Paul Robbrecht

Paul Robbrecht founded Robbrecht en Daem with his wife Hilde Daem in 1975. Their son Johannes joined in 2002. This family-led practice is one of the most important in Europe, helping transform Belgium into one of the richest architectural cultures in the world. He talks to Tim about his father, his favourite sculptor and Egypt.

Podcast transcript

Tim Abrahams: Superurbanists! I’ve been travelling across the European continent in search of amazing people to talk to. Last episode we were in Portugal with Kengo Kuma. This week we are in Antwerp and I will be updating you with other journeys and other people I’ve met on them. 

I often ask people who I interview, who else should I have on? And this man’s name has been the first in more than one person’s list. His name is Paul Robbrecht. If you don’t know who he is, well, you’re about to find out. He’s one of the leading figures in Belgian architecture. He’s led the resurgence in its building confidence. He exemplifies its qualities, the ability of its best practitioners to articulate the needs of modernity whilst deploying all manner of architectural languages from throughout history to best achieve their goal. Not gratuitously, instinctively, something speaks to the body. When you’re looking at his work, you don’t think, you feel. When you don’t even feel, you respond. There’s a physicality to his work which is incredible. We met at a new, relatively small project, their entrance to the Rubens House, the home of Paul Rubens, the great Flemish artist in Antwerp. 

Their building acts as a gateway into this incredible world of the Flemish and Mannerist Italian, the international and the local, which is a very good way of thinking about Paul Robrecht’s work actually, one can overstate the relationship. Their entrance to Rubens House is a modest but unabashedly modern building, works in so many ways.  He begins by talking about William Mann, who has been on twice on the podcast. I’ll be dropping some of the projects he talks about on social media. Ladies and gentlemen Paul Robbrecht.  So, when you meet William Mann? 

Paul Robbrecht: It was in the period of the competition of the Concert Hall in Bruges and he came to see me every Saturday morning just to talk. And it was very inspiring. We were both interested in a wide range of music, from Beethoven to The Kinks. It was fun to talk with him and then I promised him, if I win this competition, please come to work in my office. And we won it. One of my most important works is this concert hall, which is working very well and successful and he was really my right hand. So he was there all the time. To develop the design and specifications and all details like that. 

Tim Abrahams: That was a very important project for you, wasn’t it? 

Paul Robbrecht: Because it was music. I really love music and my friends are musicians. From my youth, my friendship to a group of musicians and later by this concert hall, I met new musicians and they are my friends. At that time the most famous director in Belgium is Philippe Herreweghe. He’s a very famous person. We were in our youth already friends. And I could do this competition and win and make a concert hall. I was there very often because it’s only 25 minutes from my house with a car. I can put the car in the garage under the concert hall. And I go three times in the month for a concert. And they’re doing very well. They have a very good program. 

Tim Abrahams: What do you like about the building? 

Paul Robbrecht: The building is confronted with this mediaeval town completely listed to build a modern building. In relation to the city of Bruges. I’m from Ghent. Since my youth I went with my parents to visit Bruges, the old mediaeval town. This confrontation of wide voluminous building with this mediaeval city means something. And then what happened? I won another competition in Bruges and I’m doing the main museum. It’s under construction. It’s called Brusk. Bruges means “Schone Kunsten Fine Arts”. It’s a big hall of two big halls, 40 by 40 meters and 20 by 40. With two huge spaces with two windows to the north. only two windows. It was inspired by the traditional painter’s studio of the 19th century. But it is enormous, 45 meters, that’s huge. And this is under construction now and it should be ready next June. I should move there and live there. Bruges means a lot to us also, Antwerp means a lot to me. It’s not the first thing we do here. 

Tim Abrahams: Done a lot here. It’s the city. You’ve done the most. 

Paul Robbrecht: Most work is in Antwerp. There’s no particular reason. 

Tim Abrahams: What was the first thing you did in Antwerp? 

Paul Robbrecht: Yeah, there was a business in the harbor, but now it’s one of the biggest companies from Belgium. And we did the main building, a double warehouse and a new building bringing three things together. And then a very precious thing, a pavilion in Middelheim. It’s a very specific place: a collection of sculptures from Rodin to the most contemporary sculpture. And we did an open air pavilion and I could choose myself the first artist. And I’ve chosen Thomas Schutte, a German artist. And we had friends between us. And then I followed his work and then I invited him to be the first artist. And he has shown his ceramics in this building. 

