V+: Lecture in Lugano – Cities Connection Project

The Cities Connection Project exhibition continues its itinerancy and will stop at the Istituto internazionale d'architettura in Lugano from 29 November 2019 to 24 January 2020. On this occasion, Jorn Aram Bihain, from V+, whose MAD project – realized in association with ROTOR - appears in the exhibition Import WB _Export BCN. Re-activate the city will give the closing conference.

Project for a design and fashion Centre in Brussels conceived in a joint team with the architecture office ROTOR. The assignment is the result of an architectural competition organised by the City of Brussels for the transformation of an existing office and warehouse complex in the Dansaert neighborhood in the centre of Brussels. The aim of MAD Brussels is to regroup the offices and workshops of entities active in fostering the work of Brussels-based design and fashion talent.

The project proposed by V+ and Rotor is radically conservative. Instead of demolition, as was suggested by the brief, it proposes to preserve the building volumes and make use as much as can be of what is already there.The project displays a high level of tolerance towards the existent and combines this with a high standard for anything new to be added. The end-result is a building far richer in typologies than could be realized with a design from scratch.