Siberian Federal University

In total, more than 130 projects were submitted from around the world. The results were summed up on 24 April 2021.

The project of the House of Arts (la Casa delle Arti) near the historic La Grand Place (which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site) in Brussels beat the finalist projects of architects from the USA, Spain, China, Russia and Chile and was highly appreciated by the international jury. The project will be published in Сontest Book international journal.

As conceived by the author, the building takes the form of a yellow iris— a symbol of Brussels. This flower can be seen everywhere in the city. The natural site became the main inspiration for the new House of Arts. The building is made in the shape of a flower of three petals with a plastic roof and seems to grow out of small ponds located on the square, which, in turn, symbolize the swamps that once laid where they built this city. The ponds adjacent to a glass facade reflect the building itself and its surroundings. In front of la Casa delle Arti, a small entrance square is formed and paved in different patterns; marsh irises grow on its flower beds.

“The House of Arts consists of three functional blocks and is oriented to reveal its entire volume and turn the front facade towards the main pedestrian directions. The visual effect of opening is enhanced by the inclination of the two lateral functional blocks and the elevation of the central one, which has the main entrance. The House of Arts, together with La Grand Place, can become another point of the tourist route,” said the author of the project.

“The inclusion of a new architectural structure into the existing and very valuable urban environment, which is the historical centre of Brussels, is a very difficult task even for a professional architect with extensive design experience. In my opinion, however, our student coped with this task brilliantly: the modern object designed by him harmoniously blended into the historical architectural context. An interesting creative concept and a high professional level of project implementation led to this remarkable result,” said Nikolay Grekov, professor of the Department of Architectural Design, the School of Architecture and Design, and scientific supervisor of the project.