Philippe Breels

designer

Philippe Breels studied architecture at the UHasselt and was selected for Toegepast 21 with his project ‘Palimpsest’. The term Palimpsest originates from palaeography andconcerns the overwriting of parchments with new texts.The parchment’s written layer is scraped off to make roomfor new writing. Text upon text and never a clean slate,which also applies to architecture and urban development.A fascinating process and a fitting metaphor for PhilippeBreels, who, as an architect, wishes to devote attentionto the little houses of the Hasselt beguinage and its manylives.The beguinage has served as an arts centre since 2002and naturally still bears many visible traces of previous use,while other traces have been erased or written over. Usingprojections, Philippe Breels’ spatial installation makes themany lives of the building visible. He simultaneously alsostages a light-hearted future scenario of this public building.How do we deal with such buildings full of memories?

Core Discipline(s)

Architecture