between the lines

Located on the grounds of an orchard in Borgloon near Liège, the Doorkijkkerk (See-through Church) was installed in 2011 as part of a public arts campaign to urge thinking about open spaces through negative space and the silhouette of architecture. The weightless structure is comprised of one hundred metal plates supported by two thousand columns. Depending on the angle of the viewer, the perspective of the church shifts from nearly solid to vanishing thin and wan against the sky. See a whole transformative gallery at Unusual Places at the link above.

elke belg wordt geboren met de baksteen in de maag

With a resonate, resounding spirit similar to McMansion Hell, Hannes Coudenys’ collection of “Ugly Belgian Houses” struck a chord with neighbours and compatriots that said something about the house-proud and architectonic aspirations of the Flemish.
The saying above, often repeated and reaffirmed visually as well with faux châteaux, Texas ranches and Barbie dream homes vying for attention all crowded next to one another—Every Belgian is born with a brick in the stomach, does speak to the national psyche to expand outward into suburbia, throwing caution and uniformity to the wind and willing to clash. Like Kate Wagner, Coudeny was also threatened with legal action and had to go on an extended hiatus before continuing his gently critical look at the lay of the land. Much more to explore at Amusing Planet at the link above.

alta california

Seeking the counsel and perspective of history and equipped with the patient and veteran lens of an antique camera that dates back to a time before the current US/México frontier was established and cemented
in a cultish mythology that drapes greed and racism with the civilising sheen of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, photographer Tomas van Houtryve traced the border as it was before the Mexican-American War, telling the stories of the descendants who instead of crossing the border were rather crossed by it. The collective amnesia and avoidance of a past shameful to recall and confront allows intolerance and the powers of regression not just to keep its pathetic toehold but experience a revival. Learn more about the portraits and landscapes—lines and lineage—at the links above.

animus in consulendo liber

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the intergovernmental military alliance between twenty-nine North American and European countries (up from twelve founding members) came into existence through a treaty agreed upon by member states on this day in 1949—signed with the charter coming into force in August of the same year.
With administrative and operational headquarters split between the Belgian capital and the city of Mons, the organization expanded from an invitation for the Benelux countries to join the pact of mutual assistance struck by France and the UK with the Treaty of Dunkirk in March of 1947, to come to one another’s aid in case of aggression by the Soviet Union or a resurgent Germany. Inclusion of West Germany in May of 1955 prompted the Soviet Union to create the Warsaw Pact. On NATO’s fortieth anniversary in 1989 when it would begin to still the dissolution of its chief foil and counter valance, the organization officially adopted a hymn—its motto above Latin for “a mind unfettered in deliberation). The present flag was first hoisted and flown in October 1951, replacing an earlier version that was essentially the coat-of-arms of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), designed to be straightforward and inoffensive (though suggestive of this rather antithetical corporate logo) and emphasise a mission of peace.

shadow-casters

Nag on the Lake brings us a short feature from Belgian director and illustrator Vincent Bal (previously) called Shadowology which reframes the shapely shadows that the imaginative sketch artist captures as live-action to show the creative process and how light and shadow of everyday objects are mentally manipulated until an entire scene is teased out of an ordinary silhouette projection.

co2-bilanz

Via Slashdot, we discover that a Leuven-based research team have managed to modify solar cells to decompose water into its component parts and produce hydrogen in situ.
The system harvests moisture from the air while generating photovoltaic power and the dual-application really reveals itself as complete, self-sustaining (if it can be scaled up) and self-sufficient as trials suggest that a small array of panels can procure enough power to light and heat a smallish living space without adding to the household’s carbon footprint. Demonstration projects are already underway in the UK and Belgium that keep homes warm using hydrogen instead of natural gas and can use the alternate fuel with existing pipes and infrastructure with relatively little retrofitting required. If the hydrogen does not need to be pumped in from outside, the process becomes even more efficient.

