Citroën, the Soft Museum

The competition for the reconversion of the former Citröen factory and into a Museum, is taken as an opportunity to develop the Soft Museum as a ‘process museum’, a new type of cultural institution for which the blueprint does not yet exist. The Soft Museum is imagined as a catalyst for the cultural energy of Brussels, calling to make new alliances, reconsider categories, fuse institutional boundaries, recombine existing cultural fragments. The scale of the operation can make for a whole new visibility to emerge. Only with this multiplicity of actors involved can we imagine the Soft Museum to become a ground-breaking institution on a European and international scale.

Spatially, the proposal takes the garage as a cue to make specific art spaces, with a clear identity and relation to the city. As spaces that are both public and intimate, they engage the audience in a diversity of ways.


  • Location

    Brussels, Belgium

  • Client

    SAU/MSI

  • Competition

    2017

  • In collaboration with

    Caruso St. John, l'AUC, Thomas Demand

  • 51N4E project team

    Freek Persyn, Sotiria Kornaropoulou, Matthieu Moreau, Petar Petricevic, Hunter Doyle, Galaad Van Daele

  • 51N4E involvement

    Competition design

  • Consultants

    Arup, VK engineering, Daidalos Peutz, Vogt, Thomas Stroobants

  • Graphic design

    6m56s

  • Model

    Attak

  • Programme

    cultural infrastructure in former industrial site

  • Built surface

    35.000 m²