Roger Raveel Museum

Roger Raveel’s independent relationship with his village is echoed by that between the architecture of the museum and the collection of the Raveel Foundation. The new museum building transforms the parcel – the shape and dimensions of which define the structure of the entire village – into a single volume. Three strips arise from adjacent, elongated plots: the private and intimate museum garden, the museum volume, and the public park that links two parallel streets. The linkage of subsidiary volumes of varying height forms a broken and multiform volume that alludes to the row of gables in a traditional village street. This succession of rooms, with their different dimensions, proportions, lighting, and relationships between interior and exterior ensure a constantly shifting atmosphere. The smaller rooms of the presbytery further add to the arsenal of display space. This produces a circuit like a marvelous walk around a covered garden path. The route, from which visitors can constantly deviate, is continued outside, straight through the village’s back gardens, vegetable plots, courtyards, orchards, greenhouses, and birdhouses.

It is a grand gesture, a necessary break, without being brusque or dismissive. It is an object that is familiar yet strange. It brings renewal without impacting too violently and shows the village that it is alive and that it embodies possibilities for our own time.

Geert Bekaert