Brussels

Parvis de St Gilles subway station: "DYADES"

In Brussels, the capital of Europe, the project is located in a popular district, at the Parvis de St. Gilles metro station. The station is defined around a double theme : the dyad which means the combination of two concepts complementing each other: in this case, the Human Rights and the European borders. There is a long and abstract line, in the shape of an encephalogram crossing the station several times and representing all the european borders, drawn one after each others. The subway is the most democratic network. It is also vital for the cities, it makes them fluid and organizes their movements. It also creates possible encounters. It lives like the arteries of an organ.

When a traveller enters the station in Brussels, his eyes are immediatelly attracted by two sentences of Erasme: 'Speed up slowly' 'If you want to have honey, bear bees'. Then, as he goes deep under the earth, he walks in between the stratas made of thousands of letters and of one long abstract white line running through the blue tiles. Then, the line wraps around him and encloses him into a panorama, obliging him to understand the abstract territory in which he is momentarly taken, while waiting for his train. Then he realizes that- just like Janus and his doubled faces- the continent he lives in, is comprised in between two angular stones: democracy and borders.

Une dyade est l‘union de deux principes qui se complètent réciproquement. On peut dire que la dyade européenne est composée des frontières européennes et des Droits de l‘Homme.