brutalist brussels

Renown for his portfolio of works that includes a pavilion on the flora and fauna of the Congo created for the venue’s 1958 l’Exposition universelle (the one the Atomium was built for) and the city’s cinema museum, Belgian-Polish architect Constantin Brodzki also designed an iconic headquarters for Cimenteries CBR (acquired by HeidelbergCement in 1999) in 1967—comprising seven hundred fifty-six prefabricated oval concrete modules that give it its distinctive façade. Abandoned for some time, the historic building has been restored and conserved—retaining many of the original elements and built-in furniture units—and is reopening as a multistorey coworking and conference space. The revival is being called Office Boitsfort/Bosvoorde, after the Brussels municipality, and you can see more at Curbed at the link above.

7x7

asterix and obelix: the comic book route of Brussels

mad libs: a handy template for Republican politicians to use for announcing their retirement

slot cars: a electrified stretch of road opens to traffic in Sweden which will recharge the batteries of electric vehicles as they drive down it, via Slashdot

stamina, fitness and skill: Pelle Cass’ compelling composite photography of athletic events capture the patterns of motions in sports

fluency: an artist explores the roots of language and consciousness through a vocabulary of personal hieroglyphics

saloon: a virtual cache of bar- and alcohol-related accessories and ephemera, via Weird Universe

b-side: an Austrian company developing high definition vinyl records, which can be played on existing turn-tables, will bring them to the market by 2019

le génie du mal

Our thanks to Kuriositas for introducing us to this handsome devil, who’s taken up residence underneath the pulpit (chaire de vérité) of Saint Paul’s Cathedral of Liège (previously).
Not the usual subject of religious sculpture, the artist who executed this fallen angel, Guillaume Geefs, had to come up with his own iconography—drawing from the myth of Prometheus and other sources to frame his creation—which was commissioned as a replacement for an earlier work by his younger brother, whose version of the Genius of Evil was removed from the church for being too much a distraction for the congregation. See a comparison at the link up top. I suspect that church-goers still do not dedicate their undivided attention to the sermon but rather spare a glance to the tortured soul lurking below—the elder Geefs making the androgynous figure even more alluring. The brothers Geefs came to prominence themselves in the 1830s with Belgian independence movement by creating nationalistic monuments and public sculpture that celebrated their history and culture separate from the Netherlands, and the Church turned to the artists to convey their dispatch of the “triumph of religion over evil’s genius” but it is debatable whether either iteration was exactly on message for parishioners and the wider public—the devil too sublime and seductive. It’s always a gamble whether people respond better to caricature or camouflage.

6x6

hello, I am a bear: ursine pondering and poetry, via Dave Log

alles in ordnung: German government being sublimely dull

down in the underground: the forgotten catacombs underneath Brussels, via Messy Nessy Chic

muted: hushed and concise social media is reviving the cinematography of the silent film

orbit city: celebrating the life and work of Gin Wong, the architect who inspired The Jetsons

adult swim: synchronised images of Soviet-era public pools

proost!

Taking advantage of the nice Spring weather, we had a chance to visit an outdoor Belgian café and got the chance to give a proper toast to our friends in the newly discovered solar system hosted by a red giant in the constellation Aquarius, some forty light years distant.

m-class or goldilocks

Amongst the thousands of confirmed exoplanets in the firmament and the untold trillions of worlds estimated, NASA just held a colossal press-conference that served to the public the very exciting news of a solar system discovered in orbit around a cool (ultra-cool, Red Giants are m-class stars but Star Trek’s planetary classification system is unfortunately made up) dwarf star in the constellation of Aquarius, some thirty nine light years distance from us.
Astronomers are giving the discovery the designation of TRAPPIST-1 as it was the first solar system to be observed directly using transit photometry.  The acronym for the programme and one of the telescopes used spells out Trappist, like the monastic order and brew-masters of Liège, where the search method was first conceived. Seven rocky (terrestrial) worlds orbit the star and at least three are thought to be in the habitable-zone, conducive to life as we know it thriving. After compiling and analysing telemetry for a year and half, researchers are very confident in their results. Finding no life in that entire star system would be, I’d wager, far more stranger than discovering extraterrestrial life. As we said above, this ensemble joins an already crowded Cosmos, but I think it’s brilliant that there’s already an artist’s conception to captivate and stoke the imagination—it reminds me of Mongo of Ming the Merciless and the other floating kingdoms in that overcast empire. Here’s to science, NASA and the monks. Flash jump, everybody!

