Anderlecht — Molenbeek by Pierre Blondel

The art of Pierre Blondel creates an intermediary space between reality and fiction, a space with an enticing and strange familiarity built through skilfully mastered means that testify to his dual vocation as a writer and architect. His short stories unfold in the neighbourhoods where his future buildings are found, imagined, but not yet built. The reader will be a witness to the architect’s vibrant gaze, which notes the permanent and transitional nature of the city: lives that repeat, but which build the landscape for future generations through the traces they leave behind; the complex desire of individuals to understand their identity through their family background, superimposed on the places and society around them, which are in constant flux; the city itself, which is becoming permanent, without forgetting the past, when the urban environment had not yet lost the ill-defined, green paradise of childhood discovery; the difficult clashes between the suburbs and the city centre, between old residents and new arrivals. All of these themes, which are explored through both media with a sort of detective irony that will surprise the reader, give the familiar feeling of an approaching nostalgia that is specific to life in the city.

Stefan Simion