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THE SNAKE BUILDING
THE SNAKE BUILDING
Aarschot, Belgium
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Other Projects by C+S ARCHITECTS
THE SNAKE BUILDING
Aarschot, Belgium
C+S ARCHITECTS COMPLETES 'THE SNAKE BUILDING' WITHIN THE URBAN REGENERATION OF THE DE TORENS AREA IN THE CENTER OF AARSCHOT IN BELGIUM
C+S Architects has completed the Snake Building in Aarschot, Belgium, as part of the De Torens masterplan, transforming a former industrial site into a new mixed-use urban district. The project introduces a multifunctional complex that reinforces community identity through the design of public space. As Maria Alessandra Segantini explains: “Public space is the backbone of all our projects. In Aarschot, architectural design gives back to the community a larger public space, while drawing on contextual construction knowledge and skills to reinforce community identity.”
The Snake Building in Aarschot, Belgium, is part of a collaboration with a2o, a Hasselt-based architecture office, commissioned by the client to design the urban regeneration of the De Torens masterplan: a former industrial site in the center of Aarschot, developed with housing, commercial, and public spaces.
A series of collegial workshops in Hasselt initiated the design process and assigned the plots to each office. Our approach to architecture is shaped by the idea of Future Heritage, a process that develops an in-depth, historical and ecological research, where every gesture reinvents the traces of the past though materially sensitive interventions that evoke memories engaging the senses, enhance the identity of spaces and places and connect communities with the environment.
In a cultural context, such as Belgium, which still values craftsmanship, our design focuses on reinforcing community identity through urban design, architecture and construction details.
Notably, in the Middle Ages, Flemish cities were surrounded by common lands – shared private parcels used for firewood, grazing, and farming. In today’s Europe, where square footage per person shrinks every year, we like to think of the public realm – biodiverse, open, resilient – as our new common land. We began with that concept of common land: a space that makes community physical.
In European cities, the piazzas are mineral. From Porto to Prague, from Bath to Ghent or Florence, the public square is as a place of exchange, resilient in its materials yet porous to events. It’s where trade happened, protests were staged, games were played, and siestas taken. And this still happens today. The measure of European piazzas makes us feel at home across Europe and reflects the idea of a shared identity shaped by economic resources, the defence of democracy, and common policies: public space that is open, durable, flexible, adaptable, and recognizable. Like the campo in Venice- a city that we carry with us wherever we design, the piazza holds the collective memory of a people. It is the community 'living room'. It is an urban home.
In Aarschot, we were assigned the edge plots. The Snake Building sits at the entry to the development. It connects to the historic urban centre, extending Leuvenstraat—the backbone of the city—into the site.
We manipulate the plot to carve out public space, reworking the client’s brief. Where they saw a compact block, we proposed erosion. Reduction. Redefinition of the volume's height.
In plan, the Snake Building pulls back, creating room for the piazza and a tree to pierce the underground parking and for the view to reconnect to the Old Orleans on the hill as well as enhancing the pedestrian flows into the site.
In section, terraces are cut to recall the “roofline dance” of Flemish cities. What appeared as a brick-made monolith, is instead a volume carved by sky and life.
Architecture becomes a frame for human life, where deep loggias open to wooden frames, because where the building meets the human, the materiality softens. Brick gives way to timber. Solidity gives way to touch.
Rather than following a regular pattern, the facade openings are scattered. They become a statement of transformation and potential readaptation over time as the city evolves. From the inside, windows frame the surroundings in different ways and scales, capturing urban flows and the seasonal changes of the surrounding hills.
Details matter: the recessed joints, the seamless folds of brick- even extended to the interior of the loggias- and bay windows that wrap upward into the roofline. These gestures turn mass into meaning, shelter into story.
We worked with local masons. We respected their knowledge. We built in brick – not because it is trendy, but because it is real. Durable. Specific. The choice isn’t simply aesthetic; it’s an argument- a local insistence on memory and manual skill. In this context –Aarschot, with its storied facades and accumulated municipal identity- the use of traditional materials doesn’t just honour the past, it inhabits it, digs into it, makes a kind of continuity out of friction. The building’s curved, non-linear shape –less a gesture than a negotiation with its urban setting– owes its logic to these materials and the timeworn techniques used to work them.
But what reads, at first glance, as simplicity or reverence reveals itself on closer inspection to be anything but. The very elements that make the building feel familiar – brick, wood, the slow grammar of hand-laid joints – also make it meaningful. There’s no shortcut to the subtle fusion of wall and roof, no prefab solution for the bay window that pushes up through the eaves like a thought interrupting a sentence. These are challenges born of fidelity to place. They require not only an eye for form but the hands of people who know how a Flemish bond breathes in winter, how a recessed joint gathers shadow, how wood is rather a texture than a flat surface.
In this fidelity, in this quiet craftsmanship, the building begins to seem less like something designed and more like something uncovered – an object not placed in the city but drawn from it. The wood, introduced where the structure yields, doesn’t soften the form so much as acknowledge its fragility. It reminds us that what we build performs multiple roles: grounding itself in context and tradition, reinforcing community identity through construction and durability, while allowing inhabitation and transformation through facade design and materiality.
The building emerges as a sort of inhabited brick sculpture, while wooden windows, entrances, and terrace facades in timber boiserie (all 100% recyclable materials) bring warmth to the composition. The material tells a story – of hands, of place.
And where that story touches life, it turns to wood: soft and warm. Home.