magic lantern

As the bloc has expanded from twelve member states to twenty-eight, office space at the European Union headquarters buildings is naturally going at quite a premium—not counting the attendant actors accompany the “travelling-circus.”
The councillors that represent the executive officers of the member states, the other chamber that acts as a counter-weight to parliament (it’s all terribly complicated and byzantine and enough to make people shutdown rather than engage), and support staff are moving—or rather, are expanding into, after some delays and misgivings, from their purpose-built structure, the Justus Lipsius hall that the Council occupied since 1995, to this new building, occupying a space donated by the city Brussels and just separated by a span of footbridge (next to rest of the ensemble that makes up the rest of the supranational government). The glass façade encloses an orb that comprises eleven storeys of conference rooms, cafeterias, galleries and offices. The whole edifice is a marvel of passive engineering and highly energy-efficient, and much of the construction material was recycled and salvaged from demolition sites across Europe. No word yet what this new headquarters might be called but the Samyn and Partners commission will be ready to host its first sessions in 2017.

tchin tchin!

UNESCO is adding the beers of Belgium to its representative list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity, this rich tradition matriculating with Uzbek humour, the pottery of Portugal and falconry in the UK and joins the ranks of champagne and an array of French wine and the cuisine of Mexico. How nice that we can raise a glass to this deserved accolade, though absolute purists may not exactly appreciate that this currant beer is the only one we have on hand.

umbrage

Via Colossal, we are treated to the serendipitous sketches of Belgian film-maker and illustrator Vincent Bal who has transformed the shadows cast by various objects resting in the sun into creative, artistic Rorschach ink-blot interpretations. We really ought to banish harsh, shadow-dispelling overhead lights in the work-place if a stray item could inspire like this.

parity of esteem

Since first hearing about the small village outside of Antwerp over the summer on NPR’s Invisibilia, I’ve really been intrigued about the story of Geel and its approach to addressing mental illness and appreciated Hyperallergic’s giving the community and its mission further exposure. After becoming a pilgrimage destination for the mentally ill in the late twelfth century, the villagers have hosted displaced and alienated souls, bringing them into their homes and providing a course of treatment and therapy that doesn’t try to make their guests conform.
This unusual patronage is traced back to the daughter of a pagan Irish chieftain and a Christian mother, called Dymphna (Little Fawn) who herself converted to Christianity against her father’s will. Dymphna’s mother passed away when she was a teenager and her father became absolutely inconsolable, quickly descending into depression. His courtiers pleaded with him to re-marry, and reluctantly, the chieftain agreed, provided he could find one as beautiful and charming as his lost wife. The chieftain’s overtures turned towards the teenaged Dymphna, and fearing what would come next, she fled to Belgium with her confessor and, oddly, the Court Jester. Dymphna and her crew problem would have never been found, but at Geel, where they settled she founded a hospital for the poor and suffering and her charity eventually made its way back to Ireland. Her father went to Geel to retrieve Dymphna but she refused at which point her father beheaded her. Though perhaps not the imbalanced party and unsuccessful at that particular juncture, many of the demon-plagued who visited the place of her veneration were pronounced cured of their condition, maybe not advancing the understanding of mental disorders in the broader public awareness but at least reducing the social stigma on a local level. The lives of the boarders are chronicled in a series of photographs that blurs the distinction between guest and host and is in stark contrast with the usual methods of reintegration through institution.

