problem for landscape architects to tackle for the future?

BS: With my students, I don’t ask them to find an answer to something; I ask them to pose a question. We present a city and ask them, ‘What is the most urgent thing to do?’ This way, they learn to define the problem before formulating a response.

EC: As most of us live in cities, we need to rethink them. We need to invent forms and structures that allow nature to live within a city. And we need to look at landscape architecture as an artistic space. Landscape architecture is the queen of science because it helps us to consider nature as one of the biggest forms of art on the planet.

W*: Does this reframing include some way of ‘healing’ nature and our planet?

BS: Landscaping is not about repair. We are part of a larger ecosystem, and instead of trying to impose ourselves on it, we need to figure out how to live with it differently. It is about understanding its systemic value. For example, we transformed a former desert [the park in Arles] into an incredible space where lots of species now thrive.

W*: Is it an equal relationship between humans and other living things? We can manipulate the environment, but then we also have climate change, nature’s reaction. Where does the landscape architect’s responsibility lie in terms of managing this relationship?

EC: I am just a scholar, but I would say that we have to avoid formulating the question in purely moral terms because this way we are giving too much power to humanity, who don’t have this power, and we’re turning problems into a question of guilt and merit. For example, we know now that the Amazonian rainforest has been inhabited by many populations and has been largely shaped by these populations. Unlike what we used to think, this is an urban artefact, including lots of settlements. They didn’t ask themselves what their responsibilities were, but they created a space that’s more biodiverse than it was before, the most biodiverse on the planet. That is the power of landscape architecture, and we need to study it.

BS: It’s like being a caretaker. As Buckminster Fuller said, we are on the planet Spaceship Earth. It’s about making things better, and current conditions are never final.

W*: Is there something that makes you feel optimistic about the future in the field?

EC: That there are people like Bas, new figures, and intellectuals in landscape architecture is fantastic. This didn’t exist 40 or 50 years ago. They are reshaping the discipline.

BS: For me, it’s projects like Arles: the moment you bring back a systemic approach, when you bring back soil, water, plants and are reenacting the appearance of life on earth. We brought water, then plants, and now animal life is coming back by itself. We tried to make calculations, of course, but we never expected wildlife would come back so fast and so furiously. We have 55 new species of birds, 20 of which are nesting here. The moment you tap into the life force, the regeneration is much faster than anything we could ever make as a human species. It is a clear sign of hope.

Find out more about Bas Smets in our profile, and meet some of the world's most exciting landscape architects in the Wallpaper* Landscape Architects’ Directory 2025

This article appears in the October 2025 Issue of Wallpaper*, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

You might expect a landscape architect to put plants at the heart of their universe. In a sense, Bas Smets, one of the industry’s pioneering thinkers, does that, too, but it’s the triptych of philosophy, art and science that forms his true north star.

Perhaps it’s because landscapes are ever-changing – their very idea evolving over time and history – but also, as nature is alive and therefore a moving target, it physically morphs into something different every day. ‘You need to understand a site and work with it, and realise that it is not in a state of “being”, but it’s in a constant state of “becoming”,’ the Belgian landscape architect says. In this fluid and dynamic condition, references are needed, and while you might not immediately associate these three areas of culture and knowledge with landscape, to Smets, they are intrinsically linked.

Explore the world of landscape architect Bas Smets

‘Landscape is a philosophy,’ he says. ‘It’s about understanding how to live on this planet. What is more philosophical than that? French philosopher Alain Roger said the land, the phase zero of a site, becomes a landscape through an artistic intervention, so art plays a key role here, too. In fact, the first recording of the use of the word “landscape” was by the painters from the Low Countries in the 16th century – it’s borrowed from the Dutch word “landschap”, which was first used to speak about a new genre in painting.’

Landscape is, above all, a mental construction, a way of organising the elements of the ‘land’. It is a concept that Smets has elaborated on and researched extensively for publications and exhibitions, including curating shows in 2016 and 2019 in Brussels’ Bozar art centre on both the history of notions of landscape and landscape within painting (in particular, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s work).

The science behind nature and how plants and all living things work, alone and together, is the third axis in Smets’ thinking. ‘Darwin contended that the environment does not shape the plants, but the plants shape the environment. Landscaping is setting in motion something that then continues to transform the space. You are hacking into an algorithm and into that logic. At the same time, the landscape is cyclical; it is about transformation.’

For Smets, working with a site’s natural environment to design a new landscape involves intense measuring and a deep comprehension of what is there, and what can be, in terms of biology, meteorology, geology and a host of other scientific fields, before even getting close to hatching a plan.

This quest for understanding, and an inherent curiosity, have always been a part of Smets’ thinking. He had a peripatetic childhood in Congo and Algeria (his mother worked for non-profits and his father was a civil engineer), before returning to Belgium to live on the outskirts of Brussels. As a young adult, he lived in Leuven and Geneva, where he studied engineering and architecture, and landscape architecture, respectively; and in Oregon, where he spent a year as an exchange student. ‘It was my first encounter with true wilderness and outdoor living,’ he recalls.

As a landscape professional, he’s lived in Brussels, Paris and Arles, following his projects, while he regularly commutes to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for four months each year, teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. These travels often inspired questions about life on our planet, prompted by different settings and human behaviours within them. While drawn to philosophy and mathematics as a young adult, he realised during his time at KU Leuven that what he enjoyed most was not designing the buildings, but everything else around them. He turned to landscape architecture and has never looked back.

Spending six years in Paris, he worked for the office of landscape architect Michel Desvigne before setting up his studio in his living room in Brussels in 2007. A year later, he was joined by architect Eliane Le Roux, now his partner and associate, who serves as the studio’s creative director (as well as the lead of her own design atelier; she has worked on catwalk designs for Maison Margiela, among other fashion brands).

Le Roux’s artistic consultation and detail-orientated approach have guided the majority of the practice’s product output – from benches and other outdoor furniture to material compositions, fashion accessories, merchandise, and the studio’s brand identity, helping to glue it all together. ‘I don’t have a look, I have a methodology,’ says Smets – yet through Le Roux’s diligent eye, everything, from website design to project expressions, leaves the impression of a truly cohesive creative body of work. ‘It brings a whole new depth of thought, adding a layer of refinement to the landscape project,’ says Le Roux.

One of Smets’ first commissions was for a small private garden. His client, Swiss art patron and businesswoman Maja Hoffmann, wanted a design for her central London home’s neglected courtyard. Titled the ‘Sunken Garden’ and completed in 2011, the project became Smets’ first application of microclimate analysis. Realising that the space was consistently two to three degrees warmer than its surrounding environment, due to its enclosed nature, Smets tapped into this temperature potential, bringing in Tasmanian giant ferns and Yorkstone rocks, and transforming the relatively small patch of land, surrounded by tall façades, into a lush, leafy, almost otherworldly retreat.

‘I thought, I want to make the last prehistoric garden of London! Fern is one of the oldest plant species on the planet,’ he says. ‘I like to understand a climate, record it, respond to it and then change it. With this project, because of its enclosed nature, I realised there was the possibility of creating a microclimate using the right plants. Plants are an agent of change and transformation.’

Smets’ approach expands to fictional landscapes, too. A piece he worked on with artist Philippe Parreno allowed him to imagine an entire environment from scratch. The project, a film titled Continuously Habitable Zones, made for a Fondation Beyeler show in Switzerland in 2010, involved creating a black garden on an imaginary planet set in a world of several suns. It was constructed in Portugal, and the result features an almost desert-like terrain made of a diamond dust ‘river’ and black plants (his research found that, due to the particularities of the light frequencies in such an environment, planting wouldn’t be green). ‘It was interesting, as it took this idea of inventing a landscape to a whole new level,’ he says.

Creating worlds and transforming landscapes sounds powerful, but moves such as these come with restrictions: how much are we meant to tweak and tinker with the natural world? ‘Plants move, all life moves, even continents move, but we don’t have to be naive about it,’ notes Smets, highlighting the need for a scientific approach and calculated steps. ‘The idea of indigenous plants was invented in the 18th century, which was a very peculiar moment in history. It was about putting categories on animals, people and plants; this one is from here, and that one is not. The reality is that nature has never cared about that. In today’s climate crisis, we have to think about the force of plants, their capacity, and look at them as an opportunity.’

In this context, Smets’ take on the use of science in landscaping is not about dominating the environment, but about understanding it. ‘Our knowledge of how plants work is fairly recent,’ he says. ‘They’re intelligent in the sense that they make choices. I always look at what the vocation of a site dictates, and that is what drives the project.’

This dynamism is one of the reasons why he prefers to keep in touch with projects far beyond what’s often seen as the completion date. Ideally, he’d like to follow up with work at least two years post-completion, measuring, tweaking, supporting and adjusting as necessary.

This thinking became an integral part of the studio and is regularly used in Smets’ projects, such as in the hanging gardens at the Mandrake hotel in London in 2017; creating 17 public plazas with Office KGDVS, crafting greenery and shading across Bahrain’s historical Pearling Path; planting in La Défense in Paris in 2020, where groves of alder trees protect the ground level’s open, public spaces from excessive wind by creating an urban forest; and the 2024 reimagining of the Baumanière Les Baux-de-Provence hotel and restaurant gardens in the south of France. His biggest ‘experiment’, however, is the Luma Foundation’s Parc des Ateliers in Arles, in Provence.

The site, an abandoned railway yard that had become an industrial wasteland, was given a new lease of life in 2014, when Maja Hoffmann began transforming it into a vibrant art campus. One by one, its existing warehouse structures were reimagined for art displays, residences and research (the list of collaborating architects includes Frank Gehry, Annabelle Selldorf, BC Architects and Assemble). Importantly, with Smets’ help, the campus’ outdoor areas, formerly a desert-like terrain where nothing grew, were completely revived into a lush and richly biodiverse ecosystem.

According to Smets, crafting the park in Arles was almost like mimicking the appearance of life on the planet as it came out of a body of water. He worked with a range of specialists, from botanists to climate engineers and pedologists, to bring back biodiversity, and he ‘tried to imagine what nature would have done’, activating the land in stages, bringing earth, water and plants (more than 140 species and some 80,000 trees, shrubs and flowers) in calculated succession so they could mesh and feed off each other’s success. Wildlife followed effortlessly, and now 55 new species of birds frequent the park, which is also home to small animals, such as earthworms, frogs and hedgehogs.

If these gardens looked enticing when the project opened its doors to the public in 2021, they are positively thriving now, as Smets returned to Arles this summer to launch an exhibition on his studio’s work. A minimalist and immersive yet incredibly layered display, it tells the story of Smets’ pioneering thinking and, through examples of ongoing projects, showcases how carefully injected urban ecologies can transform our relationship with the environment (one that is currently in crisis, as the entrance canopy, decked with a climate stripe graph that shows the earth’s rising temperatures to this day, demonstrates). The Luma shop now stocks hats and bags designed by Le Roux to mark the exhibition and spread awareness for the landscape experience beyond the foundation’s borders.

More experiments include ongoing projects in Antwerp, where he is currently designing a riverside park that draws on the city’s old canal system to create a dyke against rising sea levels, and research works, from his leading of the Belgian participation at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, where the country’s pavilion becomes a ‘living’ laboratory that shows how plants can be leveraged to alter indoor climate, to the work at his Harvard studio, titled ‘Biospheric Urbanism’. The latter’s intense analysis led to the proposal to create artificial microclimates by boosting Athens’ green infrastructure, for example, by temporarily planting secondary archaeological sites to bring the nature-deprived Greek capital’s temperature down using the power of plants.

The redesign of the surroundings of Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral following the devastating 2019 fire is, no doubt, his most high-profile upcoming project. For his 2021 international competition-winning scheme, Smets used the same climatic approach to create an ‘augmented landscape’ around the monument. His terrain and climate analysis aimed to tap into nature’s forces to not only slow down overheating but significantly lower perceived urban temperatures around the Île de la Cité in the Seine. Working with architecture studios Grau and NGA, Smets completely reimagined views, routes and levels on the land mass.

An abandoned car park beneath the cathedral will be transformed into a visitor centre, offering views of the foundations as seen 800 years ago, when the cathedral was first built and before soil sediments and construction raised the ground to its current level. An open plaza, paved with striated Burgundy stone slabs, will be covered with a thin film of water daily, not enough to get shoes wet but just enough to freshen the surroundings naturally through evaporative cooling. (The striation was Le Roux’s idea and not only creates an optical illusion by visually extending the floor pattern inside the cathedral, but also enhances the surface’s anti-slip properties.) Meanwhile, a redesigned green park, complete with more than 165 new trees, as well as a rethought surrounding road system, will turn this part of central Paris into a mini green paradise.

A first phase, the small plaza directly outside the cathedral’s entrance, was completed in 2024, marking the monument’s reopening. While works on the wider site will continue until 2028, this element offers a glimpse into the future – one that Smets is hopeful landscape will play a key role in, as our environment, natural and human-made, is inescapably present and therefore ever-more critical, both in terms of our wellbeing and the very survival of our planet. As he highlighted at the opening of his show in Arles in July 2025, ‘we are always surrounded by landscape’.

‘Bas Smets: Climates of Landscape’ is on show until 2 November at Le Magasin Électrique at the Luma Foundation, Arles, luma.org, bassmets.be

Welcome to the third instalment of the new Wallpaper* video series, The Stuff That Surrounds You. Watch as we're invited into the intriguing and idiosyncratic homes of creatives and makers (such as our debut with Veronica Ditting and our second episode with Yasmin Sewell), catching a glimpse of their interior lives via the objects with which they surround themselves, all of which tell a story.

There's a tendency among writers to lean on confirmation bias when profiling successful individuals, suggesting that their path was predetermined. In Glenn Sestig’s case, however, the assertion feels apt. His love of architecture started as a child, when his parents would comment on homes that they passed in the car. His father aspired to be an architect, but was unable to afford the education. Sestig fulfilled that long-deferred dream.

By the age of 13, he had already designed rooms for his parents and grandparents. Even then, his work showed glimmers of what would become his signature style – functional and tactile, taking cues from the likes of Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright and Carlo Scarpa. ‘When I go back to see the designs… it's the same way of thinking and designing as I do today. They look like modernism,’ says Sestig.

