Discover Benelux | Architect of the Month | BAEV
Bureau Architecture Engineering Verhaegen takes pride in its quality of service and architectural expertise and often successfully embraces projects with a high level of technicality.
“We have worked on many demanding projects,” explains member of the board Roland Roquiny, “in our thirty-year-long collaboration with the aerospace company SABCA for instance, we have had the opportunity to develop the test hall for the Ariane rocket. This kind of pro ject, on top of being professionally gratifying, forces us to create new processes both in the execution of our work and in quality control, a constant discipline which helps us maintain our level of competency.”
arise from them and the site management and coordination that ensue.”
This obsession with quality of service and architectural expertise was rewarded in 2000 when BAEV obtained the ISO 9001 certification from the Belgian Construction Certification Association, for “the design of architecture and engineering projects, the preparation of all projects that
Clients from around the world are recognising the quality of the Belgian firm's work. “One of our added values lies in our emphasis on listening to understand the client's concept and, very often, predict the evolution of the client's needs for the next half decade.”
A certification that was very natural, as Van Oost points out. “This was simply a formalization of the type of quality and control that we were already applying to our work,” he says. “We do not see the quest for improvement as a constraint but indeed as research and development.” As an example, the BAEV is currently investigating processes, techniques and policies that could cut construction times.
Thus, when the Chinese firm JuXing I nternational decided to build a 120,000 square metres technology centre in Louvain-La-Neuve, it chose to work with the BAEV. The China-Belgium tech centre will host five clusters of activities and include offices, a 160-bed hotel, a conference centre, parking facilities and much more. Over half a century after its creation, the BAEV has seen many changes and stayed as modern and ground-breaking as anyone could hope for. After the repurchasing of all shares in the firm, these were redistributed to the employees who now own their company because it all boils down to integrity, freedom of choice and, further, down to what's essential: quality of life. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, the company asked photographer Sébastien Reuzé to visit the structures the BAEV has built over the decades – a maternity ward, a school, a factory, a petrol station and a rest and care home. The pictures where then given to five Belgian writers who imagined life stories in these works of architecture. The result was made into a book by publisher La Lettre Volée and sums up what the team at BAEV believes is the intention of architecture: to be inhabited! www.baev.be
Issue 12 | December 2014 | 51