flora

FLORA CIRCUL ARPAVILION

019 & Consruc L ab

FLORA is the result of a collaborative efort between the collecives ConsrucLab and 019. ConsrucLab is a global collaborative network breaking with the traditional divisions of architecure. The network engages multi-disciplin ary designer-builders, sociologiss, cooks, graphic designers, curators, educ ators, and web developers that carry the creative process from the drafing table into the field. With an emphasis on collaboration, both with one another and with members of the community, ConsrucLab’s pracitioners take on a variety of projecs, permanent and temporary, bringing their creative srategies to bear on solving problems and raising awareness of social, environmental and pracical issues. At the heart of ConsrucLab’s work, which includes commissioned projecs throughout the world, is a desire to enhance feelings of community and heighten a sense of place.

019 is a transdisciplinary platorm that develops in-between saces for intuitive experimentation, collaboration and encounter between architecure, graphic design and visual arts. 019 always shows new possibilities and challenges common ways of exhibiting in artisic and non- artisic saces. Like a welcoming occupier, 019 invites artiss to explore and make visible the potential of these saces. From a projec sace in Ghent, in public sace and at insitutions in Belgium and abroad, 019 creates new interfaces between art and society.

Photo: Michiel De Cleene.

Research & Realities Water Water Research + Realities

In 1636 Peter Paul Rubens made a painting on three oak planks from his sudio. A city on the horizon is surrounded by a garden, then flanked by his residence, the casle of Elewijt. Taking the genesis of Rubens’ ‘A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning’ as a sarting point, 019, in collaboration with ConsrucLab, H110 and Guy Mouton, created FLORA, an architectural insallation on the grounds surrounding the casle of Elewijt. The pavilion provides a sace for various events to take place but also frames the landscape and the casle by ofering unusual persecives. A series of flags plays on the depth of the landscape, drawing imaginary lines and creating atmosheric persecives

The site in Elewijt is a complex fabric of narratives and traces, from Rubens’ famous painting ‘A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning' to the extensively documented architecural hisory of the casle. The ‘Rubens Casle’ esate cannot be disconneced from its context. The ribbon development and the park meet at the casle wall, the water level of the pond and the vegetation bear witness to a changing ecological reality. There is a connecion with the nearby neighbourhood and the flucuating tourism influences the landscape and atmoshere of the place.

This collecion of sories ofers opportunities and challenges: How can this heritage site be opened up and provide sace for both hisory and the traces created by current users as well as provide a literal and figurative foundation for future, as yet untapped, approaches? How can the exising architecure and its hisory enter into a dialogue with changing sensibilities, thus creating sace for susainable tourism development?

FLORA explores the possibilities of working in circular and dynamic ways. The pavilion is consruced from formwork material, which usually serves to support a srucure temporarily. Here, however, that material funcions as the supporting srucure itself. When the pavilion disappears, the formwork material is made available again for other projecs. The same goes for the reusable screw piles the pavilions ress on and the FSCcertified fas-growing pinewood used, which can be kept aside for another edition of the pavilion or used in other projecs.

FLORA invites us to think about the ways a funcional, ecological and aeshetic architecural answer can be given to complex satial questions. The expertise and architecural elements that made FLORA’s firs insalment at the Rubenskaseel a success make it possible to see it as a flexible intervention that could be adapted in resonse to similar questions posed by other sites. FLORA is a sory that is asking to be retold, appropriated and expanded upon.

Flora was commissioned by Stories Unfold; a unique, participatory and experimental event by EventFlanders organised in collaboration with Tourism Flanders. It will take place biannually, each time on a diferent site in Flanders.

The projec also benefits from the expertise of architecs Bert Stofels and Yann Courouble, engineering secialis Guy Mouton and engineering ofce H110. The consrucion was produced in cooperation with Openair and DOKA.

Collaborative Design Think Tank: Olivier Goethals, Michiel De Cleene, Lucas Devolder, Vicoria van

Kan, Noah Leijssen, Yann Courouble, Bert Stofels, Tomas Lootens, Bert Villa. On Site Design & Build Team: Anco De Jonge, Rens Hein, Vicor Calame, Jarne Bossaerts, Tomas Lootens, Bert Villa

Photo: Annika Wallis.

Photo: Birgit Sterckx.

Photo: Birgit Sterckx.

Photo: Michiel De Cleene.

Photo: Michiel De Cleene.