That he would pursue architecture wasn’t a foregone conclusion, however. Sestig’s other passion was fashion, and, for a time, he stood at a crossroads. But he managed to find a way to integrate fashion into his practice, working with designers such as Raf Simons, Pieter Mulier and Olivier Theyskens. ‘You cannot really separate fashion, architecture, photography, music… they all need each other,’ he says.

Sestig's breakthrough came with the design of the now-iconic Soap hair salon in Antwerp, and he founded his practice, Glenn Sestig Architects, the following year (1999). Today, he is known for architecture that is not minimalist per se, but monumental, symmetrical and sophisticated, having worked on projects such as the Thirty Lane modernist villa, a rural retreat for the Pringiers family, and the La Réserve hotel in Knokke.

Sestig’s residence, which he shares with his husband, Bernard Tournemenne – an artist and creative director of Glenn Sestig Architects – was originally designed in the 1970s by Ivan Van Mossevelde for an art collector. ‘Visually, it's very brutalistic. It’s totally concrete, and the plan is very minimalistic,’ says Sestig. ‘So when I saw [it], it was something very close to me.’

The house first caught his eye during a walk 25 years ago. He asked the owner if he could have a tour, which they declined, but Sestig remembered the residence. Years later, in 2017, he acquired it. What followed was a restoration that carefully preserved the building’s shell: ‘I didn't want to change anything about that beautiful, strong architecture,' he says.

Sestig's home is filled with sculptures and sculptural forms, from a ceramic by Guy Bareff, to a structure from Pierre Caille of which there are only three in the world, and stone-hewn Italian street furniture from an unknown designer. Then there's the 'living sculpture': Sestig's cat, Tanit, named after the goddess of Ibiza, where he rescued her from.

Elsewhere: light fixtures from the ‘Tennessee’ collection that he designed for Ozone, a vast metal candelabra from Aether/Mass, and a chair for the Ostend Post Office designed by architect Gaston Eysselinck. Sestig's seating collection also comprises an Oscar Niemeyer ‘Marquesa’ bench, a Zaha Hadid ‘Moraine’ sofa, and the ‘Cornaro’ sofa from the ‘Ultrarazionale’ series, the only sofa collection that Carlo Scarpa ever designed.

Art is used sparingly. A portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe shot by Patrick Robyn, the husband of Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester, hangs on the wall. The only remaining piece from the home's original owner is a wall mural by Sol LeWitt.

Sestig chooses his objects based on a feeling rather than criteria – what matters most is that an object is well-crafted and resonates with him: ‘It's difficult to explain why I like an object, but it's important for me that it's really well done. You will find a lot of different objects in the house, but in the end, you will feel it's very me.’

This space is both the architect's sanctuary and muse – a lived-in archive of ideas and inspiration for projects to come. We hope you enjoy stepping inside.

DOP: Bas Van Hoof
Focus puller: Mathew Lau
Sound engineer: Laurens Desmet
Edit assistant: Giulia Bassanese
Architecture & environment director: Ellie Stathaki
Head of video: Sebastian Jordahn
Director of digital content: Charlotte Gunn
Editor-in-chief: Bill Prince

The Brussels Standard is the latest addition to the portfolio of the gastronomy- and design-focused brand, and it is its first launch since parent company Standard International was acquired by Hyatt in October 2024. Located in a renovated tower within Brussels’ lesser-known Northern Quarter, the hotel’s rooms start on the sixth floor, giving all 200 rooms, along with the rooftop restaurant and terrace, spectacular and previously unseen views of this underrated and eclectic European capital. The warm, inviting atmosphere and alluring design by prominent local talent Bernard Dubois create a refreshing change in what used to be an office-dominated area that emptied out in the evening.

Wallpaper* checks in at The Standard, Brussels

What’s on your doorstep?

Brussels’ central business district might not be a part of the town you have visited before. Built amid some controversy in the 1960s and 70s, the area was underutilised and emptied out at night. To reconnect it with the city and diversify its uses, it is now undergoing a major revitalisation project. It serves as an ideal base for exploring both the centre (reachable on foot) and the increasingly vibrant and creative Canal district nearby. A short walk north-west brings you to the sprawling turn-of-the-20th-century former industrial complex Tour & Taxis, now a cultural and exhibition venue with an architecturally striking food hall. To the south-east is the Botanique, a music venue set within the greenhouses of a former 19th-century botanical garden.

Who’s behind the design?

Designed by Bernard Dubois, who worked closely with the savvy in-house team at The Standard, the interiors are a heady blend of rigorous yet playful architectural and design details, along with bespoke, sophisticated furniture pieces (not to mention what must be thousands of metres of curtains in the bedrooms, suites, lobby, and restaurants). There’s a nod to early postmodern Belgian architect André Jacqmain in the soaring lobby, with its arches and playful symmetry, and inspiration from post-war Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck in the layout of the ‘1930s Miami’ rooftop restaurant, with its series of intimate spots created through stepped height changes, circular banquette seating, and salmon-hued see-through curtains.

‘I like to mix, juxtapose, transform, and distort historic references in order to give birth to something new and different,’ explains Dubois. The rooms are quieter (except for the splendid carpets, which reference the quirky seat fabrics of 1980s European cars), but they continue the game of blending proportions and shapes seen elsewhere. Think seductive milled wood finishes, thick, curvaceous, ocean-liner-style lacquered wood tables, and circular motifs – in the bed’s headboard, recessed timber seating areas, and the minibar.

The room to book

Any of the Deluxe Junior Suites (the rooms ending in 17) are worth booking. These corner suites offer expansive views over the tree-lined Avenue du Roi Albert II below and the city centre beyond, including the world-famous Grand Place. Their dreamy, cream-tiled bathrooms feature bathtubs and direct city views. These suites don’t come with TVs by default, but one can be brought to your room on request. The idea is that the city below becomes the ‘screen’ to watch, particularly at night, when the twinkling lights and traffic take on a mesmerising quality.

For a less indulgent stay, try the Standard King. In this and other smaller room types, the curtains running along the wall closest to the window create the clever illusion of a corner room (often, the TV is tucked behind this curtain). A thoughtful touch includes the discreet all-in-one plug and USB-C bedside sockets, as well as the analogue (yet dimmable) white BTicino light switches.

Where to switch off?

Next door to the rooftop terrace is a lush garden, shared with the offices in the building but spacious enough to offer a complete escape from work, people, and the world. The ground-floor ‘greenhouse’ serves partly as an outdoor spill-out terrace for the Double Standard restaurant and partly as a public park during the day, complete with intimate corners and benches. Alternatively, head to the ground-floor bar, which features several cosy nooks. There’s even a table hidden behind the bar, completely out of sight from the rest of the hotel, making it perfect for a rendezvous.

Staying for drinks and dinner?

The food and drink offering is both cosmopolitan and cleverly rooted in local inspiration. California transplant and long-time Belgium resident Alex Joseph, of Michelin-starred Rouge Tomate fame, is the culinary mind behind it all. At the ground-floor Double Standard brasserie-style restaurant, expect a medley of US comfort food and Belgian classics: think Caesar salad and pastrami melt alongside prawn croquettes and mussels with frites.

On the 29th floor, Lila29 celebrates Iberian cuisine in all its forms – grilled, baked, and fried. Try the red mullet with polenta or the grilled octopus with ink aioli. But be sure to leave room for the vegetarian fideuà con socarrat (a paella-style dish made with vermicelli noodles instead of rice, cooked until the bottom turns perfectly crispy). It’s a delightful surprise. Drinks often nod to local flavours or the restaurant’s theme.

The verdict

Despite its very recent opening (which means staffing and menus are still being fine-tuned), The Standard, Brussels is an assured project that exudes energy, a distinctly Belgian sense of approachability, and an appealing dose of levity. The staff are consummately attentive and good-humoured, and the design is effortlessly alluring. There’s a pleasant intergenerational and mixed atmosphere too. Office workers popping in for lunch at the rooftop restaurant or locals trying out the ground-floor brasserie or bar rub shoulders with international guests visiting for both work and leisure. Whether you’re here for a breakfast meeting or a few days’ stay, you’re likely to leave with a smile on your face.

The Standard, Brussels is located at Bd Roi Albert II 30, 1000 Brussels, Belgium.

Govaert-Vanhoutte Architecten has completed a new Belgian house design – a striking single-family residence, set amidst a densely wooded but undulating site that adjoins an existing golf course. The architects have exploited the topography to thread the linear building through the site, digging down to create an expansive basement, above which is a first floor that’s raised just slightly above ground level. This is topped by a first floor contain the bedroom accommodation, culminating in a roof terrace set amidst the canopy of the old growth trees.

Tour this Belgian house engulfed in greenery

The clients requested a house that was ‘harmoniously integrated within its natural setting,’ and stipulated the preservation of the most significant trees, including some mature American oaks. The actual garden space is modest, consisting of a lawn and a pool, reached by steps descending from the ground floor podium and fringed by woodland on all sides.

The alignment of the house and the subsequent arrangement of the floorplan was determined by the placement of the trees and a path running through the forest. This became the winding drive that leads from the main road, curving almost immediately through 90 degrees before plunging beneath the house to the four-car garage in the basement level. This space also includes a bike store, gym, games room and bar, along with utility spaces and storage.

The main living spaces are all arranged on the first floor, a vast concrete slab that appears to float above the site and minimise the contact with the ground. The architects have divided the accommodation into two ‘boxes’, a closed wooden box that spans both levels and includes the upper floor bedrooms, and a larger glass-enclosed space that tucks beneath it, housing the living, dining and kitchen areas. The base slab unifies the entire structure.

From the road, the house is shielded by a large concrete wall, beneath which lies the ramp to access the garage. This western elevation gives way to much more transparency elsewhere in the house, especially to the south, where the elevation is almost entirely glazed. This part of the house contains the living room, dining area and large open plan kitchen. The far western end of this floor houses a separate cinema room.

The northern façade of the ground floor is more closed off to the exterior, as befits the private home office, back kitchen and bathroom areas that it contains. Above the first floor is another slab, extending out over the accommodation to create a covered terrace and allowing for inside/outside living during the summer months thanks to the sliding glass doors. Outside, to the east, there’s an outdoor kitchen, barbecue and fireplace.

Four bedrooms are located upstairs, contained within the wood-clad component of the house. In addition to a large primary suite with views across the garden to the woods beyond, there are also two identical smaller suites and a guest room and separate study. Above this floor, a stair leads up to a roof terrace, with its own fireplace and Jacuzzi, alongside a seating area and even a pétanque court.

Damiaan Vanhoutte and Benny Govaert’s award-winning firm is based in Bruges. The studio has created a number of elegant contemporary villas in Belgium, including Residence FSD and a villa near Ghent designed for a classic car dealer.

As part of a series of upgrades to its Premier offering – which saw the reinvention of the onboard culinary offering in October 2024 – Eurostar has now unveiled the redesign of its branded lounges in Brussels and Paris, which are available for Eurostar Premier passengers travelling on continental routes, as well as Carte Blanche and Carte Étoile loyalty members.

Eurostar revamps its Premier lounges in Paris and Brussels

Courtesy of London-based Chris Bagot Architects, the two revamped rooms draw inspiration from the atmosphere of European cafés and bars but cater to the comforts of contemporary travellers seeking an elevated pre-departure experience. ‘The brief was to create consistency across both spaces while simultaneously reflecting the place where they are and the new brand values,’ Chris Bagot tells Wallpaper*.

The updated lounges arrive with a dedicated semi-circular cocktail bar clad in European oak and featuring crimson red ‘Kashmir’ stools designed by Simon James for Resident. The bar is open from 3 pm until closing time on weekdays, and passengers can request mixologist-made cocktails to enjoy with the complimentary snacks and magazines on offer.

In Paris, a monochromatic patterned Mutina-tiled floor and terracotta wall tiles by Maora Ceramica define a warm and comfortable atmosphere. Contemporary furnishing choices are sleek and thoughtful, such as rustic Thonet’s ‘209P’ café chairs and Vitra's beige ‘Fauteuil Direction’ armchairs by Jean Prouvé. ‘A classic Swiss-French design, a Nemo 'Lampe de Marseille', originally designed by Le Corbusier for his Unité d’Habitation project, illuminates the central food counter,’ notes Bagot.

Belgian-made pieces such as a Muller Van Severen hanging lamp and a solid oak table by Heerenhuis add sophistication to the Brussels location. Towards the rear of the lounge, a corner ‘Bob’ sofa, by Thomas Bernstrand and Stefan Borselius for Blå Station, upholstered with verdant Dedar velvet, defines an intimate area that can be screened off with a voile curtain for greater privacy. Nearby, an enclosed phone booth allows personal calls.

The new Eurostar Premier lounges are located at 22 rue de Dunkerque in Paris and Rue de l’Instruction 158-160 in Brussels

Brussels doesn’t leave the best first impression. The Belgian capital is home to major institutions like the E.U. Commision, Parliament and NATO but also struggles with fractured governance, acute social inequality and a run-down physical appearance (the centre of town in particular).

Straddling the linguistic boundary between Romantic and Germanic Europe – the increasingly autonomous regions of Dutch-speaking Flanders to the north and French-speaking Wallonia to the south –Brussels has a disjointed identity, but that might be a good thing.

Peeling back the layers of a city undergoing yet another chaotic phase of urban renewal – past attempts of which notoriously destroyed a lot of its historic charm in favour of modernisation – one uncovers a thriving creative scene extending from fine art, architecture, design, cuisine and where these domains intersect. Fashion is more of Antwerp's thing, but its influence can be felt here as well to a certain extent.

International hospitality and cultural forces hedge their bets on Brussels

Surprisingly, there's a high concentration of Michelin-star restaurants in Brussels. The latest of which is Le Petit Bon Bon, a reimagined Belgian brasserie situated within the recently reopened Belle Epoque-era Grand Hotel Astoria, expertly restored by Francis Metzger for Corinthia Hotels. This boîte was deftly outfitted by Antwerp-based firm WeWantMore with the aim of elevating the traditional typology in both material and form, echoing the approach chef Christophe Hardiquest took in curating a menu of reformulated local classics.

Other premium hotel chains like The Hoxton and The Standard have also gotten in on the game recently, revamping properties in what has long been viewed as the dingy Northern Quarter. Here as well, Parisian art museum Centre Pompidou is set to open its Kanal outpost in a repurposed Citroën facility.

Across the adjoining canal, Tour & Taxis has emerged as a bustling mixed use complex. Its main post-industrial halls play host to internationally renowned fairs like Art Brussels and BRAFA. The innovative all-timber construction Gare Maritime within the complex is flourishing as a tech incubator.