wintertuin ou hôtel particulier

Thanks to Messy Nessy Chic for piquing my curiosity with this divinely art nouveau glimpse of the Hôtel Hannon in Brussels, a Hôtel Particulier being a grand, detached townhouse in French. A wealth and successful petro-chemical engineer named Édouard Hannon in 1902 commissioned an architect friend to design him a home in the city. The house was transformed into a showcase for some of the finest art of the period, with fine frescos and mosaics, stained-glass from the Tiffany tradition and Émile Gallé, who contributed lamps, vases and other bric-a-brac. Tragically, the family only were able to reside there a couple of years and the mansion was left to decay, until having purchased the property, the borough opened house as a museum in 1989 after extensive restoration.

moisture farmers ou puit aerien

Around 1900, a Russian engineer by the name of Friedrich Zibold made the conjecture that ancient structures found on Greek outposts on the Crimean Peninsula were a sort of air-well, designed to harvest enough moisture from the atmosphere to sustain a small settlement. Despite initial successes with models based on the Greek buildings, Zibold was unable to sustain the condensation and collection of water for very long.  Later archaeological studies determined that the mysterious structures were actually burial mounds (this being around the time when interests were captivated by the idea of the Ark of the Covenant as a battery and the death ray of Archimedes), but that did not dissuade others from trying to build their own air-wells after Zibold’s calculations.
One such hive-like well (puit aerien) was erected in Trans-en-Provence in the 1930s (reportedly, a UFO scorched the fields of this community in 1981) in the département of the Var by Belgian inventor Achille Knapen. The site was abandoned when it also failed to collect water in the expected volumes, but this early experiment helped engineers build better and functional condensing units that help supplement the rains in places all around the world today.

atlas obscura

Messy Nessy Chic shares her discovery in a beautiful and winding gallery of the amazing art nouveau backdrops of Belgian illustrator François Schuiten.
Son to a dual-architect family and with echoes of the surreal, Schuiten was able to conjure up fantastic urban landscapes the graphic novel series Les Cités obscures that debuted in the early 1980s and whose franchise—with spin-offs and with different collaborators over the years—continues to this day about the splintering of a parallel humanity into sovereign city states that fosters unique cultures and styles—sort of like the future that some internet tycoons have imagined of ocean-plying floating islands (or lassoed asteroids) of independence and popular consent. Schuiten’s imaginative artwork is furthermore a revolt (especially in the volume called Brüsel) against the phenomenon known as Bruxellisation, one not exclusive to his native city and perhaps a rejuvenation effort that his parents were complicit in (or rallied against), wherein historic district were demolished in favour of utilitarian, almost brutally so, modern buildings—perhaps the vision of the above tycoons. Browse the extensive arcade of images and learn more about Les Cités obscures and their contributing civil engineers at the link up top.

royal prerogative or we are not amused

It’s been speculated for some time that the media mogul become presidential contender—and perhaps the next US president, might be a sort of Manchurian Candidate installed under the auspices of a once and future syndicate, engineering to propel the opposition into power. Though this conspiracy seems quite far-fetched, maybe it’s not beyond the realm of political possibilities, a parallel scenario, judging by recent events, seems almost assuredly more likely in its absurdity.
I think the Queen may use this opportunity to seize back the powers eroded of the monarchy and run her majesty’s own government for the time being rather than letting the presumptives and heirs-apparent take office. Perhaps (and I’d venture for a lot of the voters who voted leave, respect for the royal family is also a shared demographic and would submit to rule by some unelected German and some unemployed Greek on public-assistance) it would be a dereliction of her duty to faithfully defend the kingdom not to. What do you think? I recall how a few years ago Belgium was suffering a constitutional-crisis for failure to cement a coalition government and elevate a prime minister—for a period surpassing war-torn Iraq going without a formal leader, and me wondering why the Belgians were so concerned, with already having a king and being the seat of the EU parliament.  Winkie-winkie.