The seven awards to be handed to the winners of the Brussels Architecture Prize 2023 were created by artist Conrad Willems. Each of the awards consists of a handmade, precious walnut wood box containing eleven building blocks made from leftover pieces of different types of natural stone. As in a construction set for children, they fit neatly inside the box.

The building blocks are a common thread in Willems’ oeuvre. Central concepts in his work are geometry, repetition and modularity. Not coincidentally, these are also essential characteristics of children’s boxes of blocks. They stimulate the imagination and challenge them to create new structures from the existing set.