Exhibition on Léon Stynen at London Festival of Architecture 2019

With the exhibition Brutalism on a Human Scale. Post-war Architecture by Léon Stynen in the iconic Silver Building in London, the Flanders Architecture Institute presents an insight into the post-war oeuvre of the Belgian architect Léon Stynen. His brutalist designs, in which the human scale plays a crucial role, take centre stage.

Few Belgian architects have left behind such a striking and diverse oeuvre as Léon Stynen (1899-1990). For more than fifty years, from the early 1920s to the end of his professional career in 1977, he was active as an architect, urbanist and designer. He worked all over Belgium, but with a great love for his native city of Antwerp. Several of the most important modernist buildings in Belgium bear his name. The most famous buildings by Stynen are deSingel, the BP-building and the casinos of Ostend and Knokke.

The curators of the exhibition Brutalism on a Human Scale. Post-war Architecture by Léon Stynen at the London Festival of Architecture reveal the richness of post-war architecture and highlight the importance of the modernist heritage for today’s urban development. The architectural firm Eagles of Architecture worked with a group of students to build a series of wooden constructions based on Léon Stynen’s iconic facades. These wooden frontages are absolute eye-catchers in the open space of the Silver Building.

Photographer/artist Filip Dujardin shows in the Silver Building Stynen’s buildings in their contemporary context. In the ‘boiler rooms’, the Flanders Architecture Institute will be showing a unique selection of archival documents from the fascinating Stynen collection, all of which bear witness to his superlative oeuvre.

London Festival of Architecture 2019 and The Silver Building