‘No space, architecturally, is a space unless it has natural light.’ This is how Louis Kahn (1901-1974) emphasized the importance of daylight in architecture. Yet natural light is often shunned in museum spaces, even though art in the archetypal artist studio is conceived in daylight. For Robbrecht and Daem architects, in collaboration with Olivier Salens architects, this tension formed the starting point for an innovative museum concept in which natural lighting shows art as it was intended.

In the heart of Bruges’s old town, the Brusk art gallery, which is opening its doors in May, forms the centrepiece of a new public park around the Groeninge Museum. Two entities stand out like hills in the silhouette. These are the monumental exhibition halls that have been raised to the first floor. A double-height public passageway, the Scala Grande, separates the two parallel exhibition circuits, which are connected by three bridges across the central passageway. The ground floor serves as a public engine for urban dynamism. With an auditorium, bar and museum shop along the inner street, Brusk fits into the fine-scale old-town fabric and creates opportunities for chance encounters through transparency and accessibility.