Located in the slightly more upmarket Dansaert pocket of downtown, MAD Brussels is a centralising platform bringing together the city and country’s diverse creative communities with rotating exhibitions and residency programs while serving as a vital resource for those artists and designers just getting started.

Favourable conditions for independent creatives and collectives

Many of the talents based here are having an outsized impact on the rest of the global art and design industries. What connects them is a sense of irreverence and experimentation. They’ve all set up shop and home in Brussels because of its affordability but also its grittiness. The city presents itself as a blank canvas for them to speculatively revisit time and time again. In many ways, Armenian architect Noro Khachatryan distills this backdrop in his hyper-minimalist and architectonic furnishings.

Unsurprisingly, rent and the outright cost of real estate is much lower than in nearby Amsterdam, Paris or London – major metropolises easily accessed thanks to robust rail links. This makes operating large studios much easier. Khachatryan maintains a sizable space in the burgeoning, once perceivably dangerous, Molenbeek neighborhood.

Also in the area, Asifose is a new hub comprising large exhibition and studio spaces intertwined and forged out of derelict buildings. This collaborative entity was established, in part, by the collective Espace Aygo, which embodies the ad-hoc, 'anti-design' mindset popular at the moment. Having spearheaded this movement in many respects, Brussels-based Arnaud Eubelen is known for configuring dynamic furnishings out of 'raw' industrial materials sourced from construction sites. Headed up by renowned industrial designer Lionel Jadot, Zaventem Atelier is yet another collective platform situated in a sprawling former factory along the outskirts of town. The organisation fosters interdisciplinary exchange amongst its varied members: sculptors, furniture designers and scenographers.

While the pace of life in Brussels is slower, its artistic output and spirit of future-forward thinking matches and even exceeds that of the boisterous megacities in its midst. This is especially true from an avant-garde standpoint – a tradition deeply rooted in this identity-less city, one unconstrained by the easily co-opted historical and homogenised tropes that often pigeon-hole specific places. It’s no surprise that Brussels has long been a bastion of surrealism and alternative forms of expression.

For those designers that have moved here in the past few decades, the influence of the world-renowned Design Academy Eindhoven – just an hour and a half’s drive away – is also palpable. The school's authoritative culture of material exploration and conceptual ideation permeates many of these practices. Graduates like Maarten de Ceulaer have long been fixtures of the city's ever-emerging scene. Recently debuting the ethereal and format-defying Mirror at Dusk collection at New York’s Emma Scully Gallery, Nel Verbeke has forged a research-based and zeitgeist responsive methodology all her own. Dutch designer Linde Freya Tangelder – the force behind wildly successful studio Destroyers / Builders – moved her studio to a modernist home within Brussels’s northern suburbs in 2023.

Emerging galleries and fairs with an interdisciplinary mindset

There’s also a booming, if somewhat concealed, art market here. Among private collectors – including French elites that have relocated to posh neighbourhoods like Uccle and Ixelles for favourable wealth tax policies – are a slew of recently established private and public-facing galleries, located in well-preserved Art Nouveau townhouses and Art Deco mansions.

Amongst those specialised in collectible design are Spazio Nobile and MANIERA. While the former considers the historic definition of the applied arts as a more unifying categorisation of what's being put out into the world today, the latter commissions architects to develop visually and formally captivating furnishings. With a broad roster of notable talents between them, both look to challenge disciplinary conventions. Emphasising the ever-blurring distinctions between design and art even further are the Boghossian Foundation Villa Empain – also situated in a grand historic home – and new venture Darwin 15.

Objects with Narrative is a recent addition to Brussels's raft of distinct design galleries. Located in an ornate 'baroque-style ballroom' along the chic Sablon square and massive loft levels above, this platform looks to support a wide range of contemporary talents pushing material forward and seeking to imbue their works with succinct storylines.

Anchoring all of this is the annual Collectible fair, held this year from 13 to 16 March. Bringing together an international roster of maverick galleries, edgy firms, and innovative independent practitioners, the fair prides itself on presenting only 21st-century design. Like Brussels itself, it isn’t mired in history – even if history is present – but instead spotlights those talents endeavouring to shape the future.

Highlights this year included Onlyonly Studio’s Daydreamer chaise lounge produced in natural latex and stainless steel. Antwerp-based fibre artist Nathalie Van der Massen presented a number of woven wall pieces and foldable room dividers with curator Stéphanie Fredrickx, hinting at the industry’s growing desire to reassess this age-old medium.

Geneva-based gallery Domum presented new pieces by Brazilian duo Palma, most notable of which was the egg shell in-layed Gambito Chair. As it has been for a few years now, pared back mono-material metal furnishings could also be found across the showcase. Within the entryway, French interior designer and scenographer Pauline Leprince created a perceptively prismatic installation out of upcycled denim procured from Belgian fashion house Bellerose and anchored by industrial-grade metal structures.

Welcoming over 20,000 visitors for its eighth edition, Collective fair has become an important sales point for local talents, those operating nearby and based around the world. Brussels’s centrality in Europe makes it an ideal place to mount such an event – but it's the city's openness to the new, the raw, and the speculative that truly sets the stage.

In the summer of 2023, Belgian designer Maarten De Ceulaer found himself on the banks of a mountain river in the Pyrenees, absent-mindedly stacking stones as he had done since childhood. The simple act of balancing carefully selected rocks into cairns is a practice with ancient roots. Often used as markers to commemorate people, places, or events, cairns have links to navigation, memory, and spirituality.

Months later, while driving, De Ceulaer revisited the memory of that afternoon and wondered if he could translate these ephemeral compositions into sculptural lighting objects. The result is the Cairn Lights, a series of stone-based luminaires that embody balance, craftsmanship, and connection to the natural world.

Their irregular forms and off-kilter angles evoke a sense of otherworldly beauty, reminiscent of nature’s more mystical creations, like toadstools emerging from the earth. When switched on, they emit a warm and enticing glow.

The process of developing Cairn Lights, De Ceulaer says, was instinctive and experimental. He began by collecting a large variety of stones, stacking them intuitively to create harmonious forms. ‘The juxtapositioning of the two stones had to work on every level,’ he tells Wallpaper*. ‘When putting them together, the resulting combination of shape, colour and texture had to be interesting, with a certain level of tension.’

To transform these compositions into functional lights, he sculpted the stones – flattening the base for stability and hollowing out the ‘lampshade’ to house a concealed light source. Early on, he realised that his workshop was ill-equipped for the dust-heavy process of stone-cutting. To refine his technique, he enrolled in a sculpture class, where he learned essential stone-carving skills and worked within a fully equipped studio. From there, it was a process of trial and error, developing adaptable metal components to support the organic stone structures and fine-tuning the principle with each new piece.

Beyond their material beauty, the pieces take on a symbolic dimension. Referring back to how, historically, cairns have served as wayfinders, memorials, and spiritual markers, De Ceulaer sees his Cairn Lights as contemporary counterparts to these ancient forms. 'I think that my Cairn Lights can serve as a powerful symbol of direction, memory and connection. They could stand as a symbolic beacon, guiding the way forward in a metaphorical sense,' he ponders. 'I see them becoming family heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation, becoming a legacy that holds the memories of past generations while lighting the way for future ones.'

The Cairn Lights continue De Ceulaer’s broader design philosophy, translating universal ideas and emotions into objects, each collection forming a self-contained world that evolves over time. 'Over the years, these projects become families that keep on growing, as I like to come back to them with new variations and iterations,' he explains. 'I love to explore new materials, crafts and production techniques with every new project. By doing so, each project becomes a journey, and this discovery and learning process is what I love and keeps me going.'

A selection of nine Cairn Lights will debut at Brussels-based design fair Collectible, which returns to the Vanderborght Building from 13 to 16 March 2025 for its eighth edition.

maartendeceulaer.com
collectible.design

More lighting ideas? See our pick of elegant bedside lamps and floor lamps

Certain images have the power to nestle in our minds and ripen into a vision when the time is right. Fifteen years ago, Aminata Sambe spotted such an image in a hotel group newsletter that showed a brutalist structure surrounded by rustic cabins on the northern tip of Gotland, Sweden’s largest island. The Fabriken Furillen hotel stood facing the Baltic Sea within a stark landscape filled with Scots pine. ‘It looked so peaceful, like that one place where there’s nothing to do,’ says Sambe, who was then a project manager at Villa Eugénie, a creative agency founded by Etienne Russo in Brussels in 1997. Sambe began working there in 2000, together with Nadia Saksou, a former colleague from a previous job at an advertising agency.

Creative project managers Furu: the beginnings

‘When we started at Villa Eugénie, there were maybe five people. We were doing everything,’ says Sambe of the formative years during which the duo evolved into the multi-hyphenate creatives they are today. For two decades and counting, they’ve project-managed fashion shows, set up events and devised pop-up stores for fashion brands such as Chanel, Hermès, Lemaire and Dries Van Noten, supervising 83 fashion shows for the Belgian designer, who presented his final collection last year.

‘It’s like being a chef d’orchestre,’ says Sambe of the feeling she gets when pulling together the many elements of a creative project. ‘From finding the location to sourcing the materials and gathering the team, what I really love is the excitement and challenge of it.’

Saksou adds: ‘I like to be a link between people. You’re never bored and always discover new things.’

Over the years, both women have cemented a solid reputation in a fast-paced industry. But they also developed a yearning for calm and quiet. To get away, Saksou keeps a charming old house in La Drôme, France. And in 2018, Sambe began looking for a destination far from the fashion crowd, too. ‘I wanted to go on holiday alone, to a place where I’d remain all alone,’ she says – and so she sought out the striking Gotland retreat, which had always stuck with her.

‘It’s magical,’ says Sambe. ‘When you arrive, something happens that you can’t really explain. It fills you with energy.’ The hotel’s owner Johan Hellström offered her a plot adjacent to Fabriken Furillen that could be subdivided. ‘I just couldn’t resist,’ she says. In 2020, when the pandemic shut down the event sector, Sambe and Saksou decided to ‘join forces and reinvent ourselves’, so they set up project management studio Furu, naming it after the Swedish word for ‘pine tree’. Says Sambe of the tree, ‘It grows on rocky soil yet can become huge and strong.’

Adds Saksou, ‘In Japanese, the word means “to fall from above” in the context of rain or snow. We liked the symbolism. It represents our capacity to grow, whatever the circumstance.’

Their next phase of growth is taking shape on two of the Gotland plots, where Furu has completed a summer home for a family and a house for Sambe, who spends about half the year there. ‘For both the client and my house, Furu prepared the mood board. Then we briefed the architect, Andreas Lyckefors, and Studio Volca, which designed the interiors,’ says Sambe. ‘In my house, each time you go up a flight of stairs, you view a different cardinal point. The client’s house is a family home, so it’s more about them receiving guests, it’s more inward-looking.’

The houses are next to each other in the middle of a natural reserve – ‘close to solitude, but with a neighbour’, remarks Lyckefors. ‘We wanted to preserve the privacy, and tried to solve that by creating small courtyards with deep sightlines to the landscape.’

The courtyards contain gardens designed by Anna Lundell, founder of local floral artist studio Kullshagebruk, and both structures are made mostly of natural materials: they have pine façades, hemp insulation and made-to-measure wooden furniture. In Sambe’s house, a sofa by Josef Pentenrieder for Hans Kaufeld and a vintage desk lamp by Louis Kalff for Philips stand out.

The two co-founders are no strangers to building sets or overseeing store renovations, but the Gotland homes show evidence of a desire to move from the ephemeral towards the more permanent.

For Lemaire’s S/S 2025 ready-to-wear show, they installed a set at the brand’s Place des Vosges HQ in which models walked a raised circular runway that led into the building’s courtyard as if heading out to Paris’ cityscape. ‘It’s the opposite of a set as temporary because [the brand] want to build on that structure in coming seasons,’ says Sambe. ‘They wanted people to feel at home as if they were guests at their offices, but also with an eye on sustainability.’ Furu reused the entire set for Lemaire’s A/W show (during Paris Fashion Week Men's A/W 2025). ‘We threw nothing away,’ she says.

Sambe and Saksou are currently working on an apartment renovation in Stockholm, as well as supporting supplier and client relationships for the construction of a Glenn Sestig-designed home in Antwerp. It’s all in the spirit of being that link between people, but also between people and their environment. ‘I think, for human beings, it’s important to relate to something bigger and keep dreaming,’ says Saksou. And these creative gestures will weather whatever falls from the skies.

furuprojectmanagement.com

Plants are among Philippe de Spoelberch’s biggest passions. The Belgian businessman and dendrologist has a professional background in brewing but is now mostly dedicated to his lifetime fascination with trees – not only by stretching his own green fingers but also by being active in the scientific field of botany. His latest project is Belgium’s newest plant ‘museum’ in Marche-en-Famenne, in the region of Wallonia. The site, which has been many years in the making, includes a new visitor centre by local studio AW Architectes and has just opened to the public.

Take the tour of Marche Arboretum

Marche-en-Famenne is the second scheme of its kind initiated by de Spoelberch, who started informally planting trees in his family estate in Wespelaar, Flanders in 1966. An extension to an initial ten hectares in 1986 allowed him to further his collection. The entire 20-hectare extension was donated in 2003 to a dedicated foundation, the Stichting Arboretum Wespelaar.

The arboretum is now managed by executive director Dr Koen Camelbeke, under the supervision of the board of directors headed by chairman Guy de Broqueville. Blending trees collected during travels (by the team and external contributors), with purchases and gifts by major botanical gardens across the globe, Wespelaar thrived and by 2020 reached capacity. Now the foundation intends to repeat its success in the new, 76-hectare site.

‘We were lucky to find an exceptional site on a rare limestone formation that complements the collections of more acid loam of Wespelaar. Poor soils allow for rich meadows. Ten of Belgium’s native orchids were found on the site. Meadows have been sown with seed from sites of Natagora [a nature conservation NGO]. Fifteen hectares of the 76 have been fenced to keep wild boar out of the more precious areas and the visitor centre. Roe deer and beavers do find a way in!’ de Spoelberch says.

