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THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK: THE BRUSK

New buildings are rare in the medieval centre of Bruges, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That’s one reason BRUSK is so unusual: The 9,500-square-metre concrete and glass exhibition hall, with a contemporary gabled roof and oversized dormer windows, opened here in May. Designed by Robbrecht en Daem Architecten, alongside Olivier Salens Architecten, the building occupies the site of a former school tucked into a dense network of alleyways. “Even though it’s a very important program, it’s a building you have to discover,” says architect Olivier Salens. “At ground level, you don’t see it until you walk right up to it.”

Arguably the most notable — and visible — element is BRUSK’s expansive roof covered in dark green glass plates embedded with PV cells. South-facing openings in its gentle slope allow indirect light into the two 14-metre-high exhibition halls, tempering the “colder light” that flows in from the much larger north-facing windows, explains architect Paul Robbrecht.

The airy central street — known as the Scala Grande — guides visitors through the building, to an all-day café and restaurant and outside to what, in 2031, will become a major new public park, as well as up to the exhibition halls. The Scala Grande’s walls are covered in a monumental fresco by French artist Laure Prouvost, which depicts Bruges’s history and cityscape in intricate detail while tantalizingly delving (sometimes in 3D) into urgent themes like ecology, globalization and women’s place in the world.

As part of the project, the architects kept and renovated a 1930s school building next door and created a landscaped public piazza in front of it. The structure now houses BRON, a scientific research centre for the municipal organization that manages the city’s most historic buildings and prestigious art museums, including BRUSK. “We wanted this to be a place not just for visitors but also one for working and living, a vibrant new city quarter,” says Salens.

WHILE YOU’RE IN BRUGES

The Venice of the North, Bruges makes for a resplendent sojourn about an hour from Brussels. After checking out BRUSK’s programming (“High Tide,”which charts the influence of oceans on everything from art to fashion, opens October 30), you can complete your cultural immersion at the city’s famed Groeningemuseum (while it’s closed for renovations, beginning in March 2027, many of its masterpieces will be relocated to BRUSK). Two Christmas markets, under the umbrella of Winter Glow, take over Markt and the Simon Stevinplein starting November 20. Need some respite from the dense city core? Visit Katelijne Park, a green space inaugurated in 2024. Wherever you go, don’t steal the cobblestones! Tourists vying to take a piece of Bruges back home with them are considered an official menace to the built fabric.

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THE COMEBACK KID: DESIGN MUSEUM GENT

Belgium’s largest design museum, made up of an alluring collection of buildings dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries, reopens its doors after a seven-year expansion and renovation project. Design Museum Gent (in the northern Belgian city of Ghent) now has a brand-new five-storey wing that completes the museum’s courtyard, connecting the ensemble of historic structures and, above all, “upgrading the museum to 21st-century standards,” explains Andy Groarke, a co-founding director at London-based Carmody Groarke, which worked on the addition alongside Belgian firm ATAMA (conservation architects RE-ST oversaw the restoration of the historic buildings). “As it emerges above the shoulder height of the city,” Groarke says, “it twists to create this sculptural form on the skyline.”

A previous major expansion in the 1970s had provided a great deal more exhibition space but also introduced its own headaches. “The conversion included a four-storey void linking all the new gallery levels, which put the collection at fire risk and also created acoustic problems between the floors,” Groarke says. Until its recent closure, the museum didn’t have proper permanent toilets, universal access or an elevator. In its expanded form, it houses all of these necessities, as well as a café, a lecture theatre, a multi-functional space and a rooftop terrace that, Groarke explains, “will connect you to Ghent in previously unseen ways.”

The new wing embraces circularity with its all-timber frame and white brick facade. Made entirely out of local mineral construction waste, the bricks are lime-cured and required no kiln firing, reducing their embodied carbon by about two thirds. The material references the city’s palette and vernacular, while its white tone matches that of the neighbouring historic houses, as well as significant public landmarks clad in white limestone. In more ways than one, this building is a connector.

WHILE YOU’RE IN GHENT

Design Museum Gent’s reopening coincides withDesign Fest Gent, taking place from October 3 to 11; for the occasion, the museum is inaugurating a number of exhibitions, including “Public Matter(s): Design and Democracy” and the participatory programs Connect and Co-Lab. As you explore its design scene, the city has plenty of architectural attractions to enjoy, among them the Market Hall — with its majestic twin-gabled roof — by Robbrecht en Daem (the firm behind BRUSK) in collaboration with Marie-José Van Hee. And if you need a stylish place to crash, the Jam Hotel Ghent, recently transformed by Studio Lionel Jadot, layers new over old in a compelling palimpsest.

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INDUSTRIAL REVAMP: PALAIS DES EXPOSITIONS

The monumental Palais des Expositions, an exhibition hall in the southern Belgian town of Charleroi, was built in the 1950s, during the city’s industrial coal mining heyday. With two huge wings for exhibitions and a central distribution building featuring a grand domed foyer, it was vast and unwieldy (and recently underused) by this city of some 200,000 inhabitants. The City initially floated the idea of demolishing the entire complex but abandoned that approach as too costly and unsustainable.

Eventually, in 2015, it held a competition to renovate the building — which was won by Brussels-based firm AgwA and Ghent-based practice Architecten Jan de Vylder Inge Vinck. Among other things, the team was asked to tear down the central portion of the building and construct an energy-efficient one in its place. Given that the initial budget was only one-third of what was needed, the architects chose instead to open up the centre, strip away its facades and create three levels of “urban terraces” connecting both wings. “By turning the circulation spaces into outdoor space, the central foyer became not a low-energy building [as called for] but a zero-energy one,” explains Hélène Joos, a partner at AgwA.

The brief also posited a new ground-floor car park — yet again, the architects chose another route. By demolishing a part of the first-floor slab, they were able to connect the ground level with the second one for the first time in the building’s existence, shifting from a horizontally organized building to a vertically stacked one. “As a result,” explains Nicky Vancaudenberg, another AgwA architect, “the thermal envelope was reduced to the north wing, which now houses all the exhibition halls, whereas the south wing was repurposed as a multi-storey car park that can also host non-air-conditioned events.”

Every intervention was overseen with respect for what was already there, reduced to the essential and made visible. Vancaudenberg likens it to a “form of architectural archaeology balancing economy, ecology and aesthetics.”

WHILE YOU’RE IN CHARLEROI

The humming industrial engine of Belgium, Charleroi boasts many modern attractions, from the curvyBauhaus-meets-Streamline-Moderne building DeHeug by Marcel Leborgne, built in 1933 and restored in 2018, to Jean Nouvel’s bizarrely on-the-nose turret of a police headquarters, completed in 2014. Most impressive is the transformation currently underway: Alongside the sustainable renovation of the Palais des Expositions, the city is training its sights on the former industrial park a 10-minute trip from the expo building. As part of the ambitious Nature in the City project, French landscape firm Michel Desvigne Paysagiste is envisioning a network of pedestrian- and bike-friendly green spaces — with new groves of trees — to establish the lush Dampremy Quartier Nature.