Parking Cathédrale

Our country is unfortunately infamous in the world of urban planning for the term “Brusselization”. This pejorative is used to describe neighborhoods in cities around the world where urban development appears “haphazard” and historical heritage has been destroyed to make way for soulless buildings. In general, a neighborhood that has undergone Brusselization ends up as a “failed” neighborhood, which is subject to a series of improvement attempts spanning several decades.

Liège serves as an example, with the disappearance of one of the most impressive cathedrals in Europe, scattered skyscrapers placed at random, and semi-highway intersections right in the city center. However, it is precisely this eclectic architectural heritage that gives the city its charm. It makes us fall in love with its streets, where each building tells the story of different eras at a glance.

Parking Cathédrale by Elias Cafmeyer questions this patchwork architecture by synthesizing several urban functions into a single building. The installation appears to be a parking entrance, placed within the portal of a historic building (possibly incorporating stones from the old Saint-Lambert Cathedral), which itself is integrated into a Brutalist structure from the second half of the 20^th century. The installation invites viewers to pay closer attention to the richness of our public spaces and to appreciate the hidden beauty within our urban landscape, so that we may proudly reclaim the term Brusselization as a mark of quality.