An invited competition between three architecture studios led to the selection of the winning team headed by Gauthier Wislez. The practice designed the visitor centre to contain the curator’s accommodation, a small auditorium, a café, a glasshouse, offices, and service areas for the gardening and maintenance staff. Its accessible green roof, semi-buried in nature, clever geometry and orientation mean it’s near-invisible from several angles, allowing nature to take centre stage.

‘I wanted the architecture to be contemporary, but also responsive to its site and function,’ Wislez says. Sustainable architecture strategies such as a ground source heat pump system, energy recovery ventilation, high-performance insulation and solar panels help the limestone-clad concrete building be sensitive to its context. The site was perfected with the help of landscape architect and head gardener at Arboretum Wespelaar, Christophe Crock, who worked on the parking lot, building the access route, roof and surrounding environment.

Water from a well on site is used in the building and for irrigation, while rainwater is stored in reservoirs for the drier months. Local stone artisans helped create the building’s façade and farmers from the region are engaged in subcontracted upkeep throughout the year (some of its meadows are naturally maintained by local sheep and donkeys).

De Spoelberch’s vision for Marche springs from a respect and deep interest in nature. ‘I don’t want this to become a “Disneyland”, but rather a key scientific tool for botany,’ he explains. Introduced plants are labelled throughout, native species are studied and managed, and doors open one Sunday per month from April to October, and for specialised groups by appointment.

More than a tourist attraction, the arboretum was designed as a place for experimentation and study. Still, it is early days for Marche Arboretum. ‘It takes a while for something like this to grow. Many trees are still young and it might only be of real scientific interest in 20 years,’ de Spoelberch says, adding that he intends to keep adding species and trying new things. ‘[But even as a work in progress], it feels very natural. It is definitely worth a visit.’

arboretumdemarche.be

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See more 2025 Wallpaper* Design Award-winning architecture projects

All of the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025 winners will be celebrated online over the coming month and are featured in full in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

It feels like the past year was one of reassessment. In fact, the prefix ‘re’ seems to be popping up in project descriptions and initiatives the world over, with architects rethinking, restructuring, refitting and reimagining, aiming to restore, rebalance and renew the built environment and the way we live. Perhaps this is nothing new and indeed the entire purpose of architecture – to transform lives. Or perhaps this is felt more acutely now than ever, as big, ongoing debates on critical global topics (sustainability, equality, inclusion) and dramatic recent world events (pandemic, war and political turbulence) have sparked an urge in us all to hit refresh.

An overarching need for repair and reinvention is sparking simultaneously a speeding up and a slowing down of action on various fronts, as signalled in some key new projects that are primed to set the mood for 2025 – as part of an era of powerful, yet gentle statements.

Wallpaper’s Ellie Stathaki delves into what defined the 2025 Wallpaper* Architecture Awards

Wellbeing and restorative strategies are increasingly coming to the forefront of our efforts to nurture people, places, and souls. In this context, connecting with nature is steadily rising to the top of the priority list for many. For some, this might take the form of experiencing open spaces and the wild outdoors or seeking solitude and retreat, where one can focus on views, nature and oneself. Protecting and preserving said nature is an arm of this practice, boldly delivered through an entirely new arboretum in Belgium’s Marche-en-Famenne.

This trend can also bring out the desire to escape; here holiday homes, from the archetypal, simple cabin to more luxurious, contemporary guest houses, have always had this allure, often used as shorthand for the desire to leave the world’s problems behind and go into cocoon mode to refocus and hopefully, reach inspired solutions. Few projects embody this sentiment better than Halifax architect Brian MacKay-Lyons’ El Aleph, a building that is ‘silent, but with more to say’ on the ragged Canadian coast.

Of course, it would be naive to suggest that we should all forego the buzz of urban living and become solitary nature explorers. Cities and their myriad offerings present a different kind of ecosystem but one that’s equally important to develop and grow, blending the urban condition’s multiple layers and facets, while prioritising residents’ (human and otherwise) well-being.

Pausing to breathe and sync with the elements can happen here too, and doing so is not a mere ‘bonus’ any longer – but a necessity. The case of Rotterdam, The Netherlands’ second largest metropolitan area (but at a couple of million, still relatively small, compared to the world’s megalopolises) brings an interesting and refreshing approach to the global stage. How can this industrial, modern, growing city incorporate sustainable attitudes and intentions? The answer seems to be through several initiatives, all happening simultaneously, taking action at different scales while playing the long game.

This rethinking of our built environment also translates to the smaller scale and existing buildings. Our rich legacy of 20th-century treasures, many of which are now steadily becoming in urgent need of a refresh, is an interesting topic to explore in this light. What does the legacy of modernism mean for the 21st century, and where does it fit into our current needs and wider zeitgeist? We certainly do not need to reject the past altogether – but rather, make it work in a way that responds to the needs of today.

Helsinki’s Finlandia Hall, a listed, landmark project by Finnish modernist Alvar Aalto, responds to this with a dramatic restoration – yet a subtle one, which you may not even notice if you are simply walking past it. Opening in January 2025, the building has been delicately transformed in its accessibility and energy efficiency, while painstakingly and faithfully updating the monument’s fabric where needed.

Meanwhile, tackling the other end of the spectrum of the life of a building, Limbo Accra has launched its first physical museum - Limbo Museum - in the Ghanaian capital tasked with examining the African continent’s unfinished buildings, what they mean, and the role of these ‘ruins’ in our cities.

Architecture is a notoriously slow-moving beast, but if these projects are any indication, there is plenty to be hopeful about for 2025. And there’s plenty to be looking out for too, as after a pandemic lull, a slew of key new cultural openings are now on the horizon for the new year – including (but not limited to) the Yale Centre of British Arts’ reopening post-restoration in New Haven; the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture by Asif Khan in Almaty, Kazakhstan; the Frick Collection’s reimagining by Selldorf Architects in New York; the 2025 Expo Osaka; ; and Jean Nouvel’s new Fondation Cartier in Paris.

At the same time, the human dynamic seems to be changing too, thanks to digital technology. As architect and academic Lesley Lokko puts it in her essay about taking stock and looking forward to the next year, ‘newer, younger, “other” voices are bursting onto the scene and there is a generosity in the cultural zeitgeist that I find really inspiring.’ To move forward, this injection of fresh thinking is just what we need.

Best Modernist Revival

Finlandia Hall, Helsinki, Finland

Modernist architecture master Alvar Aalto's design for Finlandia Hall, a large concert and congress venue in Helsinki’s Töölö Bay, was built in 1971. It has since become a landmark, not only for its architect’s oeuvre but also for the city and Finland’s wider cultural scene. By 2019, nearly fifty years after its creation, Finlandia Hall was due a refresh. Now a listed monument and beloved city icon, Finlandia Hall has been refreshed by Arkkitehdit NRT, deeply yet delicately restoring its fabric and functions set to bring it to the 21st century.

Best Retreat

El Aleph Guest House by MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple, Canada

‘Elemental’ seems to be an understatement for El Aleph and its site, which feels mesmerizingly wild and open to the weather. The project was a perfect fit for MacKay-Lyons, whose studio is known for crafting quiet buildings with a strong presence and a story to tell. ‘When you’re there, it feels like you’re alone in the world,’ says the architect. ‘You can see the other structures but it’s a long journey from anywhere, it’s remote and dangerous, as well as spiritual, so it’s the perfect place to feel the solitude and be in tune with nature.’

Best Urban Rethink

Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Rotterdam has been changing, responding to the worldwide climate emergency, its intense densification in the past 15 years, its location on the mouth of the River Rhine, and the gradual move of its enormous port to a site further outside its main urban core towards the sea. Now, a range of new initiatives and live projects prove that this extremely architecturally active city has sprung straight into action in the face of these difficulties. As part of the country’s recently announced ‘New Dutch’ movement, a platform that focuses on its 21st-century innovation, Rotterdam has generated a wealth of schemes that aim to safeguard the city’s longevity and health - both in terms of its urban fabric and inhabitants.

Best Landscape

Marche Arboretum, Belgium

A new plant ‘museum’ has opened in Marche-en-Famenne, in the region of Wallonia. The site, Marche Arboretum, which has been many years in the making, includes a new visitor centre by local studio AW architectes. Marche-en-Famenne is the second scheme of its kind initiated by businessman and dendrologist Philippe de Spoelberch, who started informally planting trees in his family estate in Wespelaar, Flanders in 1966. An extension to an initial 10ha in 1986 allowed him to further his collection. The entire 20-ha extension was donated in 2003 to a dedicated foundation, the Stichting Arboretum Wespelaar - which is now behind Marche Arboretum.

Best Architectural Legacy

Limbo Museum, Ghana

Limbo Accra’s transformative approach to architecture redefines what it means to engage with the built environment - and their latest project, Limbo Museum, has just opened in collaboration with curator Diallo Simon-Ponte and architect Lennart Wolff,. By repairing and reimagining unfinished spaces, the studio creates dynamic platforms for dialogue, creativity and community, resulting in a new legacy for overlooked structures. Ultimately, Limbo Accra’s work reminds us that within every building skeleton lies the potential for new beginnings. 

All of the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2025 winners will be celebrated online over the coming month and are featured in full in the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on newsstands from 9 January 2025, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

To see the work of great 17th-century painter Paul Rubens, you need to go to the Rubens Hall in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp where his masterpiece Adoration of the Magi hangs alongside other works that speak to his amazing range and empathy. To understand who he was, though, you need to visit the far smaller Rubenshuis and its gardens nearby, recently given a new entrance building – one could think of it as a gatehouse to the Flemish artist's world – by the Antwerp-based architecture practice Robbrecht en Daem.

The cultural space houses an introduction to Rubens’ life, in the basement, a double-height public reception area on the ground floor, and a library, as well as offices on floors three, four and five.

A journey through Rubenshuis and the Flemish painter's world

The building, which has no physical connection to the historical house, still provides an entrance to and a view of the domestic universe that the artist-genius built for himself. In 1608, Rubens returned to the medieval streets of Antwerp from Italy, having immersed himself in the work of his Italian Renaissance predecessors and made a name for himself.

On his return, he bought a Flemish step-gabled house that faced onto the prestigious Wapper Square. He renovated it and, creating a courtyard, designed and built a new studio space in the Italian Mannerist style opposite. In so doing, he created an axis that extended from the gate through a portico and a symmetrically planted garden to a classical pavilion that culminated this line.

Robbrecht en Daem preserved this axis – all Rubens' own work – and set its new building to one side, demolishing nothing but an old wall, which gives another entrance onto the fashionable retail street of Hopland.

Robbrecht en Daem’s structure doesn’t ape either the Italianate or Flemish past but provides a confident impression of modernity in two façades; a more classical one faces the streetside. Here, the concept of the bookshelf – this corner of the garden is apparently the former site of Rubens’ long-demolished library – is strongest, although the slender concrete columns are absent from the central section, allowing as much light as possible to fall into the entrance atrium.

This relationship between column and glazing is inverted on the rear façade, with the colonnades only present at the very edge of the building and glazing is predominant across the floors. From the street side, this strategy with two outcomes suits the stylish symmetry of Hopland’s Beaux Arts buildings. To the rear, it is a bold modernist architecture addition to the historical variety of buildings surrounding the gardens.

On a symbolic level, this uninterrupted glass façade is also a means of ensuring the relationship between the recently replanted garden, Rubenshuis proper and the life and work of those in the library and offices. Within the five-storey new building, one is only ever several steps from a view onto the house and garden and the axis that runs right through it: the heart of a private world a true master created for himself.

robbrechtendaem.com

rubenshuis.be

Antwerp is having a moment. Not just because it’s hosting the anticipated Antwerp Six exhibition at MoMu (Fashion Museum Antwerp), but because word is spreading that this historic port city is alive with artists, designers and a distinctly avant-garde point of view. A visit here stimulates without overwhelming.

Just 45 minutes from Brussels, Antwerp has long been an easy day trip, but that’s no longer enough. In addition, every May, the city hosts Antwerp Art Weekend: a four-day, citywide takeover where galleries, museums and project spaces open simultaneously, creating a dense, walkable art circuit.

Antwerp is defined by contrast. Old-world Flemish grandeur meets industrial port energy. Renaissance façades sit alongside bold contemporary interventions like the Port House, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The city unfolds through cobbled streets that open out towards the revitalised docklands, shifting scale and atmosphere as you move through it. It feels stylish, slightly raw, and culturally literate – a place where people live, work, and make things. The best thing about Antwerp is that everyone interested in the arts will find a point of entry.

Here’s what we recommend.

An essential guide to Antwerp: 11 hotspots for design lovers

Where to stay

Botanic Sanctuary Antwerp

Antwerp’s most talked-about development is the rambling, new Botanic Sanctuary, a top-tier hotel occupying an ancient refuge on the edge of the city’s bijou botanical garden. The most striking aspect of the scheme, by the city’s own AID Architecten, is the multistorey spa and rooftop pool, kept indulgently warm under a peaked glasshouse structure that overlooks the 16th-century rooftops and eponymous gardens. It provides the flourishing neighbourhood with another sort of sanctuary.

Botanic Sanctuary Antwerp is located at Leopoldstraat 26, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

De Witte Lelie

Designed by Ann Dierick, De Witte Lelie is an 11-room boutique hotel tucked away in a heritage villa. Even more noticeable than the mammoth one-off sofas and gem-like mosaic tiles she sourced are the dazzling wallpapers appliquéd with sequins, faux fur and hand-painted motifs, most from Brooklyn’s Flavor Paper. Outsiders, once forbidden, can now come for a peep by booking into the new restaurant Lilium, located in the old stable.

De Witte Lelie is located at Keizerstraat 16/18, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Hotel Julien

Hotel Julien has recently reopened following a complete makeover led by founder Mouche Van Hool, alongside interior designer Bea Mombaers and architect Peter Ivens. Since opening in 2004, it has remained a constant for those returning to the Belgian city’s particular mix of history and forward-looking design. Occupying two adjoining 16th-century townhouses, the property carries a natural sense of charm, pairing original features – fireplaces, beams and cornicing – with a more restrained, contemporary sensibility.

Hotel Julien is located at Korte Nieuwstraat 24, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Where to eat and drink

De Nor

De Nor is Flemish slang for ‘prison’ – think ‘clink’, ‘slammer’, ‘joint’ – and thus an appropriate name for this interactive installation on the grounds of the Middelheim Museum, styled like an Eastern European bunker. Designed by local artist Dennis Tyfus and built from raw concrete with help from FVWW Architects, it acts as a standalone exhibition space, with a performance stage, bar and bleachers for loitering, all open during scheduled events.

