In 2019 the team formed by archipelago and Atelier d’Architecture Daniel Delgoffe (AAdd) won the competition for the redevelopment of the secure psychiatric hospital (HPS) Les Marronniers in Tournai. While waiting for the project to rise from the ground, the artist Françoise Schein was appointed in the context of the decree for the integration of works of art. The purpose of this decree is not only to support artists by awarding them public commissions and by promoting their works, but also to improve the quality of the urban space and to take art out of museums and to familiarize the general public with artistic creations. Françoise Schein has now laid the first stones of a healing environment by going to meet the patients and listening to their stories.

The secure psychiatric hospital Les Marronniers is a place of committal. In Belgium, the justice system exempts individuals who have committed a crime or an offence from any criminal conviction if they were recognized as suffering from a mental disorder at the time of the crime. However, the medical treatment of the person is compulsory; the individual is then ‘treated under constraint’ in an HPS, like here in Tournai. Committal oscillates between a logic of care and a logic of ‘sentence to be served’ for an individual presenting a danger to society or, on the contrary, to protect that person. Located on the edge of the city, beyond the old fortifications that are now boulevards, the site is the geographical illustration of its programmatic paradox; between care and surveillance, Les Marronniers borders a hospital while overlooking a prison. Its dominant position on a plateau offers unobstructed views of the agricultural landscape on one side and the city on the other, making visitors forget for a moment the double enclosure that marks the physical border between the institution and the rest of the city.