These complementary fields of action give Bellastock the capacity to explore and develop new ways to work the materiality of places, buildings and territories, in response to the challenges of tomorrow which are, more than ever, the challenges of today.

Biography

Bellastock is a cooperative community-oriented enterprise (SCIC) in the field of architecture. Our work focuses on the valuation of territories and resources. Bellastock has 10 years of experience in circular economy applied to the construction sector, and especially on the reuse of building elements, through demonstrative pioneering projects and national and European research programmes. This has allowed our organization to provide technical assistance in more than 100 architectural projects and raise awareness among the French construction sector.

Bellastock thus initiates innovative, ecological, and solidarity-based projects, and proposes alternatives to the traditional act of building by organising the flows of materials and prefiguring territorial transformations.

In 2020, Bellastock won the ‘Palmarès des Jeunes Urbanistes’ (‘Young Urbanists Award’), awarded every two years by the Ministry of Territorial Cohesion and the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

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ESALA Public Lectures Series: Rotor (Gaspard Geerts & Arne Vande Capelle – Geddes Visiting Fellows)

Reuse: Rediscovering a Practice. CC BY-NC.

Today, reuse is often presented as a new thing, an innovation that requires complex technical solutions, a whole new branch of building materials and lots of expansive digital support. But in fact, reuse has always existed and continues to do so today, even if it has become a very marginal practice in our Western society. At Rotor, our work has been guided by the principle that “reuse” is more about rediscovering practices that have been swept away by discourses of modernisation and innovation than it is about reinventing the wheel. But this does not mean of course that reuse does not require inventiveness or creativity. On the contrary, rediscovering practices and adapting them to our current conditions often requires lots of both. During our presentation we will present a series of projects, and zoom in on what point during the design and build process we tweaked contemporary protocols and design conventions. By doing this, we hope to demonstrate the very concrete requirements of the circular economy today, without disregarding what already exists.

Founded in 2005, Rotor is a multi-disciplinary team that focuses on material flows in industry and construction, with an emphasis on the relationship to resources, waste and reuse. On a theoretical level, Rotor formulates creative strategies for recovery and waste reduction through publications, conferences, workshops and exhibitions. On a practical level, Rotor carries out interior design and assists clients, designers and construction companies in extracting and integrating reused materials into their projects.

Since 2014, the activities of deconstruction, dismantling of building elements and resale are conducted under the name Rotor Deconstruction, a spin-off that specialises in large-scale office interiors. In 2015, Rotor’s work was recognised with the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, awarded under the patronage of Unesco. Rotor and Rotor DC are based in downtown Brussels and together employ about 35 people.

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ESALA Frictions Lecture: Annmarie Adams

Grand Plans: hospital architecture and what it tells us. CC BY-NC

This talk explores the role of monumentality in a century of hospital design. From the sprawling British pavilion-plan building typology to postwar towers and today’s mega-institutions, hospital architects have consistently argued for bigness. Such notions of largesse have been expressed in a range of architectural ambitions, from building massing to complex arrangements for air and patient circulation. Is bigger always better? We explore extensive wards, imposing silhouettes, sophisticated anti-contagion strategies, and even temporary COVID hospitals with this question in mind.

Building on the methodologies of her 2008 book Medicine by Design, Adams’ new work extends the ways the built environment can serve as historical evidence. Current projects include a “spatial biography” of a well-known woman doctor; a feminist reconstruction of an Art Deco garden; and a yearning to capture her own subjective responses to the study of hospital architecture.

Biography

Annmarie Adams is an architectural historian based at McGill University, Montreal, where she is jointly appointed in the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. She holds the Stevenson Chair in the History and Philosophy of Science, including Medicine, and has recently finished a five-year term as Chair of the Department of Social Studies of Medicine. From 2011-15 she served as Director of the School of Architecture.

Adams’ publications include Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870-1900 (McGill-Queens University Press, 1996); Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893-1943 (University of Minnesota Press, 2008); and Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (University of Toronto Press, 2000), with sociologist Peta Tancred. She is currently writing a book on a pathologist and museum curator: Maude Abbott: A Life in 10 Spaces, under contract with McGill-Queen’s University Press and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.