Imagine this happening to you as an architect: you win a tender for the redevelopment of a station square and bus station. The clients: the city and De Lijn. Due to the urgency of the matter, you rush to submit a planning application and finalise the tender in one go. Just as you’re waiting for the tenders, you receive word that an advisory body set up by the city has rejected the planning application. Shortly afterwards, it also transpires that De Lijn is less than enthusiastic about your design. This is what happened to URA Yves Malysse & Kiki Verbeeckin in Bruges. But the practice did not give up.

Stations on the fringes of historic sites are always in a tricky position. They provide a more sustainable link between modern network society and the historic site than, say, a motorway. Historically, however, they were the first sign that the historic city was losing out to that network. The railway turned the old town into a theme park frozen in time.