When it was inaugurated on 24 April 1934, the Citroën garage in Brussels was hailed as ‘the largest garage in Europe’. Set along the canal, close to a major thoroughfare, it was conceived by André Citroën as a complete complex devoted to the automobile, uniting production, exhibition, sales and services under one roof.
- Date
- 14:00 — 16:00
- Location
-
Salon
Some 80 years later, the Brussels Capital-Region acquired the building to create a museum of modern and contemporary art. By then an icon of modernist architecture in Belgium, the structure offered exceptional potential: more than 40 000 m2 of floor space, a monumental showroom and a location at the heart of a rapidly changing neighbourhood.
Published to mark the opening of the museum, From an Iconic Citroen Garage to a 21st-Century Museum traces this dual history: the story of the Citroën garage, from its visionary design to its decline, followed by its transformation into a major museum for the 21st century. Belgian and international historians, curators and researchers examine the building's successive phases, uses and transformations, along with the many projects that have shaped its evolution.
At the launch, several of the contributing authors outline the main threads of the building's history and the contemporary challenges of its renovation. They are joined in conversation by the editorial team and Studio Otamendi, who look back on the making of a book that took shape alongside the final stages of the renovation.
Speakers at the launch:
Jean-Marc Basyn is an art historian specialising in the conservation of modern architectural heritage. He works in the Knowledge & Communication Department at urban.brussels and lectures at the ULB La Cambre-Horta Faculty of Architecture and the Ateliers Saint-Luc. He will trace the building's architectural history, from its design, industrial function, construction and inauguration through its transformations and its decline after Citroën's bankruptcy, to the various proposals for its reuse and, finally, its conversion into a museum.
Sandrine Colard is a curator at Kanal and an associate professor at Rutgers University–Newark, and holds a PhD in art history from Columbia University. She will discuss the colonial legacy embedded in the Kanal site and the artistic practices that are reshaping it, notably in the exhibition An infinite woman.
Manuela Dechamps Otamendi is a Brussels-based designer and the founder of Studio Otamendi, a typography and graphic design studio working mainly in the cultural sector, with a particular interest in art and architecture. She holds a master's degree in typography from Erg in Brussels (2000), where she has taught typography and editorial design since 2011.
Nourdine El Fakkak is a sociologist and political philosopher, a PhD candidate in economic and social history and a seminar tutor in contemporary history at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne. He will offer a personal perspective on the factory's history, centred on the employees and workers who laboured there between 1926 and 1938.
Published by Kanal, Kanal Architecture and Fonds Mercator
Edited by Devrim Bayar (Kanal) and Yaron Pesztat (Kanal Architecture)
Editorial coordination: Jenna Barberot (Fonds Mercator)
