Conceived by Prof. Dr. J. Sebrechts, the connecting road provided an answer to the growing needs of Bruges between 1938 and 1976. It provided a fast and direct link between the two hospitals, through a spectacular viaduct above the little houses of Wevershof and a tunnel under the entrance of the Minnewater Clinic. With the reassignment of the hospitals in 1976, the road became obsolete: some parts were demolished, others were privatized, and some were reclaimed by nature.
Working as an archaeologist of the modern era, Tirtiaux revealed part of the original road opposite the Minnewater Clinic that had lain dormant for decades under a thick green carpet of moss and vegetation. By removing the overgrowth to expose what lay beneath, his intervention created the impression that this carpet of moss had simply been pulled away. This carpet became a recurring sculptural motif that marked both the beginning and end of the former road. On the pavement of Professor Dr. J. Sebrechtsstraat, an undulating viewing platform enabled visitors and passers-by to look down on the revealed road fragment. A more monumental gesture occurred at the Poortgebouw at the other end: a wide tongue of moss and vegetation rolled out of the building, thereby ‘rewilding’ this strange late neogothic structure. Along the Wevershof side, another part of the original road could be seen in an ingenious mirrored ceiling.
Walking between the three sculptural interventions in what had become an underused ‘wanderspace’—including a car park, garages, back alleys leading to private homes, and duckweed-covered canals—viewers and passers-by were invited to reconstruct this unearthed modernist infrastructure. Along the way, stories of care, construction and growth, urban transformations and failures merged with a range of questions: What could be considered heritage and what not? What lived, what grew, and how was it remembered in the city?
Adrien Tirtiaux (b. 1980, Etterbeek, BE) is an artist and architectural engineer. In his practice, he links the two disciplines in installations and contextual interventions that play with indoors and outdoors, fiction and reality. Towers, bridges and steps for example – whether functional or not – mobilise the public to participate in his work or to reflect on its underlying message.