In the autumn, Éditions Mardaga and the Architecture Unit of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation completed their collection of Guides to Modern and Contemporary Architecture with a volume focusing on Tournai and Picard Wallonia (A+269). This winter, the journey continues to the Charleroi metropolitan area.

Launched in 2011, the research project leading to the publication of the Guide to Modern and Contemporary Architecture in the Charleroi Metropolitan Area was, as is customary, entrusted to a university. As architecture is not taught in Charleroi, the scientific direction of the volume was entrusted not to a local school but to the La Cambre Horta Faculty of Architecture at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Supported by the photographer Marie-Noëlle Dailly, who is a co-author of the book, the editorial committee led by Judith Le Maire and Iwan Strauven was committed, throughout the guide’s development, to ‘ensuring that no architecture enthusiast could ever say: ‘We drove past Charleroi on the motorway, but we decided to carry on, as there’s nothing to see there’.”