De Nor is located at Middelheimlaan 59, 2020 Antwerp, Belgium

De Plek

A neo-Gothic tribute to the city’s towering Our Lady cathedral, De Plek, or ‘the place’, is a welcome corrective to the generic café genre, with a striking blue-painted serving pod constructed by the interior architects Van Staeyen. Not only has it transformed the church’s former sacristy, but it also brews its own dark and blonde Trappist beers, and hosts a regular Sunday sing-song after the organ concerts next door.

De Plek is located at Handschoenmarkt, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Eldo

Located directly across from the Ann Demeulemeester store (and featuring her Serax range as part of its glassware), Eldo is the city’s latest hot ticket. All furnishings and art found inside are by emerging Dutch and Belgian designers, such as Studio HOO and Middernacht & Alexander. There’s also a grand light installation at the top of the building by Stanislas Lahaut that welcomes patrons. The food and drinks are bistro-style, centred around open-fire cooking. Don’t miss the signature steak frites.

Eldo is located at Graaf van Egmontstraat 57/59, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Osaka Antwerp

Osaka’s take on the Japanese izakaya delivers superlative bites of quintessentially Belgian ingredients: sardines on brioche, pickled salmon sashimi and North Sea oysters served with natural wines. But the deft tone-on-tone interiors by Petillon Ceuppens risk overshadowing it all. Starting with a Brutalist concrete foundation, the architects added wall panelling, countertops and a pair of three-metre double entrance doors in sheet-thin stainless steel. Neon-tube lighting brings a brief pop of colour.

Osaka is located at Bollandusstraat 17, Bollandusstraat 17, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

What to do

Axel Vervoordt Gallery

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is an unmissable cultural haven just a 30-minute car ride from Antwerp. What started in 1857 as a red-brick malting distillery eventually became Kanaal, an artistic, residential and commercial destination on the banks of the Albert canal. The 55,000 sqm site serves as the headquarters for the foundation of Axel Vervoordt, whose company started buying up the site in 1998. Vervoordt’s youngest son, Dick, masterminded the creation of 98 apartments, 30 offices, an organic food market, public gardens, a fitness centre, an auditorium and all-important 4,000 sqm exhibition space. The latter houses Vervoordt’s personal collection built up over five decades. Anish Kapoor, Tatsuo Miyajima, Marina Abramović and James Turrell have permanent installations there too.

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is located at Stokerijstraat 19, 2110 Wijnegem, Belgium

Cour

A design-led gallery on Groenplaats, open weekends, set within a residential flat. Exhibitions unfold across domestic spaces, giving objects a different rhythm. Next on view is ‘After Work’ with Julie Kegels.

Cour is located at Groenplaats 42, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

MoMu

Belgium’s – nay the world’s – greatest fashion city has a lot to say about the art form, which is why the fashion museum, MoMu, is so important to this neighbourhood, surrounded by boutiques of the eminent Antwerp Six (also the theme of its current exhibition). The elegant domed flatiron building, recently overhauled by B Architecten, is like the Met crossed with the V&A, with its own outré flavour. Recent honourees include Belgian darlings Olivier Theyskens and Walter van Beirendonck, who elevate fashion to performance art.

MoMu is located at Nationalestraat 28, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium

Where to shop

Ann Demeulemeester

The building is a honeyed-stone classic. But just like the MO of resident designer Ann Demeulemeester, it defies tradition with crisp, monochrome minimalism conceived by her husband, Patrick Robyn. With low geometric pedestals and a long fringed banquette, echoing Demeulemeester’s deconstructed chunky knitwear, he resists the temptation to build into the vaulted space. His only intervention is a white steel staircase leading to a loft showcasing hefty leather boots and accessories – and a discreet window facing a tropical garden, open in summer. The label’s delicate ceramics collection, black stain bleeding into white, is a highlight.

Ann Demeulemeester is located at Leopold de Waelplaats, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium

A polished sterling silver necklace made up of the repeated word ‘MUM’ sits under a glass box at Modemuseum Hasselt in Belgium. Taken from Phoebe Philo’s eponymous debut exactly one year ago, the object’s place in ‘M&OTHERS’ – an exhibition that explores fashion through the rarely examined viewpoint of mother figures in all their forms – is symbolic of Philo’s influence beyond defining the look of the 2000s.

Whilst she was creative director at Chloé in 2005, Philo was the first high-profile female designer to take maternity leave, skipping a season to do so. She told the Evening Standard: ‘Having a baby is a serious, serious priority… I want to enjoy having a newborn and to protect my time in those precious first few months.’ 18 years later, the closing shot of the brand’s A/W 2024 show is of creative director Chemena Kamali and her young son in a warm embrace. The internet swooned. But how much progress has been made?

‘M&OTHERS’ fashion exhibition at Modemuseum Hasselt, Belgium

‘Everyone applauds Philo for taking leave but she was the lead designer. The people who worked with her, the people who still work behind the scenes across the whole industry don’t always have that same opportunity or support. A lot of artistic professions do not embrace motherhood, families or taking time for yourself. This is a story that needs to be told,’ co-curator Eve Demoen says.

Together with Karen Van Godtsenhoven, the pair unpack the challenge of fashion-making and having a family. Within fashion museology, there has been surprisingly little research on the topic. What does exist focuses more on objects of design that relate to labour and rearing children. Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick’s book and exhibition Designing Motherhood was an important source but beyond this, visits to the archives of Yves Saint Laurent, Sonia Rykiel and Lanvin gave the curators a chance to look at fashion history afresh. ‘We also spoke to so many people, designers like Meryll Rogge who learned she was pregnant at the same time she debuted her own line in 2020. Ann Demeulemeester was the same – she launched her house whilst carrying her son.’

The show also documents the legacy of male designers influenced by their mothers. Lucienne Saint Laurent introduced her son – the young Yves – to the world of fashion, theatre and cinema via the pages of glossy magazines. A paper doll that the designer made at the age of 17 using cuttings of them has pride of place in the exhibition alongside personal family photographs. The Musée Yves Saint Laurent preserves 11 dolls, more than 400 costumes, and 100 accessories made during the same period 1953-54.

‘We see so many celebrations of motherhood and pregnancy today on the catwalk and in the media, but it's so interesting to see what the evolution has been,’ Demoen says. When a naked, seven-month pregnant Demi Moore posed on the cover of Vanity Fair for its August 1991 issue, some shops stacked it in the pornography section or refused to sell it. The cover is included in the show alongside Rhianna, radiant in her third trimester on the cover of American Vogue's May 2022 issue, wearing a red lace bodysuit.

‘M&OTHERS’ is a timely show and, as the title suggests, the curators are keen to expand our notions of female nurturing. ‘I don’t think you need to be a mother, a biological mother, to get into the subject but it helps if you have been a mentor or carer.’ The exhibition includes an installation by FOR ALL QUEENS! (FAQ!) a collective made up of people that have found themselves going from church to club to ballroom, an altar to Madeleine Vionnet – ‘the queen mother of couture’ as The New York Times described her in 1954 – and a look from John Galliano’s S/S 2001 Christian Dior Haute Couture collection which is a paean to the idealised fifties housewife.

The curators explore the reproductive functions of the biological female body as a common source of veneration and misogyny in Western culture. One section is provocatively called ‘Monsters,’ highlighting how women’s bodies are contested, discussed, and reviled. ‘That’s the good thing about being in Hasselt and not in a central city like Brussels, Antwerp, London or Paris,’ Demoen says. ‘We can be a bit more experimental. I think many visitors to the museum arrive thinking they are going to see an overview of maternity wear from the 19th century up until today, which of course is not what they get.’

‘M&OTHERS. Fashion and Motherhood’ at Modemuseum Hasselt runs until 5 January 2025.

modemuseumhasselt.be

‘Masquerade, Make-Up & Ensor’, a new exhibition at MoMu in Antwerp, examines the correlation between James Ensor and contemporary creative figures. A founding member of the avant-garde group Les XX, Ensor is championed as one of Belgium’s great proto-modernist artists.

Throughout his practice, ‘the mask’ was a recurring motif, often referencing the make-up trends of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As art historian Susan M Canning observes of the painter and printmaker’s work, ‘masking, make-up and arrangements of masks […] promote the disruptive and transgressive subterfuge of artifice’.

Inside ‘Masquerade, Make-Up & Ensor’ at MoMu – Fashion Museum Antwerp

‘Ensor was a perfect way to feature make-up and hairstylists in MoMu for the first time,’ says Elisa De Wyngaert, who co-curated the show with Kaat Debo and Romy Cockx. ‘But also a way to discuss beauty ideals and everything surrounding the fashion industry.’

Also central to the exhibition’s genesis were three points of exploration that De Wyngaert, Debo and Cockx wanted to highlight: Why do we wear masks? Why are people so afraid of visible ageing? How do we deal with ideals of beauty that are always changing and are impossible to achieve?

The multimedia works on display span paintings, photographs, scrapbooks, mannequins, videos and more. A small series of paintings by Ensor marks the start of the exhibition, followed by self-portraits of mammoth proportions by Issy Wood, highlighting the painter’s discomfort with being photographed. Elsewhere, Genieve Figgis’ ‘grotesque and beautiful’ characters hang on canvases against the backdrop of lilac curtains decorated with huge bows (a highlight of Janina Pedan’s exhibition design).

American photographer Bruce Gilden’s disarming close-ups of his subjects are mirrored in a selection of Cindy Sherman’s Head Shots series, while artist Tschabalala Self explores the idea of persona and politics. ‘A lot of the time beauty ideals reflect the politics you want to align yourself with,’ she considers on a nearby wall panel. ‘People often underestimate the political aspect of beauty.’

From the worlds of fashion and pop culture, Pat McGrath’s viral ‘porcelain doll’ make-up, conceived for John Galliano’s Maison Margiela 2024 Spring Summer Artisanal collection is presented with Another Galliano fixture, the ‘Rosalie’ doll. The latter can be found in a space dedicated to the master of hair Julien d’Ys, as well as a cloud-like sculpture he created for Wallpaper* in 2022. Items from Rihanna’s Fenty line and Martin Parr’s 2019 beauty campaign for Gucci both make cameos.

Perhaps the most significant, however, is the contribution of make-up artist Inge Grognard. Here, the looks she created for Maison Martin Margiela between 1988 and 2008 are shown almost like posters, the respective products used to create them hanging in sandwich bags below, while a video of Grognard today concludes the exhibition. ‘The film is very special; you don’t often hear the voice of make-up artists,’ notes De Wyngaert.

‘I am still flabbergasted by the amount of research [hair and make-up artists do]; they are true painters of fashion, the way they draw, the preparations,’ she continues. ‘True artists just working in a different medium. I didn’t think make-up was superficial [before], but the quality of the work, the reflection and depth, is something I’m just stunned by.’

For Cockx, whose focus was specific to the work and social landscape of Ensor, surprise was reserved for the language – and attitudes – surrounding make-up application. ‘What really struck me was, when looking at the fashion magazines from the 19th century, they literally compare make-up to applying paint [on a canvas],’ she adds.

Though not explicitly gendered, ‘Masquerade, Make-Up & Ensor’ strongly focuses on women, with whom the eccentric and opinionated Ensor had a complicated relationship. His 1925 poem, On Women, for example, is a deeply misogynistic text. Yet he also lived with – and frequently painted – his mother, aunt and sister.

‘Women wearing too much make-up is still perceived as, “what is she hiding?” not “oh, she wants to express herself”,’ suggests De Wyngaert. ‘There’s so much judgment; both in Ensor’s time and still today. It’s this kind of impossibility – how do you ever win? That is something we wanted to leave space for. Women constantly feel they are not in charge of their own bodies – we wanted to explore where these fears or anxieties come from.’

In a later scene, fears of ageing are projected onto a would-be bride. Surrounded by a sheer curtain, she stands before a three-piece mirror, the extravagance of a Christian Lacroix gown mirrored in her hair, which is piled high in an exaggerated style that riffs on the beehive.

‘That was the most experimental installation, with Cyndia Harvey,’ shares De Wyngaert, alluding to the revered British hairstylist. ‘It was an idea from a previous interview with Lacroix for “Echo: Wrapped in Memory”. He told me about this obsession with Miss Havisham and that planted the seed. I hope it gives some strength, acknowledgement and empowerment to ageing women, or ageing people for that matter,’ she concludes.

‘Masquerade, Make-up & Ensor’ is on display at MoMu - Fashion Museum Antwerp until 2 February 2025

momu.be

The Green Ark now graces the Meise Botanic Garden on the grounds of Bouchout Castle in the Flemish Brabant. The new pavilion is part of a project to revive and extend 7,600 sq m of greenhouses in this centre of plant conservation. The structure, designed by NU Architectuur Atelier, is fashioned from Kebony Clear wood to create a dramatic lattice structure at the heart of the 92-hectare Botanic Garden’s conservatory complex.

Green Ark: caring for the world's endangered plant species

The Meise Botanic Garden is one of the world’s largest conservatories of endangered plant species. The restoration project encompassed the Garden’s 22 different greenhouses, each one dedicated to a particular environment, while education and conservation are also a key part of the activities on site.

NU have created a dramatic centrepiece in the Green Ark, a pavilion that sits at the heart of the one of the newly restored conservatories and offers visitor and educational experiences. The new structure has a curved roof of Kebony wood shingles that appear like scales as they cascade down its steep curved sides. Inside, the huge arched roof reveals the naked wood structure, raised up on a concrete frame with a glazed ground floor that looks into the surrounding sweep of glasshouses.

Working alongside the Flemish Government and De Keyser Wood Industry, as well as Archipelago Architects, NU have made the most of Kebony’s FSC certified softwoods. The company has become renowned for its ‘modified wood’ process – and for its support of artists, architects and designers – which uses softwood’s much faster growth rate and a special process of combining the wood with furan polymers to increase its solidity and stability. This puts Kebony’s softwoods on a par with hardwoods, at a fraction of the cost and growing team, leading to far more sustainable outcomes for sourcing and carbon capture.

For the Botanic Garden and for Kebony, NU’s Green Ark makes a timely and striking statement, epitomising a more ecologically-led approach to structural timber, and avoiding the use of tropical hardwoods. The new pavilion is also set up to recycle rainwater from the shingled roof, while the rest of the roof structure is a flat terrace that gives elevated views into the surrounding greenhouses. There is also a connection to the on-site seed bank, offering visitors an insight into the ongoing conservation work at the Meise Botanic Garden.

