Marie-José Van Hee architecten. A Walk

Marie-José Van Hee architecten

The national and international prizes, publications and exhibitions with which she is associated prove that Marie-José Van Hee has not stood still in all those years. In 1997, together with Paul Robbrecht and Hilde Daem, she won the Flemish Community’s Cultuurprijs voor Architectuur [Cultural Prize for Architecture] and in 2017 she was awarded the prestigious British International Fellowship by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The world-famous Japanese magazine A+U even dedicated an entire edition to the Ghent-based architect. In 2018, she again exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale. She had previously participated in 2012 at the invitation of Sir David Chipperfield, together with partners in crime Robbrecht en Daem.

400 projects

In Belgium, the seven-person office Marie-José Van Hee architecten is known for its striking housing projects and projects in the public realm, such as the City Pavilion in Ghent, the redevelopment of the banks of the River Lys, Deinze’s market square, and the ModeNatie building in Antwerp. After more than forty years of practice, the bureau can now look back on 400 projects, 250 of which were realised. Marie-José Van Hee speaks with great passion about her metier – “her craftsmanship”: “The work still comes first for me. But I have a love-hate relationship with everything that has not been executed, particularly with the competition projects.”

Grandes Randonées (GR)

As the title already suggests, the exhibition is conceived as a walking route, or rather two walking routes: the GR5A (the long route) and the PR5A (the short route). The names allude to the Grandes Randonées, the famous walking routes in France and Italy that are so close to Marie-José’s heart. Walking is an important part of Van Hee’s life: “For me it is time and space, the ultimate kind of freedom.” In her designs you will never encounter a dead-end corridor; Van Hee always provides a circuit. And there’s a reason for this. Says Marie-José Van Hee: “As a child I lived in a house where I had to walk through my parent’s bedroom to go to the toilet. Since then, I always provide a way out in my designs, a path to freedom.” The PR5A route points to the exhibition hall, where the curators have constructed a version of Marie-José’s own home. The house has many rooms, and every room alludes to an important part of the oeuvre of Marie-José Van Hee architecten.

expo hall DE SINGEL

PR5A (the short walk)

Just as in real life, you enter the house from the street. The ‘Street Life’ room is illuminated by Van Hee’s garden-street-lamp which she designed for House HdF and House V-C. You can relax there for a while on the benches that the architect designed for the Venice Architecture Biennale, or flick through the large books that rested upon her legendary lecterns from the 1993 exhibition. The ‘Drawing Room’ is perhaps the most important room, it is a copy of the space in which Marie-José Van Hee draws on the house-work-table that she designed herself. The viewer is invited to take a seat on the bed-bench and leaf through a series of books and drawings. Afterwards you enter the ‘Jardin des Ami.e.s ’ which features a range of voices who play an important role in the oeuvre of Marie-José Van Hee architecten. “We invited the designers with whom we have collaborated to reflect on our work. Each of them does this in their own unique way”, explains Sam De Vocht, who has been working with Van Hee’s for fifteen years. For Marie-José Van Hee it is clear that an architect never operates alone: “Today we live in an era of ego tripping. As an architect, you cannot be an ego tripper. You work with and for people. I continue to learn every day, above all from other people.”

arts campus DE SINGEL

GR5A (the long walk)

The curators also break through the walls of DE SINGEL’s exhibition hall. The long route contains artworks, a tree, furniture, books and doors. With this series of interventions, Marie-José Van Hee confronts the architecture of Leon Stynen, the original architect of the arts site. Van Hee says: “As an architect you always want to leave something behind. We’re doing that too in this exhibition, with a number of permanent interventions and explorations.” On the square in front of DE SINGEL the curators have placed a tree, a Swamp Cypress. “The tree is supposed to activate the square – which is in fact a non-place. It serves as a beacon to clearly signal that something is happening on the campus”, says Van Hee. The long walk leads the visitor past parts of DE SINGEL where they would otherwise never go. Such as the mural by the Antwerp-based painter René Guiette (1893-1976) located in between the Stynen and Beel sections. Van Hee: “By replacing the fire doors with glass doors, we make this artwork more visible so that the visitor has almost no choice but to pause for a moment.”

Who looks after the architect?

The Flanders Architecture Institute asked Marie-José Van Hee architecten to come up with an exhibition within the framework of this year’s theme ‘Care in Architecture’. Van Hee turns this around. The final slogan at the exhibition exit reads ‘Who looks after the architect?’ Van Hee: “I am worried about the architectural profession. Today the architect has become an administrator who is only occupied with rules, there is scarcely room for creativity any more. The ideal home that fully complies with all the EPB norms in in fact a cube or a sphere. But let's be honest; you can’t live in those, can you?”

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Marie-José Van Hee architecten. A Walk

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