Park Books International New Titles Autumn 2022

Institutions such as the state, church, army, judiciary, bank, university—or
even marriage—organize our social relations. As
inherently social structures, they regulate societies according
to various practices, rites, and rules of conduct, and guide our
actions by delimiting what is possible and thinkable. An institution’s
individual scope depends on society’s understanding of it.
They are in perpetual mutation and thus form complex entities.
Architecture plays an essential role in the establishment, identification,
and perpetuation of this social structure as it formalizes
value systems in space and represents ideologies in permanent
physical structures.
Institutions & the City investigates how architecture establishes
and reveals the way an institution functions through different
strategies, taking the Tracé Royal (the royal route) in Brussels
as an example of an urban figure. This succession of emblematic
streets, extending from the Palace of Justice in the heart
of the city to the Church of Our Lady and the Royal Domain in
Laeken, is home to several of Belgium’s national political, legal,
religious, financial, and cultural institutions. The book explores
the strategies applied over time by the various institutions to
leave a lasting inscription on the country’s social order, revealing
similar spatial responses and surprisingly prevalent mutation
processes. And it highlights the importance of architecture in
inventing new relationships with institutional spaces in order to
improve the way we live together in a time when social, political,
and cultural reference points are being blurred.
What role does architecture play in
establishing and maintaining public
institutions that shape both society
as a whole and our individual lives?
Gérald Ledent is a cofounder of Brussels-based
architecture firm KIS studio and professor at
the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering,
and Urban Planning (LOCI), Catholic
University of Louvain (UCLouvain).
Cécile Vandernoot is an architect and architectural
critic. She is pursuing her PhD and teaches
at the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering,
and Urban Planning (LOCI), Catholic
University of Louvain (UCLouvain).
ISBN 978-3-03860-293-4