Brussels Architecture Prize | XDGA, Place Rogier [Major Intervention]

Brussels Architecture Prize | XDGA, Place Rogier [Major Intervention]

Place Rogier in Brussels is not just any square. Once the Place des Nations and gateway to the former North Station, it gathered the first cars and electric trams amidst stately hotels with melodious names. The square breathed to the rhythm of the metropolis and managed to reconcile the bustle of city life with human encounter. The construction of the North-South connection shunted the North Station a few hundred metres further along, thereby creating space for a square with international ambitions. The beautiful, 117-metre-high International Rogier Center, designed and realized in 1958–60 by architect Jacques Cuisinier, proposed an unprecedented conglomerate of offices, housing, shops and restaurants, a polyclinic, exhibition and theatre spaces, and even a sky bar with the Martini logo on its roof. But the new neighbourhood had brought all too soon marginality and social inequity into place and the International Center was unable to hold onto its ambitious plan. Over the years, Place Rogier became a site of residual space, with a mysterious pyramid in its centre, an invisible underground exhibition and conference centre, and hotels whose prestige had slowly withered. On a sad morning in 2001, the International Rogier Center was demolished. Brussels had lost yet another piece of its metropolitan identity.

“Connecting the street level to its underground tunnels while also creating a transitional scale with the surrounding tall buildings is in itself a hard task. Doing it in such a way that it not only functions well but also creates a sense of place of seamless transition is remarkable. The project manages to successfully introduce lightness and fluidity despite the technical complexities.” – Sofia von Ellrichshausen

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