Tim Abrahams: One of the first things I thought to ask you was about the beginnings of your practice. And it seemed to me you were very close to artists. So it’s very interesting to hear you talk about musicians being your closest friends. 

Paul Robbrecht: But also artists unfortunately, they all died. Only the big master, Gerhard Richter is still alive. He’s 92 and we work together. But the artists from my age, next year 75, they all died, unfortunately. Juan Munoz, the Spanish sculptor Jan Vercruysse, which is a very important Flemish artist. But Schutte is still alive. I was always interested as a kid as well, and I liked drawing myself. But I knew I’m not an artist, I’m somebody else. And my father said, maybe architecture. And it was just right. 

Tim Abrahams: And what was your father’s job? 

Paul Robbrecht: A baker. He was a very bright person. He had to take over the company from his parents. But he was a very special man and the most important man in my life. 

Tim Abrahams: He encouraged you? 

Paul Robbrecht: I was 14. He sent me to see Le Corbusier. And when I came back, he said, what do you think about this? I said, I’m really astonished and it’s fantastic. And that’s what you’re going to study. Boink! I was very lucky. I’m very happy. But in the 50s the parents would decide at that time what you studied here in Flanders. They chose the job that their kids had to study at that time. It was not like I do, even the artists that I know that become first a lawyer – Christina Iglesias, with whom we do the fountain here in Antwerp, in front of the museum. Christina Iglesias had to study chemistry because her father made a fortune in chemistry. He found this green foam for putting in flowers. Her father is the inventor of that. And then his daughter had to study also. And then she said, “Papa, I’ve done it and now I’m going to become an artist.” 

Tim Abrahams: That was how it was. 

Paul Robbrecht: That was how it was. The war was over and we have to study, we have to work. But my father gave me something I really liked, because with the money he earned, he built houses. So he was interested himself in architecture in a way. He knew Le Corbusier, a baker who knows Le Corbusier. But he was a bright person, funny also. 

Tim Abrahams: And I was speaking to Niall Hobhouse. 

Paul Robbrecht: I was in his place also. I saw his collection. 

Tim Abrahams: Yes, it’s a great collection. And you’ve talked about, excuse my pronunciation, Initiative 86. 

Paul Robbrecht: Initiative. Yes. 

Tim Abrahams: And that seemed to be a strong relationship between domestic scale, art… 

Paul Robbrecht: At an important moment. Actually, the curator of that exhibition was a German, Kasper König and he had in mind to show one artist, René Havard, who began his career as an architect. But he had problems with his lungs. He became a very interesting artist whom I’ve met several times. He had to literally make the art in his bed with brushes and with very fragile small things. And so we in the Abbey of Ghent built a kind of house for him with a kitchen and a bedroom and a living space. But abstractions, these pieces existed in these new temporary built spaces. 

It was very domestic scale, taking the light from the windows. And it was like a group of cells. You could compare the atmosphere a bit with the convent of San Marco in Florence. If you’re ever in Florence nobody knows it so well, but it’s a corridor under a roof with white cells where these monks lived. And in each cell Fra Angelico has made a little painting like that. And now to René Havard. It had this cell-like, domestic scale. And it was actually the first time that we did something very clearly for art. 

Tim Abrahams: Then you go on and do Documenta. 

Paul Robbrecht: And then we do a Documenta, Jan Huts calls me up three years before Document. Paul, you have to become my architect. Wow. It started with a meeting of very important artists. He invited Gerhard Richter and five important artists to discuss it. But there already I proposed a pavilion. And it was my idea about what is going on in the arts. And it was this like train – still exists actually. 

Tim Abrahams: Yeah. In Almere? 

Paul Robbrecht: First in Almere but it moved again to Nieuwe Stad 

Tim Abrahams: Because it’s those pavilions and those structures to host are very common now. We’re used to having international ballets where new structures are created. You had to create…

Paul Robbrecht: The new idea of an auto show art and immediately what was so successful? Because some of the artists, important artists has chosen to be in that building, like Gerhard Richtersken. 

Tim Abrahams: Why do you think they felt attracted to it? 

