Extensions on the present

PROJECT An ambitious project integrating industrial heritage and contemporary architecture 24 25 A site erected in the 19th century for the excavation of the famous Belgian bluestone is now dedicated to an ambitious project integrating industrial heritage and contemporary architecture. The project for conversion and restoration of the Grande Carrière Wincqz in Soignies, Belgium, is signed by architects Isabelle Toussaint and Matteo Robiglio's studio TRA, fully respecting the archaeological and industrial remains. Active until the 1920s, the site was subsequently used as a logistics platform and warehouse, only to be decommissioned in the 1970s. Classified in 1991 as a national industrial heritage site, in full continuity with its past, it was reborn as a vocational and educational training centre for the Belgian stone industry. The design strategy is based on the binary choice of making the interaction between heritage and new realities - structural, technical, mechanical - clearly legible in order to preserve the traces in bluestone of the evolution of technologies and production organisation. The contemporary project leans on the pre-existing building, cladding it in galvanised raw steel, often re-appropriating the materials and colours of the façade in a way that echoes its older counterpart in the new. The construction of the new wing deepens the dialogue between exterior and interior space, and adds as contemporary extensions to the historic building to guide the cultural dialogue between generations, as a collective process of creating place and meaning.