Two years after the architectural competition to transform the former Citroën garage into a new cultural hub for the city of Brussels, the competition’s winner, architect Stephen Bates, takes stock. How has the KANAL Centre Pompidou competition project evolved, how is the conversion progressing, and what might a museum look like in a post-Covid-19 era?

Since their origins as private collections open to the public, museums have been constantly re-imagined and re-made. The trajectory of this rethinking has led to the widening of their mission to reflect social and cultural values and to the redefinition of their role, as symbols of the cities they represent on the international stage, as catalysts for investment and as facilitators of urban regeneration. Today, they play a major role in the global art world offering an ever-broader platform for art practice and huge potential to reach beyond their site boundaries and traditional audiences. The most recent challenge has been the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Closed to the public, the fragility of museums is exposed. It is against this backdrop of questioning and re-evaluation that we are developing the KANAL-Centre Pompidou project in Brussels, transforming what once was the largest car factory in Europe.