Paul Robbrecht: On one hand I think the scale and on the other hand, enormous relation with the landscape. One side was winding, the other were walls. And it was at the time of the unification of Germany. It was 89 when we designed this building and 92 was Documenta but this was built by people from the east. They were shy with yuo bit I talked with them and the building is also looking to the east was what I wanted. There is a new world that we have to learn to know and artists liked this relationship. 

Tim Abrahams: So you had one side, you had the art and then you turned around and the landscape. 

Paul Robbrecht: It was like that. I built a particular space for all of these artists. Then Gerhard was in this building and he had a very nice quote about this building. They said it remembers the rock and roll song under the Boardwalk, where people meet each other under the strings. And actually it was the cheapest hotel because in the night there were people sleeping under that building. 

Tim Abrahams: You think back to those times, they were very fluid.

Paul Robbrecht: Artists were very open then, it’s much more difficult now.  More open then.

Tim Abrahams: More open in the fact that they were open to challenges. 

Paul Robbrecht: Yeah. To the challenge to work with you as an architect now. Oh, it’s much more difficult for me, I have to say. 

Tim Abrahams: So, it’s strange to go from these temporary structures, these kind of domestic scale, then suddenly, not suddenly, I realize the decade goes by and then, boom, you’re doing the concert hall. You’re going from these intimate scale to this. 

Paul Robbrecht: It’s exaggerated, but in a way it’s the same. Of course, huge buildings are complex programs you have to manage. But the heart of it and to discover something or to think about something is similar, of course. And you have to work much longer and then you need much more assistance to do that. I had a very good team of acoustics from Arup Acoustics from Winchester, very good people. And the way they worked with me was interesting. They gave me 10 points you have to respect when you design a concert hall. And then I had an idea about how the inner form would be. And they said to me, and there was, at a certain moment, you have doubts about your ideas, but they said, it’s a very good idea, we cannot calculate it, but go on with this idea. But then they gave me 100 points to respect. First 10, the big proportions and then 100 things had to take care of. And it’s a really successful acoustic place. 

Tim Abrahams: One of the things you mentioned the early projects did in Antwerp and you’re doing. And your work in the UK, the Whitechapel it’s working on historic. 

Paul Robbrecht: History that’s always there, like here. It’s for me a challenge. It’s not that I want to imitate history, but to be confronted with that is for me something that gives me lots of energy and inspiration. And I love to study the history of architecture, but also the history in general of art. We are always working. We are conscious of the past, but we have to go in that direction. 

Tim Abrahams: Paul is pointing over his shoulder at this point. 

Paul Robbrecht: It was a very nice quote. I have to write it down. I read it somewhere and it was somebody who’s reflecting on Taylor Swift. Can you imagine a philosopher who is reflecting on Taylor Swift? 

Tim Abrahams: And this is the one when he’s saying, we’re looking back, but we’re heading into the future behind us. 

Paul Robbrecht: That’s what happens with our lives. I was always interested in history. 

Tim Abrahams: You’ve worked on buildings by Horta and Van de Velde. 

Paul Robbrecht: The lifetime work in two years we will be finished with this library which is there in the city of Ghent. 

Tim Abrahams: Is the tower completed or is it just waiting? 

Paul Robbrecht: The tower is completed. Everything from the outside is completed. We scratched four centimetres of concrete with water and we poured again five centimeters. The building is one centimeter bigger in all directions. We put a very fine armature of stainless steel and then we poured. And it had to be very slowly because we have only this size to pour concrete. It was a monk’s work, actually. 

Tim Abrahams: Monk’s work? Did you say? 

Paul Robbrecht: A monk’s work? Yeah, that you would say it in English?

Tim Abrahams: I think we need to say this though. We should borrow this phrase, a monk’s work so it’s just meticulous.

Paul Robbrecht: You know writing, copying a book like that. 

Tim Abrahams: So what you did was expand the building by a centimetre?

Paul Robbrecht: Yeah, we did little new part, a very modest new part. But the building had this kind of possibilities that we could bring it to our times because it’s such a logic building. Van De Velde arrived in Germany in the early 1920s and he built up a school in Weimar and out of this school because he was the first director, the second director of that school was Gropius and then out of this became Bauhaus. So he was one of this Loos generation, pre modern, like you could say that already rationalist. He was the one who could go from Jugendstil  to that new architecture. Horta couldn’t do that. They became enemies. Horta couldn’t stand Van de Velde they were opposite. They were not friends. 

