From a modernist office tower of the Glorious Thirty in a state of transient decay, Open space reverses the "classic" ruin/nature representation that can be observed in Flemish landscape painting from the 17th century. Unlike the "composed veduta" by painters from the north where you can see ruins of ancient Rome surrounded by an Arcadian landscape where nature and culture unite harmoniously, here the landscape no longer welcomes ruin, it makes part of the ruin. The mountainous landscape used, refers to the aesthetics of the sublime, giving a tone of confrontation between man and the forces of nature.

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This fiction imagines the Convent of the Tourette, abandoned and entirely covered with vegetation, giving birth to a new unique work of art, where nature and culture come together in a harmonious whole. 

 

The Tourette convent built by Le Corbusier between 1956 and 1960 was commissioned by the Dominican friars.  The vocation of the Dominicans being to preach, their convents are often located in big cities, contrary to other orders which have for vow to isolate themselves. Eager to get closer to Lyon, the brothers chose a site about 30 km northwest of the metropolis, betting that the latter, constantly growing, would one day join the convent . . . it never happened.

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The chapel Notre-Dame-du-Haut, built by Le Corbusier between 1951 and 1955 on the hill Bourlémont, Ronchamp (France), was commissioned by the Dominican friars. 

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At the time, the chapel’s architecture surprised a great number of architects and architectural critics who saw Le Corbusier as one of the fathers of functionalism who swore allegiance only to the right angle. Its round shapes inspired by the Vosges hills (audio visual) and the animal world (crab shell for the roof), appeared to them to be....

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This fiction imagines The Notre-Dame-du-Haut chapel built by Le Corbusier between 1951 and 1955 on the Bourlémont hill in Ronchamp, entirely covered with three paintings painted by Le Corbusier on the walls of Villa E-1027 located in Roquebrune Cap Martin.

 

Some Anglo-Saxon critics qualify the pictorial intrusion at E-1027 as symbolic "rape". The frescoes are in oppositon to the concept of purist architecture by Eileen Gray based on pure volumes and solid colors, and the ideas of Le Corbusier himself, for whom architecture could not be "decorated", seeing in the artist an enemy of architecture, destroying and ....

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Delory offers, for CarréRotondes, a very personal rearrangement of the urban characteristics of the buildings photographed in Luxembourg, where he uncovers the angles, proportions and perspectives.

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This commission to the photographer was placed within the framework of la Triennale Jeune Création 2013 "You I Landscape" Carré Rotondes. The theme of the landscape, and more specifically Luxembourg’s landscape, came about because of the extraordinary arrival of Xavier Delory, during the time of la Triennale jeune creation 2013. With Luxembourg, the Belgian artist presents a reflection on the bourgeoisification of the popular neighbourhoods, whereby the social and economic profile of the inhabitants is transformed for the exclusive benefit of a higher social stratum.

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It's a refers to the changes that result when wealthier people ("gentry") acquire or rent property in low income and working class communities. Often old industrial buildings are converted to luxurious residences. 

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Façade libre or ‘facadism’, planning practice which consists in conserving only the front of old buildings while demolishing the rest in order to construct a modern interior. This whithout any link to the original architecture. 

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Our countryside (in Belgium as well as in a many other western countries) is monopolized by one specific type of houses called ‘clé sur porte’ (turnkey) (def: Urban prefab cluster of similar forms implanted in the landscape without any effort of integration).

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The cycle ‘Habitat’ throws a look at this type of ‘architecture’. The concept of protection and stereotyped block is pushed to its extremes (similar to our withdrawal into on ourselves and our formated lifes).

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Archiving of walls marking out the surroundings of the Brussels region.

The wall directs and confines our visual and spatial experience. It marks and determnates individual and public properties.

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With, "After Sol LeWitt", Xavier Delory offers a unique interpretation of the work of Sol LeWitt, the founder of conceptual art. This Urbex style fiction depicts an abandoned house whose walls reveal the remains of Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings.

 

Xavier Delory brings the conceptual work of the American artist face to face with the romantic expressionism of abandoned places. The erasure of the mural caused by the architecture’s dilapidation evokes the transient side of Lewitt's art. And thus the photographer continues to explore the dialogue between architecture, ruin and painting.

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The church is part of a commission of several buildings made to Le Corbusier, by Eugène Claudius-Petit, mayor of the town of Firminy. The project, baptised 'Firminy-Vert', forms the largest architectural complex built by Le Corbusier in Europe.

 

This site includes: a cultural centre, a stadium, a swimming pool, a housing unit and the Church of Saint-Pierre. Construction of the church began in 1970, five years after the death of the architect. Due to budgetary and political problems, the project experienced many disruptions.

 

By 1978, only the substructure was built and for 30 years this base, nicknamed the 'blockhouse', remained cut off from the rest of the building.

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L'unité de Briey, built between 1959 and 1960, is the fourth of five of the Le Corbusier housing units. The unit began experiencing difficulties rather quickly. An economic crisis plunged the inhabitants into serious financial problems. The building gradually became empty and was on the point of being dynamited in 1984. In 1989, under the sponsorship of international architects and artists, the organisation 'First Street' contributed greatly to the rescue of the l'unité de Briey. A renovation was carried out in 2007 and will be completed in 2010. 

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Villa Savoye, the best known work of the French-Swiss architect, Le Corbusier, was built between 1928 and 1931. Villa purists say that this icon of the Modern Movement completes the cycle of white houses.

 

With this 'Living Machine', Le Corbusier sets in place the 5 five-points of new architecture (the theory provides the basis of the Modern Movement): pilings, roof terrace, open plan, window bar and open facade. 

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In addition to these 5 points, the first modernist architects favour expensive ornaments and a minimization of decor.

 

Nowadays, the Villa Savoye has become .....

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This fiction imagine a self-constructed towers built from typical Brussels houses. It's a reflection about the urban block, the framework of the historic city, its break-up and its replacement by residential and office towers.

 

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Critique of a functionnal and profitable architecture, symbol of vanity and fragility.

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Have our shoppingmalls become our new temples? Has the religious cult been replaced by the cult of consumption? Do these new places of communion and their catchy slogans supplant our ancient monuments and their divine words?

 

This fiction is not very remote from the frequent use of the religious symbol by the commercial. Our commercial culture sucks the lifeblood from our collective memory, emptying it of all it’s meaning, keeping only it’s shell. Does this all prove that our society has cut itself off from its history? 

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Everything is made to entertain him and to make him forget himself and his loss of references. These two projecting features of modernity seem to lead us to our loss. The modern man seems to define himself by the urban (recently the number of people living in urban areas has exceeded the number of people living in rural areas) and the festive model. 

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This cement industry, situated in the surroundings of Brussels, has been the triggering factor of the project Construct.

It produces the basic material that constitutes the various artifacts of our built environment. 

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