The National bank of Belgium is envisioned as an open, transparent, publicly engaged institution that draws the city into itself, hopefully becoming a catalyst for change.
The attitude the project takes is to deeply understand and interrogate what exists before proposing changes
– imbibing the studio dictum of ‘economy of means’. As an outcome, the new and old buildings merge into one another and become a congruent whole – and hopefully, a successful ‘piece of city’.

The paper "Representation shapes Reality" reflects on the relationship between drawing and architecture in six parts. It first gives an overview of the history of drawing – which is seen to be closely linked to the history of the architecture profession as we know it today. The overview establishes a historical trajectory and identifies patterns in the use of certain types and modes of drawing. These types and modes are then analysed in further detail. This part is bookended by an overview of the way architectural historians and theorists have examined the role of the drawing. With this background information at hand, the paper studies the work of contemporary architects to examine the hypothesis that the way the architect draws influences the built outcome significantly. In conclusion, the paper argues that the use of a certain mode of drawing or the layers of information depicted in them drastically affects the object being designed, as opposed to the conventional understanding of its role as a passive, transparent medium.