Whether we’re talking about public buildings, offices, schools or courthouses, we’re gradually coming to accept as normal the fact that public authorities demand a certain standard of architectural quality. Yet these same authorities also manage numerous utilitarian buildings, such as the salt storage sheds used by gritting services. When it comes to this sort of building, nobody seems to think that quality matters. But the opposite is true! This is demonstrated by the salt shed designed by RGPA (Goffart Polomé Architectes Reservoir A) and Ney Wow in Houffalize. It is, unfortunately, disheartening to see that the public authorities have gone out of their way to ruin the designers’ work once they had turned their backs. 

A salt shed is used to store salt for gritting the roads in winter. For this purpose, a space of sufficient height, enclosed on three sides and topped with a roof, is sufficient. The gritting vehicles come and go through the fourth, open side. However, the required height must be provided – in this case, around 8 metres. The open side of the building must also be fitted with a canopy to prevent rain from blowing in and soaking the stock. That is all that is needed, nothing more. For an architect, this does not seem like a project likely to earn much acclaim. For the public tender for design and build launched by the Walloon Region for a hangar of this kind in Fontenaille, in the municipality of Houffalize, only two candidates came forward. One of them was a consortium comprising RGPA (Reservoir A and Goffart Polomé Architects), Ney Wow (the timber structures department of the engineering firm Laurent Ney) and TS Construct.