Koloniënstraat Offices
The office building on the corner of Koloniënstraat and Kanselarijstraat in Brussels is located at the heart of political and financial power. It looks like a single building, but is actually a regrouping of three separate buildings that were given a shared neoclassical facade in the early 1900s.
The building was hollowed out. Only the contours – the street facades, those of the patio, and the stairwells – remained intact. A new structure was erected behind the meticulously renovated facade. One patio was converted into a covered atrium, the other into an outdoor patio. The atrium is the building’s axis, the heart around which the flexible office space is structured.
Three new floors above the cornice replace an addition from the mid 20th century. Each floor steps back progressively from the building line. They have a more subdued, contemporary facade. Its rhythm alludes to and emphasizes the building’s neoclassical facade, so characteristic of the Brussels cityscape.
