Uplace of Shopping K? Nee, bedankt
Artikel over de architectuur van een vals dilemma rond winkelcentra
Dood van een dienstverlener
Column over het bouwen als olifant in de kamer van de architectuurcultuur.
Het belachelijk sublieme in de Vlaamse architectuur
Artikel over humor als het teken van kritische afstand in de architectuur
Verslaafd aan architectuur
Een artikel over de betekenis van de Biertempel discussie voor de architectuurcultuur in België
Wafels, bier en architectuur
Een artikel naar aanleiding van de herbestemming van de Beurs in Brussel tot biertempel naar ontwerp van Robbrecht & Daem Architecten.
Zorg dragen voor architectuur
Artikel over gebruik en postproductie in de architectuur naar aanleiding van het Jozef Plein in PC Cartias (Melle).
Sprak er iemand over healing environment ?
Lees hier over de bijdrage van Charles Jencks en de postmoderne architectuur aan de ontmanteling van de kliniek.
Pic Nic Architectuur
Een retroactief manifest voor Pic Nic the Streets als bijdrage aan de architectuurcultuur in België. > Version Française > English Version
Wraak op de commons
Een artikel over het nakende einde voor Agrocité en de toekomst voor architectuur onder zelfbeheer.
Architectuur van de schaamteplek
Wie grip wil krijgen op de problemen van in psychiatrische ziekenhuizen, begint bij het ontwerp van de isolatiekamer.
Van Utopia naar Wuustwezel
Er zijn weinig termen die zo’n beladen betekenis hebben in de architectuurgeschiedenis als utopie. Version Français
Relational Architecture
Read about the production proces of the Kanunnik Petrus Jozef Triest Square in the Psychiatric Centre Caritas, Melle. Article in Dutch / English / French
Hoeveel samenwerking kan architectuur verdragen?
Artikel over de tentoonstelling 'Ensembles. Architectuur en Ambachtschap' in deSingel en Vlaams Architectuurinstituut.
Bouwstenen voor het psychiatrisch centrum van de toekomst
Lees meer over de visieontwikkeling rond het psychiatrisch centrum van de toekomst gepubliceerd in Psyche.
Eco-politiek in Brussel: Bas Smets en de Brussels Urban Landscape Biennial
Artikel over het nut en nadeel van landschapsarchitectuur als instrument voor regionale ontwikkeling in Brussel.
Architectuur vol van verlangen
Artikel naar aanleiding van de opening van het Kanunnik Petrus Jozef Triest Plein in Melle.
(Re)Politicize!
Proud to present the A+261 issue on architecture and politics - Dutch and French edition.
Architectuur met schaduw
De 20ste eeuw baarde vele duivelspacten tussen architectuur en politiek. Opvallend genoeg wordt de architectuur van het Italiaanse fascisme tot op vandaag geprezen omwille van haar abstracte vormentaal. Dergelijke rehabilitatie is de architectuur van het Derde Rijk nooit te beurt gevallen. België heeft zo zijn eigen kleine trauma in de relatie met de politiek.
Vakmannen aan het front
Een recensie over de bijdrage van Bravoure in de Architectuurbiennale van Venetie.
Toiletemmers in Werelderfgoed
Er is iets curieus met de inrichting van de gevangenis van Merksplas, waar enkele weken geleden een opstand uitbrak. De geschiedenis van de site reflecteert een utopisch beeld van de gevangenis van de toekomst, de manier waarop omgegaan wordt met die geschiedenis symboliseert dan weer de gemiste kansen.
FPC Gent: geen markt, geen gevangenis
De opening van het Forensisch Psychiatrisch Centrum in Gent zorgt na één jaar werking voor een grote opluchting - zelfs bij voormalige critici. De juiste vraag is niet of aanvankelijke bezorgheid terecht was, maar wel of de opluchting niet een beetje voorbarig is?
Het penitentiair verdriet van België
In de bouw van het gevangenisdorp Haren vormen de lokale en regionale overheid samen front met de actiegroepen tegen de federale overheid - of toch niet? Hoe kunnen we de knoop tussen activisme en politiek ontwarren?
Een psychiatrisch centrum bouwen we samen
Ook architectuur heeft zijn plaats op de Vlaamse Hersteldagen. Doe mee op 18 november in de Vooruit.
Eindelijk een kennisplatform voor humane gevangenisarchitectuur
De website www.prisongear.be presenteert het onderzoek naar een humane gevangenisarchitectuur.
Ontmanteling van de psychiatrische kliniek
Lees de gevalstudies over zorgarchitectuur in Vlaanderen gepubliceerd in Psyche
Een sterke leefomgeving begint met ruimteregie
Wie is er bang van het Bouwmeestercollege?
Iedereen lijkt het roerend eens dat de Vlaamse architectuur zonder de Bouwmeester overgeleverd is aan de wetten van de markt en de willekeur van het politieke bedrijf. Lees de opinie 'De Bouwmeester en de onheilsprofeten'.
A humane prison is coming to your neighbourhood
As part of the Conflict & Design Triennial the knowledge platform Prison Gear presents design studies that pave the way for a humane prison in Leopoldsburg, Belgium.
