Parlement Francophone Bruxellois / SKOPE

July 15, 2014

Architects: SKOPE
Year: 2013
photographs: Georges De Kinder

Text description provided by the architects. The new program includes: the seat of Brussels Parliament (PFB : French speaking part) and the restoration of the former Postal Relay (Renaissance 1694) as a polyvalent space. It would have been risky to chose the easy way by the creation of a mimetic building right wing of The Parliament or propose a dissonant solution with a draft bill only contemporary. Skope’s approach was different; inspired by the history of the place while assuming contemporary issues.

The building is not a simple drawing of facades but a concept overall. The architect Georges Hano, author of the facades and redevelopment inside the Provincial Palace in 1908 (the building nextdoor), was descended from the "Fine arts" architectural current. Architects of SKOPE highlighted this architecture and have been inspired for the design of the extension:

• on the one hand, maintaining the volume of the new template in the extension originally designed by the architect Hano, who thought from the beginning to the creation a Provincial Palace with two wings.
• secondly, they shelled the design intent of the architect Hano reinterpreted and by calculating the proportion of the facades.

Ensued creating a simple volume where is applied a facade whose expression is materialized by “voronoïdes” pattern, a mathematical formula close to the fractal distribution and which, on the basis of 5 distinct elements combine infinite variations.

That’s how history and modernity are synthesized on a site included in the classification site of UNESCO.

Beyond the architectural concept, it was important for the project to be sober, functional and of course energy efficient. The Brussels Parliament had to be a model of an ambitious public building being an architectural showcase but also an eco-friendly building attending the passive standard.