Tim Abrahams: But the Beaux Arts in Brussels you’ve worked on Horta’s as well. 

Paul Robbrecht: On Horta’s building in Beaux Art we did a cafe and small things. It’s a restaurant actually, where you go to eat before the concert and then after the concert. 

Tim Abrahams

So where do you stand? Are you more Van de Velde than Horta? 

Paul Robbrecht: I don’t choose. When I was a student, my great hero was Louis Kahn and he was not popular in Belgium. As a student, I found this idea of history in his building fantastic and I was happy to see some of his buildings in the United States and 10 years ago I went also to Bangladesh. Now I’m more… I’m not distant to it, but still that was my great hero when I was a student.. I didn’t copy him, not at all but that he found inspiration in ruins. And that’s close to my feeling also. I made a travel to Egypt two years ago and made an exhibition in the University of Ghent. When I finished my studies, I thought I have to start from zero. So I did the Grand Tour to Greece, to Rome, to the Renaissance. But I never made it to Egypt and that I did two years ago and it’s still in me. 

Tim Abrahams: In what way is it coming out of you? Or is it something you think about? 

Paul Robbrecht: The dark and the light also the relation with sculpture and architecture. In many things it is much too late. But it’s the travel that I never will forget. I did it with a friend very intensively. 

Tim Abrahams: How long did you take? 

Paul Robbrecht: Three weeks but we were everywhere. We were in Luxor, we were in Aswan, we were in Abu Simbel, Cairo and all these pyramids at the National Museum in Cairo. I really want to go back because a friend of mine couldn’t go and I will go with him to do it again. 

Tim Abrahams: Are there specific places you want to still go? 

Paul Robbrecht: I think I will go again to Luxor but there is one building, the Ramesseum, it’s called, and it’s a temple. But there was next to the temple an enormous colossal sculpture which fell down and the drama you still can see. And it was already for photographers in the 19th century, sometimes you see the shoulder and this organic form of that body next to that building is so impressive. It’s called the “Ramesseum”. It’s the Romans who called this building to Ramses. He was the builder Abu Simbel Karnak. 

Tim Abrahams: And do you have any particular output planned for it? Or is it just you want to see it again? Do you have a project that you’re working on? 

Paul Robbrecht: Just to see. Just to see. There’s so much in Greece. You have the Parthenon and then you have three columns somewhere there and there. But most of them is on the ground. But there they have so much. What already happene, the Romans, they were already admiring a lot the Egyptians, even their clothes. And they have already cared for those buildings. That’s why there’s so much that came to us. And also of course, the grief, but also the bas reliefs, how they beautifully draw women. It was very erotic. 

Tim Abrahams: You’ve got an erotic charge. 

Paul Robbrecht: I did this exhibition in the University of Ghent about my Egyptian experience. And I told this to a lady. The beautiful way they draw women. Yeah, but they draw the men also beautifully. She was an Egyptologue. If you think about Rome or Greece, you don’t think about color. But in Egypt, in these tombs, everything is color, paintings and color and things. It’s amazing. 

Tim Abrahams: Now, it’s interesting you mentioned color, because that’s one of the areas which, when I was thinking about your relationship with art and a word that crops up when I read people that I respect writing about your work or when I think about it myself, is the word perception, as opposed to seeing or looking. Perception is something more. 

Paul Robbrecht: On the top of this building, I just see another building from us, a hospital. 

Tim Abrahams: I’ve been around that. 

Paul Robbrecht: It’s a green blue building, but also the red building and Bruges. Yeah colour, I still like to draw and I’m not a painter, but I’m using colors in my drawings and I like painting. Barnett Newman colorful paintings. And walking in museum and see this landscape of paintings, very contemporary paintings or also classical paintings. 

I love that. I love those walks in museum. For instance, Rubens, to talk about Rubens. I look at his altar pieces as nearly abstract paintings with colors. How he brings the blue and the blue there and the diagonals. It’s something that I really love to do. Just to go to churches, to frescoes in Italy, all of them Giotto, but also other fresco painters. 

