The act of building

BC is BC architects, studies - www.bc-as.org - and materials - www.bcmaterials.org. BC stands for Brussels Cooperation and points to how BC grew - embedded within place and people. With 3 legal entities, BC starts from architecture, over research and expertise and experiment, towards material production and contracting. As a hybrid office, BC is maneuvering the boundaries of all these disciplines in a doer’s manner.

Ken De Cooman is co-founder of BC architects & studies, and BC materials. With these companies, BC starts from architecture, over research and expertise and experiment, towards material production and contracting. The use of local, bio-based, circular materials in open construction processes had led to innovative buildings. BC was participating in the Biennale d'Architettura di Venezia 2018, in the Oslo Triennale for Architecture in 2014, and in the International Architecture Biennale of Rotterdam 2018, and is laureate of the BeCircular and Vlaanderen Circulair grant programmes.

The act of building is at once action and narrative. It is the complex effort of a timely community to erect its infrastructure, running across classes and skill sets, across materials and technologies. It generates an impact and expresses values and ideas in a wide network around a specific project. The act of building contains the power of change through action, story and result.
At BC architects & studies, we believe that, in order to have a positive impact on society through the discipline of architecture, we not only need to focus on the design of its infrastructure but will also want to redesign the process of achieving the infrastructure. We’ll need to experiment within the act of building and with the role each member of a community plays in it. For us, a narrow definition of ‘the professional architect’ no longer suffices; we venture into material production, contracting, story telling, knowledge transfer, community organization – and all of this influences our design approach.