Myth against history: the Concert Hall in Bruges by Robbrecht and Daem Architects

The Concert Hall in Bruges by Robbrecht and Daem Architects was built as the result of a closed competition held in 1998. The competition and its outcome generated a lively public debate that not only indicated how closely views on the city's identity were bound up with appreciations of its architecture (both from the present and the past), but also to what extent architecture embodied the problematic presence of the past in the contemporary city of Bruges. Robbrecht and Daem developed their project from themes proper to their oeuvre rather than to this specific debate. This approach not only allowed the firm to formulate a thoughtful response to the site of the Concert Hall. It also established the Concert Hall as a building that bypasses the conflation of architecture and identity, or the seemingly inevitable question of architecture's authenticity in an historical and historicised environment, to create a place that offers an opportunity to experience fully and to examine the city in the present.