Een humane gevangenis komt naar je toe
Als onderdeel van de Conflict & Design Triënnale presenteert Prison Gear twee visieontwerpen voor de toekomstige gevangenis op het militaire domein Reigersvliet in Leopoldsburg.
Limburg City / Stad Limburg
Read the memorandum of the Limburg Europa Workshop / Lees de projectnota van Atelier Limburg Europa
The dismantling of the psychiatric clinic
Read the case studies on care architecture in Flanders
Wat is ontwerpend onderzoek?
Drie vragen over ontwerpend onderzoek, drie antwoorden vanuit de Noorderkempen.
Heeft een gemeenplaats ook een gemene waarde ?
Commentaarstuk bij het Architectuurboek n° 10: Radicale Gemeenplaatsen - Europese architectuur uit Vlaanderen
Is onzichtbare psychiatrische zorg mogelijk?
Review van de opstart Pilootprojecten Zorg door de Vlaams Bouwmeester
Limburg heeft ambitie / Limburg has ambition
Presentatie van de Startnota Provinciaal Bouwmeester Limburg / Presentation Initial Memo Limburg Government Architect
Hoeveel vernieuwing kan de gevangenis verdragen ?
Lees hoe de modernisatie van de gevangenisarchitectuur in handen van Stéphane Beel begon en eindige bij het Ducpétiaux-model.
Sociaal-realisme of zelfcensuur
Met Jonas Staal schreef BAVO een pleidooi voor een nieuw sociaal-realisme in de kunst. Sociaal-realisme is broodnodig in het tijdperk van de hysterische reproductie.
Nu ook een schreeuw om architectuur!
Niet occupy-en, maar de gevestigde orde verleiden om in crisistijden te investeren in leuke projecten. Lees hier meer over de Studio for Unsollicited Architecture.
Waarom kunstenaars niet fascistisch genoeg zijn
Lees het artikel in het decembernummer van Rekto:Verso.
Artist Participation in South Africa
The international PR campaign to showcase Rotterdam's robust policy on artist participation is now also tapping into the emerging African art markets.
Denkverbod op liberale kunst
Column over de stellingenoorlog naar aanleiding van de aangekondigde bezuinigingen in de cultuursector.
Maak liberaal kunstbeleid liberaal
Lees BAVO's advies aan staatssecretaris Zijlstra met betrekking tot de noodgedwongen keuzen die de cultuursector in Nederland te wachten staat.
International promotion campaign of the Office for Artist Participation kicks off
The City of Edinburgh will be the first to host an international promotion event of Rotterdam's innovative cultural policies for enforcing the participation of artists in heightening a city's competitiveness and securing social peace on the local level.
Culture and Contestation
The essay 'Neo-Liberalism with Dutch Characteristics: The Big Fix-Up of the Netherlands and the Practice of Embedded Cultural Activism' is published in the book volume 'Culture and Contestation in the New Century'.
Art and Activism
BAVO's essay 'Artists... one more effort to be really political!' is published in the volume 'Art and Activism in the age of Globalisation'.
Boek verschenen: Too Active To Act
Het boek biedt een kritische analyse van de maatschappelijke betrokkenheid van culturele actoren in Nederland in de afgelopen tien jaar.
Commoning the Clinic
Read more about the Kanunnik Triest Square (designed by architects De Vylder Vinck Taillieu) in the Caritas psychiatric centre (Melle) and how it results from a participative process with psychiatrists, managers, staff, and patients.

Relational Architecture
Participation is rather a dirty word among architects. After all, it surely leads only to DIY architecture. In the development of a vision for the Kanunnik Petrus Jozef Triest Square, an open and accessible space, directed by the BAVO for the Caritas psychiatric centre in Melle (near Ghent), and its design by architecten De Vylder Vinck Taillieu (aDVVT), we see that things can turn out differently.
The recent Architecture Book puts good-quality architecture on a par with tailor-made work and this immediately shows up its inadequacies. Tailor-made architecture is an obvious choice for building a private house. For public assignments things are more complicated, because it is rarely with the ultimate user that the architect comes into contact. In this case, the social interaction concerning the design assumes a representative nature and is given a technical interpretation.
In the care sector, it is customary to compensate for a rather technocratic administration by involving patients (and/or ex-patients) in the decision-making. They play a part as experts by experience. This method is not as transparent as it seems. The patient supplies potentially important experience-based information, but it is the architect who, following further consultation with the administrators, processes this and other data to reach a design. In this way, good intentions endorse a structurally uneven relationship. Like this, the patient is reduced to the role of a consumer of the building.
The architectural world makes use of a euphemism: the user is allowed to appropriate a building. It was apparent from the account given by an ex-patient at the 2016 Recovery Day just how traumatic and delayed appropriation can be. He inveighed against the flamboyant façade of a hospital: ‘Why was all that money put into the façade and not invested in the interior?’ Regarding his stay there he said: ‘Every day you are confronted with the cool interior of the ward. The brick walls come out at you. The final blow is having to sit on an easily washable chair to watch television.’