Because there the image is really in the building, sucked into the plaster of the building. For instance, Cappella Scrovegni in Padua. I think, if this is not the most beautiful place in the world. It is. And I love that. Tomorrow we have to choose an artist for this building in Bruges, there’s passage on three levels through that building and we want four huge on the wall in not something hanging on the wall, but on the wall, an intervention of an artist. And I invited Gerhard and he said, Paul, do you know that I’m 92? 9 meters high  Can’t do it. I cannot do that gymnastics anymore. He said to me, I love the building, but we have to find somebody and that’s what we have to discuss tomorrow. 

It’s not in a day it will be a series of talks and of course, in there it’s so important because it’s immediately related to this mediaeval art, which is 30 meters away of Van Eyck egg and Memling. And there is the wish that it should be a woman, because during ages women didn’t exist in Bruges. And so we are looking for a female artist. 

Tim Abrahams: I’m interested about your love of color and how it applies in your work and the way you use it to shift perception. For example, the hospital, the way in which you use the blue and the green. 

Paul Robbrecht: They are my favorite colors, pale green and pale blue. Because it’s the sky and water. It’s very simple. Sky, water, landscape but sometimes we want… with the red here… it’s not that important here in this building but the red is still something sanguine, which is in the paintings of Rubens. Immediately you remark on the red in his paintings. And it’s a little homage. The backs of the shelves and things like that. It’s a little homage to him. But it couldn’t be blue here. We used also colors, for instance, we did the archives building of the city of Bordeaux. There we also reflected on color. 

Most of the architects like to talk about sculpture and buildings, but it’s a long story between color and building and painting and building because the origin of painting is the landscape. It’s looking to the landscape. And I think making a building is more or less making… interiorizing a landscape. And so I find something in this ethic which is you take also the landscape and the painting. Of course, there are portraits and many other things, but the origin of painting is the landscape. And of course buildings like here have to do with the landscape. But also to interiorize the landscape is something that is close or related. And that’s why I like it so much. 

I really like sculpture also. 

Tim Abrahams: But that’s very interesting because that’s placing you within the work of the artists that you talk about. It’s not collapsing, it’s bringing the exterior and the interior together, which characterizes that period in art, I think, where the outside and the inside suddenly become something. Some even go through each other or there’s a kind of extra dimension that’s created. 

Paul Robbrecht: Of course, I was so lucky to meet, for instance, somebody like Gerhard Richter. 

Tim Abrahams: Can I just ask you about one of the things that. In the interview with that Niall Hobhouse published and you talk about your drawing habits. You start early. 

Paul Robbrecht: I start the day very early. There are two reasons. I need very little sleep, five hours and the other reason is I have a group of 40 people sitting there… because I live where they are coming and working and I have to be before them. I make drawings and I put them on their tables and I’m there and they see that they have to work, they have to draw it on the computer and so on. That’s the reason. But I like drawing, that’s something I still do. Also when I’m travelling I’m drawing a lot and I’m an early morning person. After five o’clock, I’m less than zero.  That’s true. After, I”m nothing anymore. 

I cannot say. We are lucky that you are here before because after 5 o’clock… I am a morning person, always have been that. Also when I am travelling I am very early. For instance, when travelling to Egypt it is very hot in the day. But when you are early the sun is low and you have these long beautiful shadows and it’s strong and the sun gives a specific color. We call this cerulean blue. It’s morning color. And you will not see me make one good drawing after 5:00pm. It doesn’t work. 

Tim Abrahams: You mentioned that you also have a weekly schedule and that you take the computer drawings. 

Paul Robbrecht: Yeah at the end of the week and then I correct. I can draw on the computer but I don’t do it so much. But I draw by hand. And even with the T and a triangle I love to do that. This manipulation of these very old fashioned instruments. I’m not comparing myself with Frank Lloyd Wright, but his mother gave him this box of blocks when she was introducing the Froebel Education in United States. Mr. Froebel said children have to play with abstract things and the box of blocks is an invention of Dr. Froebel. And Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the first child his mother taught with this block and he said, “it stayed in my fingers all my life.” 

