Wandering Again

 

The Jules Fonteyne plaque.

 Obviously, walking each morning has meant that I, a most unobservant person, have noticed a number of things, features, plaques or just plain sights, around Brugge unnoticed previously. The back courtyard on a little hotel, insistently light-filled in these less than light-filled days! This morning along the Coupure, a little plaque on a house to Jules Fonteyne, 1876-1964, attesting to the fact that he had lived there. I must try to discover something more about Jules if he is worthy of a special plaque!

Modern, back extension to the
Grand Hotel Casselbergh.

Last week, three friends and I, the same three from previous weeks, all masked and distanced of course, went on a mini-architectural walk, led by the expertise of Leen! We looked at the very modern rear elevation of the Grand Hotel, Casselbergh on Hoogstraat, as seen from across the canal, from Steenhouwersdijk. The back extension is strangely pleasing, in modern style though set within a mediaeval landscape. The architects conceived of it as a bronze treasure chest, in the architectural shape of a box with a chamfered roof echoing the design of the Belfort which also used to hold the treasury of Brugge. The idea of the treasure chest is underlined by the bronze projecting window frames which represent the gems. Frankly, I had admired this splendid back view of the hotel many times knowing nothing of the architect’s intellectual design process which really helps me to understand the design concept which, in turn, helps to account for the harmony of the modern within the mediaeval panorama.

Roger Raveel swans in removal, 1971.

En route to the Rijksarchief, we passed the spot on the Groenerei associated with Roger Raveel, an artist with an interesting history! Born in 1921, he was eventually knighted by the King. His versatility was legendary; he practised as a painter and sculptor, potter and designer of flags and for the Triennale in 1971, he made four wooden swans and placed them in the Groenerei as a protest against the dirty state of the canals. The council removed them and returned them to the artist who promptly replaced them on the water. After this cycle was repeated several times, the canals, then in a particularly filthy state, were quietly cleaned. In his paintings, he often incorporated actual objects like mirrors and reputedly, once, a cage containing a living pigeon. One of the gifted eccentrics of Bruges, he died in 2013.

We progressed to the Rijksarchief on the Predikherenrei, again, a modern building [2012] of most harmonious design, often admired by me-as-casual-passerby! The principal structure is made from long, thin bricks called Wienerbergers [from Vienna] which give a strong layered effect meant to suggest crumpled paper, and the stones incorporated are a reference to the piles of documents within the building. There are no windows above but the ground floor is walled in glass both to let in light but chiefly to invite connection with the outside world. To the left of the facade can be seen a succession of slanting roofs meant to give an architectural connection to the neighbourhood.

And finally, to see the wooden man who had long perplexed me. Situated adjacent to the pedestrian bridge on the Kazernevest, in a glass and blue stone tank, lies the wooden figure of a recumbent man, face-down. At an unseen signal [from a ‘key’, a movement detector, in a tree nearby] the prone figure slowly rises to the top of the tank, remains briefly before descending to its former resting place, every fifteen minutes. The timing of this choreography corresponds exactly to the time taken to raise up from, and return the bridge to, its original position. The bridge itself is made of blue stone and oak, similar to the materials used to fashion the man and his tank. The blue stone is from a quarry in Henegouwen, a Walloon province. To further form a unity between oak articulated model and bridge, the figure has twenty flexible segments designed to echo the movement of the nearby water. Significantly, it was a choreographer, Ugo Dehaes, who designed this unusual and fascinating tribute, named Coupure, in 2002 when Brugge was European Capital of Culture.

Coupure descending .....