Book presentation Ad Hoc Baroque at CIVA, Brussels

On January 17, 2024, 7 p.m., CIVA will host the presentation of the English-language version of the book on Marcel Raymaekers: Ad Hoc Baroque. Marcel Raymaeker's Salvage Architecture in Postwar Belgium. Rotor, Brussels, Dec. 2023.

Ad Hoc Baroque is the crystallization of a two-year research project by a team from Rotor and Ghent University into Marcel Raymaekers' postwar reuse architecture. Through his company Queen of the South, founded in 1972, Raymaekers bought and restored thousands of tons of antique building parts. He reused them to his own design in more than 120 buildings. His exceptional practice has long been viewed suspiciously by the architectural world. The book aims to change that and finally give his work the attention it deserves.

The book launch will be in the presence of all the authors, including London-based art and architecture critic and Rotor contributor James Westcott, photographer Anja Hellebaut.

The book is available in Brussels at CIVA bookshop, Rotor DC, Waterstones, Tropismes, Filigranes, Passa-Porta, Peinture Fraîche. In Ghent and Antwerp at Copyright bookshop.

Details about the January 17 event can be found on the website of the CIVA.    

An exhibition on the project is ongoing at the Vai until March 17, 2024. More info on the website of the Flemish Architecture Institute.

More info on the research can be found here: Post-war reuse in Belgium: the oeuvre of Marcel Raymaekers.