NUarchitectuurAtelier.com

Kebony.com

PlantentuinMeise.be

Glenn Sestig's latest project, Residence Norah, follows all of the signature hallmarks that have made the Belgian architect a frequent feature in the pages of Wallpaper*. An appreciation of modernist architecture? Tick. Tactile textures and concrete surfaces? Tick. A private domestic haven with nods to contemporary minimalist architecture, the high-end residential property world, and artistic explorations? Tick, tick, tick. 

Enter the private world of Residence Norah

The project – part of an existing site in Belgium's tony Deurle countryside – is set within a modernist home. The original structure was designed by the late 20th-century architect Eddy François and is now owned by property specialist Ahmed El-Saidy, who called upon Sestig and his Ghent-based team to transform a former private gallery wing within the property into a 'flexible reception area', the architect explains. 

El-Saidy aims to use the crisp new space as a hub for meetings and presentations, where architects that he works with can come and showcase their designs. Sestig responded by working with the building’s bones, revealing the raw concrete fabric and elevating it. The result is a richly textured space where surfaces play with the daylight and invite the touch. At the same time, careful detailing adds luxury to the interior through bespoke pieces of furniture and fittings.

'I made sure I respected the original architecture,' says Sestig. 'By eliminating later additions and non-structural elements, I made sure François' original intention was highlighted in the new design. I continued by taking his concept further, and layering my own minimalist sensibility, which is aligned with his – for example by straightening lines and integrating everything in the main room to free up flexible space within it, and by adding visual and physical connections to the space's wider context, such as the new stairs to the garden.'

As Sestig explains, the new design improved the home's circulation and internal connections too, as the architect created an entirely new set of steps, which now seamlessly link the interior to the property's surrounding green gardens.

glennsestigarchitects.com

The Belgian coast, a 65km-long stretch of sandy beach, is essentially one big promenade with a coastal tram linking a string of seaside resorts. One of its most interesting stops is Ostende, a buzzing harbour city where the wall of seafront apartment blocks gives way to Belle Époque villas, a curved-glass 1950s casino and street art trails.

It is in this town beloved by local artists and creatives that Albane Paret and Micha Pycke, the Ghent-based founders of Club Paradis, a communications agency specialising in the fields of art, design and architecture, have decided to open a new curated space, Paradis Apartment. And with clients including Bozar, Muller Van Severen and Tim Van Laere Gallery, the pair were not short of inspiration when it came to furnishing the space. 

Welcome to Ostende's Paradis Apartment

The project is inspired by the early works of art dealers and curators such as Leo Castelli, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Gavin Brown, who all started their careers in the art world by staging exhibitions and presentations in their own domestic places, including their living rooms and kitchens, or even hotel rooms.

Available for short and long stays, as well as for events and shoots, ‘the two-bedroom apartment serves both as a holiday escape and an inspirational place to sleep, meet, share and dream,’ say Paret and Pycke. The 1,000 sq ft flat, located on the 8th floor of a 1960s building overlooking the North Sea, is filled with carefully selected designs and artworks by the likes of John Baldessari and Nathalie Du Pasquier. Almost all of the art, furniture and collectible design items here are for sale.

‘Paradis Apartment is not a static concept, but a moving, versatile and evolving project,’ explain the founders. ‘It’s not a gallery, nor a showroom or a shop, but a curated space where the works and objects are put to everyday use, away from the sacredness of the museum and the white cube.’

At the moment, an artwork by American artist Sam Durant hangs in the kitchen, which features a stainless steel island with a high gloss wavy wooden wall by Ghent’s Atelier Ternier. The dining area comes with a table and stools by Belgian duo Middernacht & Alexander, made using decommissioned diesel tanks, as well as ‘Wire C #1’ shelving by Belgian duo Muller Van Severen.

In the living room, which comes with a curved bay window framing views of the city’s wide beach and stone jetty, a fox-themed rug by Swiss textile artist Christoph Hefti is complemented by a lacquered coffee table by Belgian studio Destroyers/Builders. Also featured are a ‘Drago Nero’ vase by Coseincorso, a Cassina floor lamp by Destroyers Builders, and a wooden chair part of a collection designed by Bernard Dubois and Isaac Reina for Maniera Gallery.

Other highlights include bedding by Tekla, colourful tableware by Lerry Ceramics, and modular cabinets by Studio MOTO architects. Also provided is a carefully edited guide to the city’s best moules-frites joints, beach bars and seafood restaurants. Of course, since most of the pieces are available to purchase, there’s no telling what you will find when you get there – but we’re pretty sure it will be worth the trip.

Paradis Apartment sleeps up to 5 people. Prices start at €280 per night

paradisapartment.com

For American artist Joan Semmel, the body is a lens through which to dissect the cult of youth. Using her own body as a reference – although these works aren’t self-portraits – Semmel considers the representation of women through an unflinching examination of the natural ageing process. 

Joan Semmel, ‘An Other View’ at Xavier Hufkens

At her first exhibition with Xavier Hufkens in Belgium, Semmel juxtaposes the tracing of this passage of time with an exploration of political feminist issues. In eight oil paintings and two works on paper, created between 1971 and 2018, Semmel questions the accepted nuances of female beauty, beginning with her early works that sought to dismiss sexual repression for women by depicting intimacy from and for a woman’s gaze.

Through a muted colour palette and with a nod to her abstract expressionist roots, Semmel considers the body as she sees it, eschewing the male gaze altogether. In Weathered (2018), which shows the female body from the viewpoint of the female, the eyes on the body are the artist’s alone. 

Elsewhere, it is props that distort the male gaze. In Disappearing (2006), we are already removed from the body, represented only through a photograph, its opaqueness carefully replicated. The mirrors and cameras of Baroque (2002) force the viewer into the frame, questioning their own motives in the reflection. 

‘Reimagining the nude without objectifying the person, using my own body, made it clear that the artist was female and undercut the stereotypes of the male artist and the female muse,’ says Semmel. ‘I wanted to subvert that tradition from within.’

Joan Semmel, ‘An Other View’, is on until 15 June 2024 at Xavier Hufkens, Van Eyck, Brussels, Belgium

xavierhufkens.com

Junya Ishigami furniture and products go on show at Maniera Gallery in Belgium today - following the Japanese architect's series' official launch during Salone del Mobile 2024 and Milan Design Week as part of Alcova 2024. 

Ishigami's architecture works, such as the Zaishui Art Museum in China and the cave-like House & Restaurant project in his home country's Yamaguchi, are defined by an elegant ethereality and a distinct sense of lightness. These qualities continue to be present in his smaller-scale designs, which display the same distinct approach as his buildings. 

Junya Ishigami designs at Maniera Gallery

The collection on show at Maniera Gallery at Villa Danckaert (until 31 August 2024) comprises dining and rocking chairs, a low Zaisu chair, an atelier table, a dining table, a glass table, two partitions and seven lamps. Ishigami has worked with materials such as stainless steel, leather, rattan, glass and wood to craft objects that are highly functional and at the same time, poetic.

'Ishigami prefers lightness to mass, fragility to gravity, and this is also visible in his designs for the new furniture series for Maniera,' reads the gallery's statement. This is certainly true in the furniture on show here - some of which was created originally for Ishigami’s cave-like House & Restaurant, and others conceived for the architect's mother’s home, which is currently in construction.

The gallery is well known for commissioning architects and artists to develop furniture and objects that can be used and enjoyed in everyday life - but embody a design-led, art-infused identity. Founded by Kwinten Lavigne and Amaryllis Jacobs in 2014, Maniera's past collaborations include established names in the design world, such as Studio Mumbai, Piovenefabi, Christ and Gantenbein and Christoph Hefti. 

Ishigami's family of products and furniture will be available through the Maniera website, as well as a handful of carefully selected furniture stores around the world.

The collection by Junya Ishigami for Maniera is on view until 31 August 2024

Maniera
Hôtel Danckaert
Rue Meyerbeer 33
1190 Brussels

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The Bruges Triennial 2024, centred on the theme 'Spaces of Possibility', opened to the public this weekend (13 April). Spanning from the Belgian city's centre to the nearby beach at Zeebrugge, the cultural festival encompasses art and architecture installations by local and international talent, which will remain in place for the next five months. This is the festival's fourth edition and its organisers, headed by co-curators Shendy Gardin and Sevie Tsampalla, are looking firmly to the future.

Bruges Triennial 2024: the highlights

'How can we safeguard the liveability of Bruges, and cities more generally, in a protective way? How do we approach concepts such as sustainability and change in a Unesco-protected environment where preservation is central? And how can contemporary art and architecture create a new framework for these issues?' are some of the questions the triennial event's participants are called to address. 

Participants and their installations at the Bruges Triennial 2024 include creatives from as far and wide as the USA, Thailand, South Africa and The Netherlands, including leading and emerging voices, such as Sumayya Vally, Bangkok Design Studio, and Studio Ossidiana.  

• Iván Argote with 'Who?'
• Bangkok Project Studio's 'The tower of balance'
• 'Firesong for the bees, a tree of clay' by Mariana Castillo Deball
• 'Full Swing' by Mona Hatoum
• 'Star of the Sea' by Ivan Morison
• 'Raamland' by Norell/Rodhe
• 'empty drop' by Shingo Masuda + Katsuhisa Otsubo Architects
• 'Common Thread' by SO–IL
• 'Earthsea Pavilion' by Studio Ossidiana
• 'Under the carpet' by Adrien Tirtiaux
• 'The Joyful Apocalypse' by Traumnovelle
• 'Grains of Paradise' by Sumayya Vally

'The 12 art and architectural installations not only provide a different view of Bruges but also illustrate how we can deal with space and materials differently in the future. They challenge and encourage dialogue about how things can be done. Together, they tell the story of a city in the throes of change: Spaces of Possibility,' said Shendy Gardin, co-curator of Bruges Triennial 2024. 

'The exhibition takes Bruges as a vantage point from which to imagine other possible cities and futures. Drawing inspiration from Rebecca Solnit’s writings, it invites artists and architects to engage with the city as a “repository of possibilities”. Practising the possible is about challenging dominant paradigms and proposing that things can be done otherwise,' said Sevie Tsampalla, co-curator of Bruges Triennial 2024. 

Alongside the main series of pavilions and artworks spread across town, a rich partner programme unfolds in parallel across Bruges, in collaboration with four cultural partners with local roots, including Cultuurcentrum Brugge, De Republiek | Dertien12, The Entrepot and Musea Brugge.

'Bruges Triennial 2024: Spaces of Possibility' runs from 13 April to 1 September 2024

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Belgian designer Christophe Gevers (1928-2007) has been celebrated among his peers for his intricate craftsmanship, architecture and interiors. Known for his tri-colour palette of primary hues, often unexpectedly injected into products and space, Gevers may feel less familiar to wider audiences than other figures in 20th-century and modernist architecture; but now, a new book dedicated to his portfolio, carefully selected and photographed by Jean-Pierre Gabriel, puts a spotlight to his oeuvre. 

The meaty tome, spanning over 400 pages and 500 photographs, presents the designer's life’s work, some examples of which have been kept private until now.

‘Christophe Gevers’ by Jean-Pierre Gabriel

Gevers was known as ‘The Maker’ in his local, 20th-century architecture and design scene. Yet, Gabriel feels the term ‘Fabricator’ is a more apt description for the designer, whose love of craft combines an artistic approach, technical skill, and attention to detail. His work stands out for his knack for merging the large and the small, space and products, developing projects from the inside out in his trademark practice of 'interior architecture'.

An unlikely midcentury precursor of today's 'unexpected red theory' (an interior design approach that uses a splash of red to elevate a space, especially in areas where it doesn't 'make sense'), Gevers thrived in harnessing the power of primary colours. His pops of rich navy and golden yellow add a modernist feel to his interiors, which often contrast against historic buildings and more textured materials such as stone walls. 

His spaces stand out for their livability and sense of comfort – yet at the same time, functionality was at the heart of Gevers' design process, whether that be in lighting, furniture, or residential interiors. Inviting the natural world to interact with his process, Gevers honed a style that is rich in organic materials, making compositions not only tactile and layered but also designed to last the test of time.

The monograph is arranged around five thematic sections. The reader first journeys through Gevers' architectural output, such as his residential projects at Ohain and La Garde-Freinet. 

The book then delves into the designer's mentorship relationships, followed by his interior work through case studies including Une Maison dans les Bois, La Maison Double, and En dessous des toits. 

Restaurants, such as Au Vieux Saint Martin, are also included in this section – as is Gevers' iconic 1959 ‘TBA’ chair, which was exclusively reproduced for the restaurant LESS by Hertog Jan. The final chapter looks into Gevers’ portfolio in furniture, lighting and objects.

Architect Glenn Sestig penned a poetic foreword for the book, describing Gevers not just as a designer, but also as an 'interior sculptor'. He writes: ‘He sculpts shapes, volumes and materials and assembles them until they become furniture… Depending on the fittings and furniture, he can be placed in the tradition of Charlotte Perriand, Carlo Scarpa, Luis Barragán, Josef Hoffmann or Dom Hans Van der Laan.’

For where to buy the book, see jeanpierregabriel.eu

Hotel Amigo in Brussels just launched Bar Magritte - the world’s only bar dedicated to the Belgian Surrealist René Magritte, commemorating what would have been the artist's 125th birthday. The bar, set in the Rocco Forte outpost of the Belgian capital, arises as a destination cocktail experience driven by expert mixology, modern design, and a sense of mystery, much like Magritte's depictions of unexpected encounters.

Bar Magritte nods to the Surrealist artist's 125th birthday

Located in the heart of Brussels, close to The Musée Magritte Museum and within driving distance to René Magritte Museum, Bar Magritte sets the tone for those seeking to explore the artist’s fabled work in his home country. 

The interiors, designed by Rocco Forte Hotels’ director of design Olga Polizzi in collaboration with Sarah Daniels of DO Design Studio, boast a joyful colour palette with playful textures and beautiful art deco-inspired stained-glass windows. 

The jewel of the bar, however, is a larger-than-life wallpaper inspired by Magritte’s Femmes (1922) and executed by London-based designer Adam Ellis. Adding to the atmosphere, jazz and live music transport guests to the rhythm of the 1920s and 1930s.