Credits:
Client: Dyls
Lead Architects, and Design Guardianship: Carlo Cappai e Maria Alessandra Segantini, C+S ARCHITECTS
Detailed design and site supervision: a2o Architeckten
C+S Architects has completed the Snake Building in Aarschot, Belgium, as part of the De Torens masterplan, transforming a former industrial site into a new mixed-use urban district. The project introduces a multifunctional complex that reinforces community identity through the design of public space. As Maria Alessandra Segantini explains: “Public space is the backbone of all our projects. In Aarschot, architectural design gives back to the community a larger public space, while drawing on contextual construction knowledge and skills to reinforce community identity.”
The Snake Building in Aarschot, Belgium, is part of a collaboration with a2o, a Hasselt-based architecture office, commissioned by the client to design the urban regeneration of the De Torens masterplan: a former industrial site in the center of Aarschot, developed with housing, commercial, and public spaces.
A series of collegial workshops in Hasselt initiated the design process and assigned the plots to each office. Our approach to architecture is shaped by the idea of Future Heritage, a process that develops an in-depth, historical and ecological research, where every gesture reinvents the traces of the past though materially sensitive interventions that evoke memories engaging the senses, enhance the identity of spaces and places and connect communities with the environment.
In a cultural context, such as Belgium, which still values craftsmanship, our design focuses on reinforcing community identity through urban design, architecture and construction details.
Notably, in the Middle Ages, Flemish cities were surrounded by common lands – shared private parcels used for firewood, grazing, and farming. In today’s Europe, where square footage per person shrinks every year, we like to think of the public realm – biodiverse, open, resilient – as our new common land. We began with that concept of common land: a space that makes community physical.
In European cities, the piazzas are mineral. From Porto to Prague, from Bath to Ghent or Florence, the public square is as a place of exchange, resilient in its materials yet porous to events. It’s where trade happened, protests were staged, games were played, and siestas taken. And this still happens today. The measure of European piazzas makes us feel at home across Europe and reflects the idea of a shared identity shaped by economic resources, the defence of democracy, and common policies: public space that is open, durable, flexible, adaptable, and recognizable. Like the campo in Venice- a city that we carry with us wherever we design, the piazza holds the collective memory of a people. It is the community 'living room'. It is an urban home.
In Aarschot, we were assigned the edge plots. The Snake Building sits at the entry to the development. It connects to the historic urban centre, extending Leuvenstraat—the backbone of the city—into the site.
We manipulate the plot to carve out public space, reworking the client’s brief. Where they saw a compact block, we proposed erosion. Reduction. Redefinition of the volume's height.
In plan, the Snake Building pulls back, creating room for the piazza and a tree to pierce the underground parking and for the view to reconnect to the Old Orleans on the hill as well as enhancing the pedestrian flows into the site.
In section, terraces are cut to recall the “roofline dance” of Flemish cities. What appeared as a brick-made monolith, is instead a volume carved by sky and life.
Architecture becomes a frame for human life, where deep loggias open to wooden frames, because where the building meets the human, the materiality softens. Brick gives way to timber. Solidity gives way to touch.
Rather than following a regular pattern, the facade openings are scattered. They become a statement of transformation and potential readaptation over time as the city evolves. From the inside, windows frame the surroundings in different ways and scales, capturing urban flows and the seasonal changes of the surrounding hills.
Details matter: the recessed joints, the seamless folds of brick- even extended to the interior of the loggias- and bay windows that wrap upward into the roofline. These gestures turn mass into meaning, shelter into story.
We worked with local masons. We respected their knowledge. We built in brick – not because it is trendy, but because it is real. Durable. Specific. The choice isn’t simply aesthetic; it’s an argument- a local insistence on memory and manual skill. In this context –Aarschot, with its storied facades and accumulated municipal identity- the use of traditional materials doesn’t just honour the past, it inhabits it, digs into it, makes a kind of continuity out of friction. The building’s curved, non-linear shape –less a gesture than a negotiation with its urban setting– owes its logic to these materials and the timeworn techniques used to work them.
But what reads, at first glance, as simplicity or reverence reveals itself on closer inspection to be anything but. The very elements that make the building feel familiar – brick, wood, the slow grammar of hand-laid joints – also make it meaningful. There’s no shortcut to the subtle fusion of wall and roof, no prefab solution for the bay window that pushes up through the eaves like a thought interrupting a sentence. These are challenges born of fidelity to place. They require not only an eye for form but the hands of people who know how a Flemish bond breathes in winter, how a recessed joint gathers shadow, how wood is rather a texture than a flat surface.
In this fidelity, in this quiet craftsmanship, the building begins to seem less like something designed and more like something uncovered – an object not placed in the city but drawn from it. The wood, introduced where the structure yields, doesn’t soften the form so much as acknowledge its fragility. It reminds us that what we build performs multiple roles: grounding itself in context and tradition, reinforcing community identity through construction and durability, while allowing inhabitation and transformation through facade design and materiality.
The building emerges as a sort of inhabited brick sculpture, while wooden windows, entrances, and terrace facades in timber boiserie (all 100% recyclable materials) bring warmth to the composition. The material tells a story – of hands, of place.
And where that story touches life, it turns to wood: soft and warm. Home.
Credits:
Client: Dyls
Lead Architects, and Design Guardianship: Carlo Cappai e Maria Alessandra Segantini, C+S ARCHITECTS
Detailed design and site supervision: a2o Architeckten
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