Debating the Identity of Belgian Architecture through Exhibitions: The Storytelling of an Intercultural Diachronic Contact Zone

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Last adjustments in the La Cambre museum for the exhibition (Re)nouveaux plaisirs d’architecture: Dithyrambes, © Photo: Faculté d’architecture La Cambre Horta, ULB, 2013.
Published: Nov 21, 2024

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Bourouiba Lyna
Université libre de Bruxelles, Faculty of architecture La Cambre Horta, Hortence research lab
Anne-Laure Iger
Université libre de Bruxelles, Faculty of architecture La Cambre Horta, Hortence research lab

Abstract




This article focuses on seven exhibitions presented in Brussels between 1971 and 2013, all dealing with the issue of Belgian architectural identity. Indeed, Belgium is a territory where tensions and cultural negotiations are structural because of its multiple regions and the co-existence of different communities. As a discipline embedded in this specific geography of conflicts, architecture seems particularly interesting as an area to look at in order to analyse how cross-cultural exchange can occur. The article aims to evaluate the transcultural resolution of this persistent curatorial question of Belgian architectural identity over time, by considering the connections between curatorial discourses over time and their intertextuality.


Image: Last adjustments in the La Cambre museum for the exhibition (Re)nouveaux plaisirs d’architecture: Dithyrambes, © Photo: Faculté d’architecture La Cambre Horta, ULB, 2013.




Article Details

Issue
No. 9 (2024): Intermediality in Architecture: Representation and the Aesthetics of Reflexivity
Section
Thematic section
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Author Biographies

Bourouiba Lyna, Université libre de Bruxelles, Faculty of architecture La Cambre Horta, Hortence research lab

Lyna Bourouiba is an architect, a PhD candidate at the ULB Faculty of Architecture, and a member of the research collective FL.5.2. She graduated as an architect from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris La Villette (2015) where she obtained a “Research in Architecture” post-master’s degree (2018). Her work focuses on the transcultural history of the idea of “zero degree” of architectural writing borrowed by some architects, historians, theorists, and critics, from Roland Barthes’ Writing Degree Zero in a context of crisis of modernity.

Anne-Laure Iger, Université libre de Bruxelles, Faculty of architecture La Cambre Horta, Hortence research lab

Anne-Laure Iger is a PhD candidate at the ULB Faculty of Architecture and a member of the research collective FL.5.2. She graduated from the the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Bretagne, Rennes (2014). Her work focuses on architectural curating practices taking place in Brussels since 1969 and their influences on disciplinary narratives and networks.