On the design, Polizzi notes, ‘The wallpaper’s design was enlarged and extended so that it encompasses the whole room. DO Design Studio then chose the banquettes – green velvet with white piping – and other furniture, such as the pink and blue chairs, to match the colour scheme. Other interesting features are locally sourced unusual lights and tables.’

A long brass bar in the centre of Bar Magritte serves whimsical drinks inspired by the artist’s work and life, crafted by world-leading mixologist Salvatore Calabrese. The first section of the menu, dubbed ‘His Works,’ features blends inspired by artworks such as ‘Shéhérezade,’ a citrussy, effervescent Martini, or ‘Lyricism,’ a sultry celebration of pear. 

The second part, ‘His World,’ comprises ten classic cocktails drawn from Magritte’s lifetime, including ‘Casanova,’ a tribute to the artist’s friend Salvador Dalí. Bar Magritte also showcases a selection of small plates featuring Belgian classics inspired by Magritte’s favourite foods.

roccofortehotels.com

If you’re on the lookout for a cosy retreat that combines escapism, delectable gastronomy, and tranquil natural beauty, look no further than La Roseraie Modave, a serene restaurant and bolthole nestled on the outskirts of the Ardennes forest in Belgium, which has added a series of contemporary cabin-style shelters to its wooded grounds.

New shelters at La Roseraie Modave

The restaurant, led by chef Marie Trignon, and with three rooms above, is housed within a 19th-century manor, and recently underwent a transformation aimed at modernising and expanding its offering while preserving the historical integrity of the venue.

In collaboration with Interni Edition, the restaurant redesign introduces bespoke tables and handmade tableware by Valerie Ceulemans.

Beyond its acclaimed dining experience, La Roseraie Modave now also boasts architecturally striking, two-storey shelters by the Belgium-based firm Laboratoire.

Sustainable architecture principles were at the heart of the project, with materials chosen accordingly. Piles replaced concrete to lift the shelters and allow tree roots to pass underneath. The buildings are timber-framed, insulated with a membrane, and finished with a glass panel exterior. Meanwhile, brushed metal accents give a reflective appearance that changes with the seasons.

The philosophy underlying the restaurant and the shelters is to embrace the natural setting while embodying modernity and forward-thinking design.

Modern flavours and textures, along with contemporary plating, continue to define La Roseraie’s fine dining experience. Chef Trignon’s passion for using seasonal ingredients along with traditional recipes with a twist now expands to the gourmet breakfast experience, which includes a cooked-to-order offering, and a unique take on the traditional English afternoon tea.

laroseraiemodave.com

The House in the Fields offers the perfect balance between private retreat and main base of operations for a family looking for a tranquil home in Belgium's green countryside. The scheme, designed by locally based architect Stef Claes, is a minimalist architecture haven that also offers a robust, well-thought-out backdrop for the daily challenges of family life. 

House in the Fields: where minimalism meets nature

The project blends local vernacular styles, a low-slung volume, and a slanted roof that nods to agricultural structures of its region; it also showcases the architect-and-owner team's love for American modernist architecture.

At the same time, an arrangement of white-painted bricks, red terracotta roof tiles, and clean, orthogonal volumes makes for a striking composition against the surrounding greenery.

A cross-laminated timber (or CLT) frame supports the structure, infilled by bricks. This method was chosen for its environmental benefits but is also a nod to the client's background in the lumber industry. Additionally, as this is the emerging studio's first ground-up build, it underlines Claes' sustainable architecture ambition, setting the pace for more to come. 

Inside, the theme of white and minimalist gestures continues, with exposed, painted brickwork and natural and light-coloured materials. Large glazed openings, tall ceilings, and clerestory windows enhance daylight indoors and bring the outside in. 

A system of custom motorised louvres helps shade the interiors, as Claes took his cues from the architecture of Richard Neutra. The resulting shadow patterns on walls and floors tie into other linear elements in the project – from the roof beams to strip windows and the overall roof line. 

The home's U-shaped layout 'hugs' a garden of wild flora and a pond, creating a more private open air enclosure for the residents. Visible from most rooms, it highlights the balance and intimate relationship with nature in this contemporary house in the fields. 

stefclaes.com

Peeking between mature trees, House P's lean, white forms are a celebration of elegance and horizontality. The home sits on a sleepy suburban plot in rural Belgium, but thanks to the rich foliage surrounding it and its smart volume positioning, you would be excused for thinking that it's in the middle of a forest – and similarly, living there, the owners can detect no hint of surrounding buildings. It was an intention its authors, architect Steven Vanderborre and his namesake studio, were keen to make reality when they received the commission for a family home from their client, a jeweller. 

House P: a landscape to experience serene surroundings

'The old, characterful trees and the natural slope of the site provided the initial impetus to create a concept – sketched on site on the wooden camping bench. [We] sought to bring a new landscape into the existing landscape, allowing the immediate surroundings to be experienced in a more intense way. A floating landscape that explores and approaches nature in different ways, a new landscape as a surface on which to live, experience, both indoors and outdoors,' writes Vandenborre (whose previous projects include Safari Studios, a music production studio for the Belgian band Goose). 

Clad in Egyptian off-white store, the structure is composed of linear shapes and large, glazed openings that make the house appear to float among the tree canopies. The experience of living there is centred on an immersion in nature, with green visible from all spaces and so placed at the heart of every room. 

'The shape of the end façade was inspired by the sculpture Signal in Brussels by Jacques Moeshal. Supposedly the most beautiful mo(nu)ment announcing a new place on our roads,' the architect continues. 

House P consists of three floors: a lower ground level containing the garage, service areas, a bicycle shed and an art gallery; the ground floor with its flowing living spaces, swimming pool deck and the principal bedrooms; and the upper level, where more bedrooms are located. 

Vanbenborre aimed to create a home that balances luxury with an atmosphere of honesty and connection with nature – a 'sensory architecture', he explains. 

vdba.be 

Antwerp’s Green District landmark, Hotel August, is now a proud member of The Aficionados, an established guide for design hotels, travel culture and lifestyle. First revealed in 2019, the transformation of this historical gem was carried out by Belgian architect and interior/product designer Vincent Van Duysen (currently showing at Design Miami 2023), along with hotelier Mouche Van Hool, renowned for her success with Antwerp’s Hotel Julien.

Hotel August is a modern-day sanctuary featuring a bar and restaurant, wellness facilities, a shop and gardens

Named after the former Augustinian cloister and chapel, Hotel August occupies five interconnected red-brick grand buildings, encompassing a private chapel, former nuns’ living quarters, townhouses, and walled gardens. Van Duysen, in his inaugural hotel project, has restored the neoclassical features dictated by the building’s listed status, infusing it with a modern touch.

Upon passing through the iconic matt-black steel canopy, guests are enveloped in the tranquillity envisioned by Van Duysen. The desaturated colour palette, a signature touch, sets the stage for the coexistence of restored heritage and contemporary design - ‘an urban bolthole of subtle monochromatic style edged in functional luxury,’ as described by the creative duo.

The hotel’s essence pays homage to its past through details like the revived chapel floor tiles, while statement centrepiece lighting from Flos and custom-designed Molteni&C furniture in moody blues and charcoal noir define its modern character. Original grey-green timber and white mouldings coalesce with modern black elements, creating a contemporary haven within historical walls. In the bedrooms, once nuns’ quarters, a palette of sage-green, creamy whites, marble, wood, and tawny tones offers a serene retreat.

Van Duysen, reflecting on the project, shares: ‘My overall strategy in turning the hidden gem and its gardens into a hotel was first and foremost to respect the historical DNA of the site and its surroundings, achieved through the careful restoration of its neoclassical splendour, through the addition of contemporary architectural elements, suitably upgrading the premises to its new function as a modern hotel.’

august-antwerp.com

theaficionados.com

Based in their 1970s brutalist house, designer Bram Kerkhofs and network architect Lore Baeyens live together in Leuven, outside Brussels. The creative duo acquired Villa Stuyven, their 20th-century concrete home in the residential neighbourhood of Holsbeek, and have transformed it into a combination of family house, artistic residency and studio. 

A reimagined 1970s brutalist house

Designed by local architects Vanderbiest & Reynaert in 1970 for the artist and philosopher Jef Stuyven, the structure has been thoroughly overhauled to accommodate Kerkhofs’s studio, together with a new guest house component for artistic residencies, held in collaboration with Leuven’s Cas-co art space organisation.

Villa Stuyven is a classic slice of Belgian brutalist architecture, created during a fertile period of residential design that has withstood the test of time and continues to be much sought after. The concrete house is embedded in the forest, with board-marked internal and external walls paired with dark window frames, white masonry internal walls and dark ceramic tiles. The large windows frame beautiful views of a garden that blends seamlessly with the woodland. 

At entrance level, the house is arranged over two-storeys; the site slopes up to a single storey at the rear, giving it a very different visual character. The renovation has stayed true to the original materials palette, with the addition of oak flooring to complete the concrete ceilings found throughout.

Kerkhofs trained as a goldsmith, and his furniture and accessories combine metalworking with playful architectural forms, from the Coil cabinetry to ‘Les Gaufres’, a collection of modular candleholders inspired by Belgian waffles.

The house now provides a solid, uncompromising backdrop for both Kerkhofs’ own work and the couple’s accumulation of vintage furniture pieces. 

The designer’s workspace occupies Stuyven’s old art studio, and the original house’s six-bedroom layout provides ample space for the visiting creatives.

Bram-Kerkhofs.be

Belgian designer Linde Freya Tangelder's work is at the cusp of design, art and architecture. Inspired by architectural forms, through her studio Destroyers Builders she creates objects and furniture defined by solid volumes and based on material research, interpretation of large-scale details into human-scale designs, and a connection between contemporary and traditional. 

Tour Linde Freya Tangelder's studio

The designer, whose recent collaborators include Cassina, has just opened a new studio in Asse, Belgium, inside a 1967 house by architect Jozef Lietaert. She describes the space as an 'atelier, studio and home in the making, as a container of ideas, raw models, new beginnings'.

The low-volume building features a sculptural red brick exterior surrounded by hilly landscapes and greenery, and its architecture struck a chord with Tangelder, for the intimate effect given by the essential architectural language: 'curved walls, small corners, and a refined materiality are fundamental elements in [my] work', she says.

The designer has spent some time researching the original architecture: 'Originally built as a family home on a rural plot, the architects’ drawings clearly [show] it was only a small triangular piece of land, separated from the neighbour’s larger plot, that became the base for the architectural home,' she says. 

'The fields which surround it, make the view quite exceptional. This sloping land must have been challenging for the architect. While the house has only a ground level from the front, at the back an extra minus-one level arose, nearly invisible from street view. For the new owners, it is mainly the simplicity in construction that has incredible potential.'

The live-work space she shares with her partner, landscape architect Jo Groven, also serves as a display for her collections, from self-initiated aesthetic experiments to pieces she has created for galleries like Nilufar Gallery and Carwan, and her lighting for Cassina. 

The interior is defined by an imposing wood-cast concrete ceiling, interacting with the brushed aluminium and sculptural oak furniture across the main floor. While this space acts as a showcase of Tangelder's ongoing oeuvre, the rest of the house is in the process of being refurbished, with spaces dedicated to a workshop, a lacquer room and a modelling room. The current space, notes the designer, 'explains a commitment, and embraces the state of the unfinished', with more developments expected in the coming years to expand the front-facing area into a large atelier. 

'Destructing and reconstructing without ending yet, new corners are uncovered and pieces settle themselves in this context,' says Tangelder. 'This state of incompleteness will be open for visits soon. The unfinished, the in-between, an Interlude.'

destroyersbuilders.com

So you want to be an Instagram star? Consider investing in a vintage Fiat 500 Jolly beach car. An adorable sky-blue model from 1959, with wicker seats and an open roof, went up for auction at this year’s Zoute Sale in Knokke-Heist, Belgium. Prior to the sale, it took a few last trips through town, as delighted bystanders smiled, waved, and snapped photos galore.

The beach community known as Knokke Le Zoute was having one of the year’s busiest weekends, thanks to the annual Zoute Grand Prix, a four-day high-end car, art, and lifestyle festival in early October that includes a BonhamsCars auction of vintage and classic cars, an exhibition of new top-of-the-line contemporary cars, a three-day classic car rally, and a GT tour.

Buckle up for the Zoute Grand Prix

The Fiat Jolly had competition for attention – seemingly every other car on the road that weekend was a collector’s item, and the quiet atmosphere was punctuated by the muscular growl of revving engines. At the luxury La Réserve hotel, teenage boys, ‘car spotters’, circled the parking lot, cameras in hand. A particularly excited group gathered to photograph a Bugatti Chiron with German plates. One spotter, from Luxembourg, explained that an alert about the car had gone out on social media. ‘You don’t see many like this,’ he said, kissing his fingers appreciatively.

But fine cars are never an unusual sight here; even a young woman working in the hotel lobby pulled out her phone to show off her family’s two Porsches. Asked whether anyone here drives a Subaru, she just laughed. ‘This is Knokke.’

Commonly referred to as Belgium’s Saint-Tropez, Knokke-Heist was settled at the beginning of the 20th century by three families who catered to British tourists by building a golf course, tennis courts, stables, and white villas with red tile roofs. 

Today, Knokke counts 33,000 inhabitants and 110,000 owners of second homes. Name a monarch or billionaire, and he (or she) is probably here. People are drawn not only by the favourable tax code, but also by 11km of sandy beach, high-end shopping, Michelin-starred restaurants, and a thriving art scene. The town’s art deco casino boasts an astonishing 360-degree mural by Belgian Surrealist René Magritte, measuring 70m wide by 7m tall (soon to be restored as part of a major facelift by TAB Architects and Barozzi Veiga).

The town contains 90 art galleries in just two square kilometres. Perhaps its most prestigious dealer is Guy Pieters, the Belgian son of a house painter who opened his first gallery in Knokke in 1981, knowing he would find collectors nearby. One of his longtime artists is Wolfgang Volz, Christo’s exclusive photographer, who was in town to show his photos of the wrapped Arc de Triomphe. ‘I didn’t know how to spell Knokke,’ said Volz. ‘Now I’ve had about five solo exhibitions here.’