It’s something like that with me with drawing. Drawing is also thinking in a way mostly thinking about buildings horizontal in my bed. Then I’m mostly thinking I don’t have to draw. And I think about them when I’m awake early in the morning and then I can think about, I have to do it like this. Mornings is so important for me. This summer in Saint Emillion we built a wine house there. But I have to think about another one. But also being in this landscape of all these rhythmic grapes over the hills is a geometrical plan of repetition. And walking there in the morning is wonderful. It’s so inspiring, 

Tim Abrahams: This building. We’ve just got onto this building just as the client turns up. 

Paul Robbrecht: Of course it started with the competition. 

Bert Watteeuw: Do you mind if I join? 

Paul Robbrecht: No it’s fine. Hello. And I said I have to do this competition. Rubens was already in my youth, somebody. I did copies of Rubens in my drawings. I didn’t keep anything but he made already a very big impression on me when I was a child and then it took me a long time before the first time I visited the house of Rubens. I was already 45 years old. I haven’t been there. But when I entered this court and arcade, I was very impressed. Doing here something in this site, I really wanted to do that. And then there was a competition and the idea came quite soon. You have this world of Rubens and the perspective line to his because the arcades and the pavilion and the garden is really Rubens who designed that. So it’s like his universe. That is like his universe. These were his friends, the archers, I think. How do you call it? 

Tim Abrahams: They were archers. We were talking about this. Is it guns? 

Bert Watteeuw: Its guns. 

Paul Robbrecht: I thought they were archers. 

Bert Watteeuw: No guns actually. 

Paul Robbrecht: But they shoot in the garden? But I didn’t know that. I thought it were archers. Ah, that’s new. I didn’t know that. Did they have this already? But these were his friends, his mother lived there. And also he came back from Italy and he had of course this unbelievable experience from Italy. He made his own world with these two places: the Flemish house and the Italian house, his studio. And then to do something in this place, because we didn’t have to do this building, it was our own choice. But that’s out of this perspective line. It’s looking to this world of Rubens. And another leading thing was that we learned has built his house here. It was on the edge between the city and the landscape but in this part there were old houses where he put his books. And that was also “ah we make a huge book shelf out of this.” So there are these shelves of books there. Shelves of books there like that and that’s the extremely basic typology of the building. Very simple. Two shelves of books and that makes a building also. 

Tim Abrahams: You’re looking onto this universe. 

Paul Robbrecht: Yeah, this universe that he created from himself. The garden was very important for him. Fruits and things were very important for him. And later on he went to live in another place but he always gave comments how the fruits had to be taken care of and then disposition and looking. And then the facades, which are an important part also. Most modern architect has to forget about facades but this one is very important. Inspired by Ruben’s drawings of what are called drawings, 

Bert Watteeuw: Anatomical.

Paul Robbrecht. The veins, things. And that was a kind of inspiration to make a building with a superposition of columns. But also for us it’s source of a body, skeleton as well. The drawings are breathtaking. His anatomical drawings and we know that they did them himself. 

Tim Abrahams: We were talking earlier about its unselfconsciously modern. It’s not trying to be contextual. 

Paul Robbrecht: It’s modern, but there is a classic tendency in it. Muscular columns also if you’re in the streets, you see these columns in a short perspective. That’s something I got from Palladio, I know everything about Palladio. I can go to a quiz and I will win. It happened to me that I learned to know Palladio through Peter and Alison Smithson because they wrote a text. They were very inspired by a book in the Age of Humanism. And they talk about this and their first school, the Hunstanton School, is symmetrical. A symmetrical building in modern times, it was not done. 

Tim Abrahams: You learned about Palladio through them. 

Paul Robbrecht: Yeah, Palladio and I studied the palaces of Palladio in Vicenza and I’m sure because the streets are narrow, that he was fascinated by this rhythm of columns. And it’s hard to see a building like that because the streets are too narrow. And this was also inspiring, if you have the facade of this building at the end of the perspective in this street is the police tower of Rennat Braem. 

It’s crazy because it’s two kilometers away, I think. But you see it at the end of the perspective. Then the whole building is like also a gate, if you look from the streets. A gate towards this world of Rubens; this universe of Rubens. Go in and discover. 

Bert Watteeuw: One of the details I like is that the colonnade is complete on that side and then it’s pushed back. 

Paul Robbrecht: We did it to see the whole landscape. 

Tim Abrahams: But it makes the concrete feel plastic rather than heavy. 

Paul Robbrecht: This is the light facade. 

