The transformation of a police barracks by EVR Architecten, BC Architects & Studies andCallebaut Architecten inBrussels is a lesson in recycling and reuseAt the end of the 19th century, King Leopold II le roi btisseur or the king builder reshaped Belgium and Brussels, often using stolen capital from his personal colony of Congo. Paris served as the example, and Belgian monuments became counterfeits ofFrance, as Baudelaire recorded in 1866 in his manuscript Pauvre Belgique. In Ixelles, amunicipality to the southeast of Brussels city centre, Leopold II dreamt of creating aChamp de Mars a city district where the national army and the security forces could be housed and educated. A cavalry and artillery barracks, an arsenal and a military station all arose around a large training field. In 1908, the final piece of this quarter was built: the Royal Gendarmerie School, toprepare new members of this paramilitary police corps.Click to download drawingsThe school occupies four hectares. It is animpressive, fully walled complex with neoRenaissance facades and additions from the 1950s and 1970s. During the Second World War, the barracks were mistakenly bombed by theAllies, and then partly restored. Some parts of the outer brick wallon the north side were replaced by heavy metal railings when a fivestorey block was built in the 1970s. The clos des maris an enclave for married officers in the northeast corner ofthe site has remained more or less intact. The Gendarmerie or Rijkswacht in Dutch was dissolved in 2001 following scandals, errors of communication and poorly conducted investigations, and replaced by the Federal Police of Belgium and the Local Police. The Federal Police took over the buildings in Ixelles, but announced itsdeparture in 2015.The intense process of dismantling turned the site into a kind of local mineAt that moment, the two universities ofBrussels stepped in, the Dutch and Englishspeaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) as well as the Frenchspeaking Universit Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). In fact, the large military training field nearby, from the late 19th century, had already been converted, since the 1970s, into a campus forboth institutions. Together with the BrusselsCapital Region, and with a little help from European funding, they are now working together to transform the site ofthe Royal Gendarmerie School, too, intoanew urban block. The first phase ofthis plan has just been completed including research spaces, fabrication labs,offices and shortterm residences forthe twouniversities; future phases are set to includefamily homes, social housing, student flats, an events hall and a sustainable food market.As part of this first phase, a team composed of the offices of EVR Architecten, BC Architects & Studies and Callebaut Architecten tackled the renovation and redevelopment of several connected buildings at the front of the site, along theBoulevard Gnral Jacques, with the addition of new volumes extending the historical complex. EVR Architecten were, at the beginning of the century, oneof the first Belgian offices to focus onecological, passive building, achieving thermal comfort with minimal heating and cooling. The younger office of BC Architects & Studies started in 2009 and is known for reusing andrecycling building materials. Callebaut Architecten specialises in heritage restoration. Together, the three teams aimedto make the project as circular as possible, minimising the flow of incoming and outgoing materials.Credit: Stijn BollaertHowever, in order to improve access tothefortresslike site, one building tothenortheast of the long site had to bedemolished; a wide staircase (with a lift inasmall brick volume) now welcomes the many commuters coming from the nearby train station of Etterbeek down to the rearof the site, which is lowerthan street level.Of the existing single-storey former garage,integrated between the grand and symmetrical central volume and cornerbuilding to the south-west, onlytheconcreteskeleton and facades werepreserved. A glass screen has been constructed facing the inner courtyard, onemetre behind the existing facade, fromwhich all window frames were removed. Thefacades ofthe single-storey counterpart on the north-eastern side of thecentral volume were similarly preserved, also with aglass screen constructed facing the inner courtyard, this time in front of the existing brick facade. A wooden structure was added on top of the existing columns and a glass entrance has been installed onthe street side.This intense process of dismantling turned the site into a kind of local mine, with the assistance of the technical expertise of certification agency Seco and Brusselsbased practice Rotor, which specialises in material reuse. The materials present on site have been maximally recovered: almost 1,000m2 of a granite floor was created by grinding down 150 window sills; 210 doubleglazed windows were reused. A total of 150m2 of ceramics, 150 radiators, 30 urinals, 20 sinks, 150 door fittings and two fire ladders were removed from the old buildings, cleaned andput back into use. Reuse was not always possible, however; one type of brick had to be rejected because it was not considered frostresistant according to contemporary regulations, even though the material had been functioning properly for almost ahundred years.Some newly introduced materials were also necessary; these are biobased, such asclay plasters made with soil not from the site itself but from another project nearby and walls made out of hempcrete. The clay plaster, with fractions of hemp and cork, was specifically developed by BC to meet acoustic requirements in the offices. Intheapartments for visiting researchers, aswell as in the lecture room, the walls areconstructed from plywood panels in awooden framework, which can be easily dismantled using a screwdriver. This projectis a valuable case study for anyone interested in reuse and recycling it is an essay in how not to demolish a building.The collaborating architects have joined forces on this project based on their respective expertise: by insulating offices asseparate volumes within the old building envelope; by reusing and recycling materials, building elements and equipment as much aspossible; and by valuing old buildings without unnecessarily fetishising them. Theprogressive and critical nature oftheseoperations is evident in the misunderstandings and resistance they occasionally provoked from the clients andcontractors, for whom the project wasin many ways a learning process. Thestandard for the future phases of the site development has, in a sense, been set.Beyond ecological and material questions, however, other objectives do remain valid and important. Placing offices, meeting and reading rooms as a freestanding box in an existing structure the boxinbox system is surely an efficient way to insulate them, and the architects chose this option intentionally. It does, however, also mean that users cannot open a window to let in fresh air (a problem, paradoxically, which hightech and mechanically ventilated architecture also has). The two and sometimes threelayered glass facades create a metrethick membrane; they offer acoustic and thermal benefits, but also a strict division between inside and outside, and public and private. The social objective of architecture to mix programmes and people, and to involve the street in the interior (and vice versa), is therefore not prioritised.Similarly, the project does not prioritise asemiotic or cultural richness a visual pridethat highlights and communicates theprogramme within, with or without thepompous historicity and charge of thebarracks of yesteryear. This extension should ensure, after all, the public presence of the two universities in the city of Brussels.One could argue that its newfound, composite appearance is not allthat exciting: the new glass facades with redbrown frames look a touch generic and neofunctionalist. A lot of pressure, in terms of presence, therefore falls on two new brick turrets a large one marking the new public stairs to the northeast and a smaller one to the southwest containing a small staircase and functioning as a back entrance. Their performance as city gates for this new district could be called subtle or weak, depending on how one looks at it, and whatone expects.The question, finally, can also be asked whether all the bricolage and reuse that, admirably, characterises this renovation andextension could not have been expressed in a more selfconfident, more formal and yes a more beautiful and poetic way, instead of, in most cases, carrying out what could also be achieved with more standard materials. In part, thisis a consequence of the limited budget (using plywood, for example, that does not need many layers ofveneer), although it was also a deliberate decision of the architects. We have tried tomaintain one atmosphere for the entire project, Bart Verstappen of EVR Architecten explains, in order to make the interventions clear without aiming for the typical contrast between old and new. Ina few cases, the nontraditional provenance of building materials also leads to surprising collages and artful results, such as the recycled window sills turned into terrazzo flooring, in the mezzanine of the entrance hall. Perhaps this is the way we have to doarchitecture now by acknowledging thatwe can no longer have it all, if we evercould.