same same but different

Architecture is a major game changer in the search for alternative resources. How can extraction not equate to exhausting or depleting the planet? That is what the Brussels office BC architects & studies & materials has been researching for years.

They work with age-old materials such as loam, straw and natural stone. But what they do with them and how, is radically different. What if a city yard, for example, became the largest harvesting site for building materials? For the firm, the large quantities of soil moved here are the raw material for circular building materials. They explore that potential to the full in all their projects.

On the occasion of Same Same but Different exhibition at the Z33 Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgium, 2022), BC materials along with Building Beyond Borders ordered Cinzia Romanin and I a series of video capsules highlighting their practice through three projects : the former gendarmerie barracks Usquare Feder in Ixelles (Belgium), BBB workshop at Parkfarm in Brussels and the mounting of the scenography on the museum site by BBB students and BC material crew.