This ex-patient’s complaint is not only about his experience of the space, but is a fundamental critique of care architecture. All the talk of a healing environment turns out to be newspeak for a bleak hospital rationality. The question is whether any radically different approach is possible in the complex reality of psychiatric care. Is the patient also allowed to make an appearance as the producer of a recovery-oriented environment?
The user-principal
In the development of a vision of the psychiatric centre of the future that took place at the Caritas clinic in Melle, we, the BAVO team, brought all the users together at the drawing board (inspired by Doina Petrescu’s ideas on the user-architect). Workgroups of doctors, managers, staff and patients examined the question of what was to be done with the sea of green open space left after the demolition of the 19th-century buildings? The Ghislaine, Sint-Jozef, Wasserij and Lente buildings were to make way for a new building for the crisis unit and children’s campus. The workgroups were given the task of drawing up master-plans involving the programme of new building. The element of participation led to a completely different result from what had initially been proposed.
The removal of asbestos from the Sint-Jozef building delayed its demolition, with the result that people fantasised a lot about the new future of this inheritance from the past. In the workgroups, Sint-Jozef started to become a catalyst in a process of giving tangible form, in a single building, to the needs and wishes that came up in the overall organisation of the care campus. The options suddenly seemed infinite. For instance, the empty building might be used as the large activity area that the management dreamed of, and at the same time as the sorely needed in-between space where patients can shelter, rest, dream, meet each other and many other things. Sint-Jozef might also act as a wishing wall.
The administrators listened to these new insights and halted the demolition. After all, the proposal from the workgroups was appropriate to a general change of policy. Policy logic still takes the bed as the basic unit of calculation in mental health care, and this leads to the typical hospital architecture. But in psychiatry this unit has little meaning, because patients are not always bedridden. In addition, since the implementation of what is called ‘Article 107’, there is an increasing focus on care networks that cover both residential care and ambulant care and mobile teams.
In this sort of context, the workgroups came up with a completely different architectural concept for mental health care: the future of a psychiatric centre does not lie only in better houses filled with beds. In the new project definition, Sint-Jozef was converted into a monumental outdoor space at the heart of the care campus. The building has no specific function as part of the hospital – it is neither therapeutic nor residential – but is an open structure that anyone can use for activities that are not pre-defined. In this way, a different sort of participation becomes apparent at Caritas: the patient is not simply a user-architect (to use Doina Petrescu’s terminology) but in the first place acts as an originator of the request for care.
The user-architect
Patients also played an active part in the subsequent design process. Part of the architectural brief that BAVO formulated was the request to develop a method by which the dynamic engendered in the workgroups was incorporated into the design. Architects De Vylder Vinck Taillieu (aDVVT) proposed opening up the building in its then state of partial demolition. The ground floor was cleared of obstacles and then fitted out. This meant that the design deviated from the project definition, which, based on a well-advanced level of demolition, had in mind the sort of ruin that forms part of an English landscape garden. The architect’s idea was to avoid any options that would irreparably harm the future of the building. This meant that the demolition of the Sint-Jozef building was definitively cancelled.
A scale model was used as a means of negotiation and enabled all those involved to exchange needs and desires. Parts of the model could be removed or added, which made the impact of each decision immediately visible. This stimulated the imagination. Consultation on the work took place in the empty building itself – into which rain fell unimpeded – again with doctors, management, staff and patients. In this way the users once again had their say before work started.
The participation process enriched the design proposal with new ideas. Discussions arose on the use of the greenhouses inside the building. In the end, they were left purposely with no specific use, so that users can use them in accordance with their acute needs. The participants in the discussions also put forward proposals regarding the design of the cellar, which had been opened up. Patients preferred not to see any barriers anywhere in the building, but only stylish ways of marking areas off. The ad hoc linkage of the cellar to the ground floor by means of sloping seating was also the result of deliberation on a rainy winter’s day.
The participation did not detract from the work of the architects. In addition to enriching the design, it also provided a strong basis for the retention of particular design ideas that were in danger of being dropped for pragmatic reasons. For instance, the open interior of the building and the mirroring of the existing loggia were retained after deliberation in the workgroups. In this way, participation enhanced the creative role of the architect. The result is a collective design process where the role of author cannot be attributed to any particular member.
‘Jozef belongs to us’
In the architectural production process for the Kanunnik Petrus Jozef Triestplein, we see the outlines of a form of relational architecture analogous to the reasoning developed by Nicolas Bourriaud for art in his Relational Aesthetics. The aim of the design by aDVVT is that the building, once it has been redesigned as an open structure, should function as a 1:1 scale model that can be adapted at any time to the changing needs and desires of its users. So the same aesthetic emancipation is possible not only in the brief and the design, but also in its use.
One good omen is that a patient in one of the workgroups spoke the shy but proud words ‘Jozef belongs to us’ – as a response to the technical discussion of who is given access to the building and when, and who takes responsibility. What this patient said shows an identification that goes much further than appropriation. A new relationship between doctors, management, staff and patients was formed in the course of the creation of the Kanunnik Petrus Jozef Triestplein. The patients were not appealed to for their spatial experience of being ill (the design process is not a therapeutic process), but were drawn into a professional discussion of the design of the therapeutic setting.
Photography by Filip Dujardin