With a modest batch of projects to their name, Xaveer De Geyter Architects have managed to build up a most respectable international reputation. The large-scale urban design studies and project proposals of this Brussels-based firm are informed by an unpretentious architecture and urban design born of a discerning and radical design strategy.
After-Sprawl shows the results of the firm's recent urban research, a research that formulates a new attitude to the present-day city. The increasing urban sprawl (the filling up of the landscape) throughout Western Europe is giving rise to more and more areas characterized by a diffuse urbanization or an urban network. Xaveer De Geyter Architects examined four such areas - Randstad Holland, Brussels-Antwerp-Ghent in Belgium, Zurich-Basle in Switzerland and the Veneto region in Italy.
This book documents and analyses the impact of sprawl on the built space, introduces a new conceptual apparatus and puts forward spatial propositions for the hybrid urbanity of the After-Sprawl.
Exhibition After-Sprawl - Xaveer de Geyter Architects at the International Art Centre deSingel, Antwerp, 1 May - 9 June 2002.