Take On, Add Away: The Transformation of the Palais des Expositions in Charleroi documents a counterintuitive architectural act — the deliberate subtraction of interior volume from a mid-century Belgian exhibition hall as a strategy for urban reconnection and programmatic renewal.
About This Book
Built between 1948 and 1953, the Palais des Expositions in Charleroi was once a monument to Belgian industrial ambition. After decades of disuse, an international competition yielded a radical response from AgwA and architecten jan de vylder inge vinck: rather than demolish, the architects converted approximately one fifth of the building's interior volume into exterior space, reopening the long-closed complex to the city around it. This book traces that process of subtractive transformation — a design methodology that refuses the binary of preservation versus demolition, and finds architectural possibility precisely in what is removed. Essential reading for those working at the intersection of adaptive reuse, urban heritage, and contemporary practice.
Key Features
- 256 pages of project documentation, process photography, and critical analysis of the Palais des Expositions transformation
- By AgwA and architecten jan de vylder inge vinck
- Case study: Palais des Expositions, Charleroi, Belgium (originally built 1948–1953)
- Published by Ruby Press, ISBN: 9783944074627
What You'll Discover
- How subtractive transformation operates as a coherent design strategy — reducing usable area without wholesale demolition
- The specific spatial and urban logic behind converting one fifth of the building's volume from interior to exterior
- The relationship between a formerly closed industrial complex and the city fabric it had long excluded
- How two practices — AgwA and architecten jan de vylder inge vinck — developed a shared architectural language for a project that resists conventional categories of restoration or new build
About the Author
AgwA is a Brussels-based architecture practice. Architecten jan de vylder inge vinck, also based in Belgium, is known for an approach to existing buildings that foregrounds ambiguity, incompleteness, and the architectural potential of what is already there. The two offices collaborated on the transformation of the Palais des Expositions following an international competition.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 256
- Dimensions: 21 x 26 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783944074627
- Publisher: Ruby Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and students engaged with adaptive reuse, heritage theory, and Belgian contemporary practice; anyone examining how subtraction — not addition — can constitute a radical architectural gesture.