Lola Mottet & Elisa Robert

The project takes its place at the heart of the grounds of Colonster Castle and the Sart Tilman open-air museum trail, offering a variety of artworks to its public. The programme brief included the design of an exhibition room, various workshops and studios for artists, a fab-lab and a conference room. In order to accommodate the artists, it was also necessary to create ten flats for them.  

We were influenced by the aesthetics of mid-century houses and high-tech projects.  Our location was determined by historical and current site factors. 

Circulation is the starting point for our thinking. We have created a continuous walkway around the site, reconnecting the ruins with the castle and our building so that they form a whole. We are preserving the ruined outbuildings by removing their roofs and reworking the floor. This area has been designed as a continuation of the open-air museum at Sart-Tilman. We have reopened all the blocked openings in the ruin to provide a permeable view of the site.  

The project is organised in a 5-storey grid, developing into the slope and crossing vertically via a tower, and horizontally via an external walkway offering a view of the valley. The building is perceived in two ways ; There is a dichotomy between the front and the back of the project, which is on the scale of the site at park level and on the scale of the valley on the other side. Public functions are all accessible from the park, while private functions are located in the valley, separating work and rest areas. 

Our aim was to play with interior and exterior spaces, alternating full and empty, and with the interplay of levels, creating a suspended walk.