Another artist in Knokke for the weekend was Princess Delphine of Belgium, only recently recognised as part of the royal family after her father, King Albert II, was obliged by the courts to take a DNA test. She drove the last leg of the auto rally in a BMW 507 roadster (lent by BMW from its heritage fleet), just like the one Elvis Presley acquired when doing his military service in Germany. 

Female drivers were definitely a minority in the Zoute Rally, which attracted 250 historic cars and typically has a waiting list. A woman named Patricia, from Antwerp, took the wheel of a red 1963 Jaguar E-Type, while her male partner navigated. When asked why she got to drive, she smiled: ‘Because it’s my car.’

The Zoute Grand Prix was founded in 2010 by two brothers, Filip and David Bourgoo, who owned an Audi-Bentley dealership. Believing that motor shows had grown too big and no longer attracted the right people, they displayed a new car in central Knokke, in front of the Louis Vuitton boutique. Sensing an opportunity, Ferrari asked them to build a marquee for its new products. Other brands followed. ‘Ten years ago, we had to beg to sell cars in Knokke,’ said Filip. ‘Now they’re queuing.’

Collector’s items, contemporary and classic

Visitors paid €75 for a ticket to enter the Grand Prix’s two beachside pavilions. In the Prado Zoute pavilion, 21 car manufacturers showed their latest models, from the Lamborghini Revuelto to the Ferrari Purosangue four-seater. Around half were electric. The car drawing the biggest crowds was the fully electric Rolls-Royce Spectre that customers had just started receiving that very week. The beautiful beast weighed 3 tonnes, with a choice of 44,000 paint colours, and a price tag of €525,000. Product expert Ed Drake said that the car’s bespoke road sound (to alert pedestrians to its presence) was recorded by an orchestra imitating the sound of a Rolls-Royce accelerating.  

Tucked away among the collector cars was the new Rimac Nevera, the young Croatian brand’s first commercial automobile, which has set the record as the world’s fastest electric production car: 0-100 km/h in 1.81 seconds. Brand manager Bernard Van Bellingen said they sold one car this year – a special version, to a buyer in Belgium, for €2.4 million – and that the year’s second sale ‘will arrive’.

There are cars that people drive, and those that sit pretty. The latter, 96 collector cars, were on display in the Zoute Gallery pavilion. Many had barely ever touched asphalt. All of them hit the block on Sunday at BonhamsCars’ tenth annual Zoute Sale, which has quickly become one of the world’s most important auctions of rare collection cars. Ruinart Champagne flowed freely, poured by servers in Magritte-inspired bowler hats. 

Several cars (notably supercars and hypercars), sold for close to one million euros or more, receiving audience applause each time they hit the milestone. An immaculate 2014 Porsche 918 Spyder with less than 400km on the odometer doubled its bottom estimate to reach €1.2 million. ‘Who woulda thought?’ said the auctioneer, Maarten ten Holder, managing director of BonhamsCars, as it blew past one million.

Surprising rarities included a 1997 SAAB EX prototype, a one-of-a-kind car made for the company’s 50th anniversary. A collection of eight different Aston Martins from 2010 were all painted the same tangerine orange colour – a special request by the original owner. A 1956 Bentley S-Type Continental was formerly driven by Helmut Newton. And a 1998 Aston Martin DB7 Volante once cradled J.Lo’s bottom in her ‘Love Don’t Cost a Thing’ music video. Love may be cheap, but this car ended up being a steal at just over €40,000.

The star of the sale was a stunning beige 1959 Ferrari 250 GT ‘Tour de France’ with all original parts, owned for 37 years by Swiss racing driver Plinio Haas. It went for slightly below its estimate, €4.83 million (including premium), to a North American client, pushing the day’s total sales to more than €27 million, a record for BonhamsCars.

And the little blue Fiat Jolly? After a round of lively bidding, it sold for an impressive €155,250 to a bidder from the United Arab Emirates.

Zoute Grand Prix, ZouteGrandPrix.be, Cars.Bonhams.com

The Pringiers family seems to have an affinity for minimalist concrete. The Belgian clan of entrepreneurs and art collectors is spread across several countries in two continents (Europe and Asia), with the parents, industrialist Pierre Pringiers and artist Saskia Pintelon, based in Sri Lanka since 1981. Pintelon’s studio is famously located within a specially commissioned Tadao Ando-designed house, nestled on a cliff edge in the southern part of the country. Between them, the couple and their three grown children – two sons, Jacob and Koenraad, and one daughter, Isolde – own a collection of design-led homes across the world, by architects such as Ando and Shigeru Ban.

One thing that three of these have in common is their elegant contemporary minimalism. Another element they share is their architect, Belgian Glenn Sestig, who, hailing from the same part of the country as the Pringiers family, has known them for years.  

A bespoke gallery and home for the Pringiers family

The latest addition to this body of work is a private studio next to a home that the family already owned in the Belgian countryside. It is set in the Flanders region, halfway between Ghent and the seaside resort of Ostend, a fairly flat land offering long, peaceful views of green nature. The existing building, originally built in the 1940s, seems inconspicuous, blending in effortlessly with the gentle Belgian countryside and its typical rural dwellings. 

When the opportunity presented itself for the family to acquire the plot next door, along with its derelict farmhouse, they jumped at the chance, enlisting Sestig to craft a new building that would be adjacent, although not entirely connected to their home. ‘Isolde, who is based in Brussels, oversaw the project and often visited the construction site,’ Sestig recalls. ‘They needed a large base to stay in when they all returned to Belgium for holidays and gatherings. The entire family loves concrete and architecture, and they wanted a place to use both as a home and for their mother to display her art in.’  

The result is a volume that draws on the lines of its historic neighbour, but comes with a flat rooftop and orthogonal lines ‘to create more space inside’. The double-height, top-lit living space acts as a domestic gallery, filled with Pintelon’s canvases. An automated hatch in the floor with a pulley above allows the safe transportation of artwork up and down from the storage space below, which acts
as an archive for Pintelon’s pieces. 

All surfaces are made in tactile, textured concrete. ‘[It] brings us back to some great Belgian architecture, like we’ve seen from Juliaan Lampens, Léon Stynen and Ivan Van Mossevelde,’ says Sestig. ‘The challenge here was that I wanted everything in concrete, inside, outside, and even the roof.’ The result appears simple – gracefully still, monolithic and sculptural. However, it is a much more sophisticated construction than it may first appear. In a single, architectural sleight of hand, Sestig managed to both follow Belgian rules in terms of the permitted thickness of concrete walls, and to ensure climate control inside. To do so, he crafted two separate layers of concrete, with a gap between them for insulation. Both were poured in situ (apart from the pitched roof side, which was prefabricated on the ground and lifted up in place) and the final build won an award for its mastery of concrete construction.

Outside, a garden by landscape architect Erik Dhont is bordered by a tall concrete wall. ‘It is connected to nature, but it is also a sophisticated exhibition space, where Saskia can hang her art,’ Sestig says. ‘She might even work there, as she often reworks paintings as they sit displayed on the wall. I like to imagine her there, paintbrush in hand, inspired.’   

glennsestigarchitects.com  

This article appears in the November 2023 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

La Réserve unveils its thorough, 21st-century makeover by famed Belgian architect Glenn Sestig, this week in Knokke. The hotel, a hospitality staple ever since the small seaside town earned its stripes as Belgium's most coveted coastal destination in the mid-20th century, hosting Hollywood stars and world-famous politicians, occupies a privileged spot in the region – placed between the popular Albertstrand beach and the picturesque Silver Lake. Now, a full redesign of the hotel's public areas, including its bar and restaurant, introduces Sestig's signature mix of minimalist architecture and luxury materials to this rich heritage, and takes the space to the next chapter in its life.

La Réserve: Knokke’s grand relaunch

La Réserve's refined refresh spans its entire ground level – from the carefully orchestrated approach, with its Sestig-designed minimalist planters flanking the entrance, to the dramatic, double-height main lobby, which is the heart of the hotel.

This space, wrapped in sleek marble, wood, stone and brass, contains not only the reception desks for concierge and car service, but also a lounge filled with bespoke Sestig product and furniture designs, as well as a mix of Jean-Michel Frank and Christian Liaigre classics. It all sits under a redesigned feature ceiling that nods to the region's traditional thatched roofs, through its shape and cladding material. 

From this main 'plaza', a number of spaces flow, including the lush bar, the hotel store, a flexible event and brand activation space, two generous rooms for private dining, and the new restaurant, La Rigue at La Réserve, headed by Michelin-starred chef Peter Goossens. Sestig crafted all of them, creating a new identity for each – from the bar's glamourous and mysterious vibe to the restaurant's seaside references, such as the bespoke, sculptural wall art that was inspired by sand formations on the beach. The eatery spills out to the hotel's lake-facing terraces, looking out towards calming waters and site-specific land art by Belgian sculptor Panamarenko. 

The redesign includes the lower level's exclusive wine cellar – which La Réserve's members can access freely as well as stock their own bottles there – and a set of spacious events rooms, for larger conferences and galas. 

And there’s more to come. Sestig and his Ghent-based team are already hard at work perfecting their plans for the hotel's spa and wellness areas, with a view to launch these too later this year. Meanwhile, a floating pontoon on the lake, offering shaded loungers and a bar with refreshments for those who want to avoid the crowds on the beach, is also on the cards. As they say, watch this space. 

la-reserve.be 

glennsestigarchitects.com 

For a snapshot of Belgian design at its best, those in Brussels would do well to stop by Mix Hotel a new ‘hospitality hub’ in the south side of the city. Here, Belgian designer Lionel Jadot has transformed a functionalist office building into a destination, complete with a hotel, three restaurants, co-working space and a gym – all kitted out with bespoke design.

Lionel Jadot on designing Mix Hotel: ‘I work like a film director’

Adamant that Mix would not feature catalogue-bought pieces or cookie-cutter styles, Jadot’s mission was to create everything from scratch, from curtains and door handles to lighting and furniture. His first stop was Zaventem Ateliers, the modern-day crafts guild that he founded in 2018, on the outskirts of Brussels. He invited all 24 Zaventem makers to design a piece of their choice for Mix.

‘I work like a film director,’ he says (it’s true; he has made films in the past). ‘I cast my designers like actors, and they interpret my words as they want.’ It’s also true that the imposing cross-shaped building, created in the 1960s by architects René Stapels and Pierre Dufau, is not short of drama. Jadot took its copper-clad auditorium and sweeping, circular staircase as inspiration, along with ‘the shapes, the concrete, the metal, the wood to create a language that informed all the interior design’.

Beyond Zaventem, Jadot scouted out a further 26 artisans to collaborate on Mix. A prerequisite was that they were Belgian, had their own workshops and shared Jadot’s ethos of working with recycled elements and repurposed materials. As a sixth-generation member of furniture-making family, Jadot spent his childhood in his father’s workshop before taking over the business aged 19. For more than 20 years, he has created bespoke interiors for private clients and hospitality projects, from Café Flora and Wolf Food Market (both in Brussels) to the new Jam Hotel in Lisbon.

A locally made hotel

In a bid to eliminate waste and generate a circular economy, many renovation leftovers have been reused in Mix. Take the recycled plastic skirting by Bel Abatros, all 6km of it, or the screens in the co-working spaces by Emma Cogné (which can be rented by the hour) made from plastic cable tubing. As well as using local materials and makers, Jadot also adopted a fairer fee structure, eliminating the middle man (himself) so that each designer invoiced the hotel owner directly. Most of Zaventem Atelier’s artisans are small-scale, with a maximum of three people, and for the 25,000 sq m Mix, they had to upscale massively.

Another fitting example of this approach is French artist Roxane Lahidji (based at Zaventem Ateliers), whose brief was to create more than 200 lamps for the bedrooms and lobby, which she made from a salt composite harvested from the Rhone delta. ‘Mix pushed her and her process further. She had to hire more staff and organise workshops to get to this level of production,’ says Jadot, clearly pleased with the results of the challenges he set her.

He adds: ‘Normally with a project of this size, the designer orders maybe 1,000 chairs from China because they are cheap. The chairs arrive by boat, which takes months. At Mix, the idea was to create a locally made collection. Everything is listed, everything is signed, so my client has a huge selection of collectible design.’ Diners, gym members and hotel guests who fall in love with pieces (and who can resist the chairs in the Fox food hall by Custom Cut or the lights by Studio Elementaires?) can commission them, and should Mix’s owners ever want to redesign the space in the future, they can auction everything off and start again.

The scale of Mix and the breadth of original design within it is mind-boggling, and that Jadot could fulfil such a challenging brief in just two and a half years is a testament to both his talents and his strong connections to the Belgian design scene. ‘Co-ordinating 50 designers, keeping my client’s trust because there were no visuals, or catalogues to look at, yeah it was a bit crazy,’ he laughs. ‘But everybody worked so well together and understood the power of the project. We were a great cast.’

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mixbrussels.com

Design and craftsmanship unite at Paardenmarkt 68 in Antwerp, a rococo mansion-turned-multi-brand retail destination that brings together Revised furniture, Wool & Wire, Gemla, Rex Kralj and Tato Italia in an eclectic curation spanning the whole of Europe.

Wool & Wire’s sustainable carpets created from natural raw materials, fully crafted in Belgium, make a warm foil for the pieces from Gemla, Sweden's oldest furniture factory. Rex Kralj, which pays tribute to Slovenian architect Niko Kralj’s furniture designs with its sculpted aesthetic, adds a contemporary edge to the collection, as does Italian lighting brand Tato.

Revised at Paardenmarkt 68

The timeless aesthetic championed by Paardenmarkt 68 is reflected in the ethos of Revised founders, Suzy and Casper Vissers. ‘We all want to revise our lives at a certain moment in time, take a new challenge on board,’ they say. ‘Keep the good things in life and add another layer of inspiration. The word “Revised” is a different story for each of us. What we share is the human ability to review, reconsider, reflect and refresh. That is exactly what makes us feel wonderful and take charge of life.’

It is a philosophy encapsulated in Revised’s artisan products, created in Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. ‘We deal directly from the factory to you. Revised products are designed and made in such a sustainable way that they will last for generations. We have a repair service should furniture need repair and we ship as flat as possible to ensure CO2 emissions are as low as possible. Our collection includes seating, tables, storage items, lighting elements and accessories [in a style that] is modern, elegant and heart-warming, with gentle, organic shapes and details. Each piece is a celebration of pure, solid, high-quality materials such as wood, marble, metal and glass.’

paardenmarkt68.com