Pierre Hebbelinck: Lecture in Mendrisio

Pierre Hebbelinck will be giving a lecture in Mendrisio on 21 May as part of the Heritage as Architecture study days. 

At a time when the ecological transition requires us to reinvent a more responsible and conservative approach to architectural design, when energy efficiency paradoxically demands increasingly invasive interventions in existing buildings, and when demolition and reconstruction are still the dominant practices, designing within the existing built environment is emerging as a new paradigm. Although now imperative, it has been explored and tested for some twenty years in the challenging conservation of twentieth-century architecture, going beyond the consensual ‘reuse’ that has become trivial.
The analysis of a series of approaches to conservation, preservation and restoration, in terms of the project approach and its theoretical issues, as well as the most pragmatic construction requirements, will shed light on these new contemporary practices in 2025 at the European level. It will also open up a discussion, beyond all certainties, on virtuous strategies for intervening in existing buildings and benevolent practices, with a necessarily limited choice of options, but in a heritage with a strong qualitative identity, whether recognised or not.
A number of questions arise. What similarities and differences can be observed in monumental heritage restoration campaigns in different European countries and in relation to a more widespread heritage? What methods are being tested in a process that we consider to be exemplary? How effective are the tools - digital or other - used in the restoration project, from diagnosis to construction? How can project strategies in architecture of established quality inform processes where it is systematically sacrificed to energy and/or economic requirements?

Pierre Hebbelinck's lecture, entitled Lying heritage, will explore three areas of reflection on the term ‘architectural heritage’. For the last century and a half, this term has been used to designate a selection of buildings based on a set of criteria laid down by public bodies. The angle adopted will be that of outlining questions of architectural design and architectural policythrough the day-to-day practice of architectural production. The ongoing restoration of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, a building designed by Victor Horta, provides an opportunity to examine the notion of heritage in the context of the much wider issues of history and memory. In particular, the approach to the history of the building will be speculative, with a view to proposing a design that takes full account of the substantial injuries sustained by the original concrete. The editorial work undertaken by the Atelier d’Architecture on the oeuvre of architect Louis Bosny (Belgium, Liège,1924-1983), a sort of ‘unknown architect’ (akin to the concept of the ‘unknown soldier’), has been brought to light following three years of research. The objective of this research is twofold: firstly, to investigate the notions of ‘heritage validation’ by public authorities and, secondly, to propose concrete actions for the dissemination of politically committed concepts of sober and economical construction, as well as the innovative aspects of post-war architecture in Europe. The presentation will also focus on the transformation of a ten-year-old house designed on the model of a turnkey pavilion (Maison Delsaute, Queue du Bois, Belgium). Attention will be paid to the built heritage as a whole, and to the stories told by the common forms of ordinary architecture. The design of this project will attempt to illustrate the notions of vitality embodied in architectural creation in the face of a context of morbidity, and the practice of moral and doctrinaire forms implemented in particular by heritage policies in Europe.