Éditions Fourre-Tout, created by the architect Pierre Hebbelinck, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary and is publishing on this occasion this abundantly illustrated monograph, written by the architect, Jean-Michel Degraeve.
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At the same time, an exhibition at the Cité Miroir questions housing policies in Belgium today, while rent prices are exploding and the number of poorly housed or homeless people continues to increase. With a scenography that is both minimal and monumental, entirely based on cardboard, assuming both an aesthetic choice and an ethical declaration.
Housing for all
Pierre Hebbelinck explains this project and firstly why Bosny was forgotten.
“At the end of the war there were not yet the tools of architectural hyper-diffusion which had strongly developed with liberalism. In the 80s and 90s, we saw the development of a star system through competitions where architects had to equip themselves with very powerful communication tools. Bosny completely escapes this rule since he is coming out of a period of complete suffering during which he was totally involved on the front against the Nazis. . He never felt the need to communicate. His job was to make plans and serve as many people as possible through programs that reflected his convictions: health, housing for all, education. “in Liège was one of the most famous architects of the 20th century, Charles Vandenhove (1927-2019) who had already implemented more elaborate communication strategies. Bosny did his job like the baker does his.”
How is it interesting today?
“Certainly, he did his job in a form of committed socialism which no longer exists today in the context of public contracts. He was his own patron because he received such poor salaries that he could not pay, he said. an ice cream for his children It was not only his architecture that was sober, but like similarly forgotten architects in post-war Germany, we can see in him an example of creative opportunity! , to identify a mode of action based on a reduction of means: do less, spend less, build fewer surfaces, reduce consumerism but while being creative Creativity can develop under constraint as we see in Arte. Povera or at the cinema with the super 8 or the shoulder camera He knew how to be creative, including in the repetition of qualitative spaces and in the furniture that he designed with empathy for the users. book (with a scenario by Carmelo Virone).
The adventure of modern architecture in Belgium
A creative sobriety, by JM Degraeve, Éditions Fourre-Tout, €35 and exhibition Louis Bosny: For a sober and creative architecture, at the Cité Miroir in Liège, until Sunday February 2, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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