Building by questioning TEXT: BAS VAN DUREN | PHOTOS: COMPAGNIE-O/TIM VAN DEVELDE
What began as a collaboration between architect couple Joke Vermeulen and Francis Catteeuw grew into a fullfledged international team known as Compagnie-O architects, based in Ghent. With versatility as its strong point, it exploits spatial potentials both in the public as well as private realm. They call themselves conceptual, but maintain a hands-on approach, as their realised projects attest. To find out more, we spoke to Francis Catteeuw of Compagnie-O.
Open platform Possibly the first noteworthy thing about Compagnie-O is its name; its underlying meaning perfectly reflects the office’s credo. “We wanted something different; most offices simply use the founders’ 22 | Issue 71 | November 2019
own names, but as we function more like a platform of equals, any individual’s name becomes secondary to the results we deliver as a collective. The letter ‘O’ was chosen for all the different meanings one may attribute to its shape, but I definitely count ‘Open’ as one of them as we are the type of architects that refuse to develop a signature style or typological building language.”
Maximalists These Belgian architects are fully aware that this kind of volatile flexibility isn’t always easy, but believe it to be an essential attitude in today’s ever-increasingly complex reality. Such complexity can hardly ever be grasped within the superficial vocabulary of one specific style. “If somebody comes along with a very
specific style of building in mind, we make sure to guide this client towards the understanding that they are cutting themselves short. There are always more forces at work than one would initially expect. We tend to question the client’s initial ideas to unveil the true inherent potentials that lay hidden. Getting an understanding of the motives that impel people to create a building project, whether that be a school, a prison, a religious or communal building, infrastructural, urban or landscape interventions, is often the key starting point,” explains Catteeuw. “It requires an open-minded and selfcritical client who can surrender to and trust that process. However in-evident it may seem, we always strive to establish such exciting and challenging collabo-