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Alluring architecture TEXT: BAS VAN DUREN | PHOTOS: DIAL ARCHITECTS
Whether it’s dealing with renovations full of heart and soul or co-creative designs for the social and artistic fields, or even the development of complex buildings in public spaces: Belgian architecture team Dial Architects can do it all. Headed by Geert Pauwels, Dial has been a mainstay in the Belgian architectural scene since the late ‘90s and is known for its quirky and timeless style that treats tradition with respect while being bold enough to expand existing spaces and heritage. Dial’s way of working doesn’t impede a holistic approach and often opts for as much green as possible.
Duality Growing up in a small village close to Ghent, architect Geert Pauwels had a 20 | Issue 71 | November 2019
deep love and understanding for his surroundings filled with parks, ponds and rural buildings like farms and sheds. He learned the tools of the architecture trade at the university of Leuven, formerly known as St Lucas, school of architecture, situated in Ghent, and he studied even further in Vienna at the ‘Akademie der Bildendern Kunste’. “An amazing place to gawk at all the wonderful architecture of Otto Wagner, Joze Plecnik and Adolf Loos,” Pauwels recalls. It all laid the groundwork for Dial Architects, operating in a 18th-century parsonage in the village of Zwalm, half-an-hour’s drive from Ghent. An ideal situation, according to Pauwels: “It forces our team to look at the busy city life from a place of tranquility and that’s the kind of duality that I enjoy a lot.”
That duality is a recurring theme for Dial Architects (named such because back when Dial started, ‘communication’ was key and the widespread team relied on phones for most of theirs). Their scope can be both narrow and wide, dealing on a zoomed-in level with furniture, but on a grander scale Dial works with landscaping and the urbanisation that hasn’t fully reached the Flemish Ardennes just yet. Pauwels: “We try to enrich both areas, making it enticing for city people to enjoy the countryside and vice versa. In everything we do, we always go for the bigger picture.”
Renovating and restoring Pauwels is fond of what he calls ‘Typological shapes’; the aforementioned rudimentary kind of rural buildings that have