Tim Abrahams: What’s above? Is it a library? 

Paul Robbrecht: Mortgage library and then at the end, the working spaces of the director and his staff, they are the top level, of course. 

Bert Watteeuw: I mean, what was essential to us is that your concept was very clear and adding something in a humble way and really choosing for this lateral position that gave us a lot of trust that you want to respect the heritage values. And then the idea of returning our library to the site where Rubens once held his library, that it’s a no brainer and that the building was conceived not as the destination as such, but as a gateway containing all these things. But still being so confident as to be able to say this is just a gateway onto Rubens world. It made for a very appealing proof of concept, really. Just very much tailored to the needs we had. 

Paul Robbrecht: And I designed something I don’t know if it has a future. A calligraphy in steel here, but I don’t know if it’s ever going to happen. 

Tim Abrahams: It’s a screen. 

Paul Robbrecht: A screen. In the time of Rubens, there was this, what they call in Dutch, schoneschreiber, beauty writers with all these things. But the other thing is I could tell stories in this thing. I enjoyed it, to do it very much about the women. There were two women in the life of Rubens, Isabella Brandt and Helene Furman, his children, the city of Antwerp and it’s all in a kind of mixture. I don’t know if they ever will do it. 

Bert Watteeuw: The question arises from putting up a new thing in a site like this. Especially our donor community, which is overwhelmingly conservative, we were very much afraid that this new building was going to feel too imposing and present. And so they were looking at it. 

Paul Robbrecht: I did this screen but I will talk about it later. 

Tim Abrahams: But the reason why you were referring to the two women in his life, because that story informs two women. 

Paul Robbrecht: There’s also something beautiful to think about because he was un uomo universale but he was also a houseman who took care of his children and his wives. He loved his wives very much. He was a serious man. But when his first wife died, when he’s talking about the loss it was so touching. 

Tim Abrahams: We wouldn’t know about him if it wasn’t for his work, which was exceptional, which was defined in the era, but also the story of him as an individual, as a man. It’s fascinating and who has had such an impact on their city? There’s not many people, not many painters. 

Paul Robbrecht: That have enormous impact. 

Bert Watteeuw: The only comparison is Shakespeare to me. He works with the complete breadth of human emotions, like the most vicious and vile aspects of being human, like the will for power and lust and jealousy and warfare. And he’s also able to capture our most noble sentiments, like the love of a child or of your wife, or of the longing for peace and all that is in the work. To me, just like Shakespeare, he is like a lens on the society of his age. Everything is in science but literature, fashion, morality. 

Paul Robbrecht: Only music. No music. 

Bert Watteeuw: Just a meeting with Monteverdi in the early Italian paintings, it has been suggested that it could have been a backdrop to a Monteverdi opera. 

Tim Abrahams: Gentlemen, you’ve been very generous with your time. I have taken of it greedily and I am very grateful to you. But I’ve been told by Paul that he, after 5 o’clock, pfft.  

Bert Watteeuw: gracious. 

Tim Abrahams: I forgot to mention that Bert Watteeuw, the director of the Rubens house, joined us at the end and that he surprised Paul with the revelation that it wasn’t actually archers who had been the neighbors to Reuben’s house, but actually riflemen. So that places it historically, always a surprise technology. As I have said before, super urbanism is a movable feast. We’re talking to people where they are, doors open, who walks through, we talk to them. I hope the references to the artists were not lost on you too much. Christina Iglesias is the artist who worked on the Fountain with Paul, her father being the chemist.

The brilliant Thomas Schutte currently has a retrospective at the moment in New York. 

What an incredible sculptor he is. Gerhard Richter, a close friend, guiding light to Paul. But then there’s all the curators and musicians. This is Paul Robrecht’s world, just like the new building is a gatehouse to Paul Ruben’s world. We have hopefully given you a look on to Paul Robrecht, architect: grounded, literate, passionate, able to unite the popular, the Avant – garde, the historical, through these faculties. The Flemish say they were born with a brick in their stomach. To convey how integral the idea is building to them the fact that Paul’s father was a baker. Something profound about this intimate physical relationship that his architecture has.

Thank you so much to the people of the city of Antwerp for making me feel so welcome. 

Thanks so much Paul Robbrecht, specialist subject Palladio. 

More soon. 

 

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