The Vector and Charleroi

You cannot speak about the Vector without speaking about the city of Charleroi. You cannot speak about the city of Charleroi without speaking about the Vector. This evolving city is the theatre of architectural and urbanism projects which have the ambition to radically change its way of working, its image and also its nature.If some of those projects were polished in a detached way, like separated points in a city, other projects have the ambition to make connections. Connections which bind to the others become lines which are spread like a dynamic network. The giant urban painting which recovers the entirety of the facades of the Vector, from the street of Marcinelle to the street Navez, is not just a decorative gesture but a structured reflexion on a building of cultural use in relation with the neighborhood and its inhabitants. It is the atmosphere of the street which has changed. With its old frontage, everyone knew the Vector, with this urbain painting; everyone knows now where the Vector is. It became an urban reference of the city center with which the neighbors interact. Object of curiosity for some of them, cultural place of living for the others, the Vector, with this new facade, translate its intellective cultural program but also reflects recreation and escape. It is in the universe of the naval war and the art of camouflage that we draw one of the major reference of the frontage. During the First World War, English and American armies invented a technique of camouflage for their boats called “Dazzle Painting”. The fresco applied to the facades of the Vector is impregnated with the geometrical and graphic principles of “Dazzle Painting” not in order to hide the building but to permanently modify its form. Following the example of these boats, we opt, in an artistic way, to intervene on all the surfaces of the facades: masonry, stone, aluminum, PVC, wood and even glass were not forgotten. It was essential that the artistic intervention recovers large surfaces but also down to the smallest detail. To work, the project has to be radical.