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Right to the City - Right to the Future
The exhibition Right to the city – Right to the future, organised by Kanal Architecture, presents a critical homage to Brussels, portraying Brussels as a pioneering laboratory for innovative spatial practice. As the capital of Europe, Brussels is often associated with dysfunction, bureaucracy and poor governance. The exhibition offers an alternative perspective, showing that it is paradoxically the tensions inherent to this city that have created fertile ground from which alternative practices have emerged and flourished. This architecture is based less on clearly defined professional role models and top-down planning processes than on conflictual, antagonistic and participatory processes that renegotiate spatial practice, and hence reinvent ways of living together.
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Room 4
Brussels has a particular and often traumatic relationship with modernity and modernisation – commonly referred to as ‘Brusselisation’. This peacetime demolition, which led to the destruction of historic buildings and entire neighbourhoods, in the name of progress, has left deep scars on the urban fabric. This is most notable through the transformation of the Quartier Nord, located directly next to Kanal. Right to the City – Right to the Future situates itself within this history, linking the memory of surrounding neighbourhoods to the challenges of today: the climate crisis, the right to housing and to political and cultural representation. Kanal is itself inevitably part of these dynamics, raising questions about the role that cultural institutions play in processes of urban transformation, gentrification and inclusion.
The exhibition and its accompanying public programme pay tribute to a transversal approach to architecture: it foregrounds a practice that hybridises the expertise of architects, landscape architects and urban planners with the civic engagement of associations, activists and citizens. Right to the City – Right to the Future brings together archives, such as the Archives d’architecture moderne (AAM), and the Sint-Lukasarchief – both rooted in the late 1960s and integral to Kanal Architecture’s DNA – alongside pioneering contemporary practices such as Rotor and Decoratelier, and artwork such as Demolition City by Aglaia Konrad. The question of rights is addressed by the new participatory commission Convention on the Use of Space – Brussels by Adelita Husni Bey and the new EU-wide campaign Right to Housing by HouseEurope!.
A key element of Right to the City – Right to the Future is its accompanying public programme, which features events with Eyal Weizman, Anna Puigjaner, HouseEurope!, Lieven De Cauter, Annekatrien Verdickt and many others; excursions into Brussels’ urban ecosystems and workshops with contributions from, amongst others, BC Architects & Materials and Vincen Beeckman. Additionally, the public programme features a series of films, Bruxelles Imaginaire, curated by Pauline Davide, and a podcast, developed in collaboration with Isabelle Plumhans and Radio OhKaai.
Right to the City – Right to the Future is the inaugural project of Kanal Architecture. Formerly known as CIVA, Kanal Architecture continues its transdisciplinary approach to architecture, landscape and urban ecosystems, while opening up a new space for debate about the built environment.
Programme
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Group tours
From in-depth visits to the exhibitions to an introductory tour of the building: discover the museum with your friends, colleagues or organisation.
© Bart Grietens -
Schools
During a thematic tour, pupils discover and explore an exhibition, with the option to attend a creative workshop afterwards.
© Veerle Vercauteren
