gijs van vaerenbergh redraws lost belgian abbey through translucent steel architecture
By thomai tsimpou I designboom
Gijs Van Vaerenbergh‘s CLAUSURA is a large-scale intervention that reconstructs the lost heart of Herkenrode Abbey in Belgium through an almost ghost-like steel framework. Commissioned by Flemish heritage organization Herita for the historic abbey grounds near Hasselt, the project revives the vanished cloister of the site at full scale without attempting to reconstruct it literally. Thin steel tubes sketch the outlines of absent buildings directly into the landscape, allowing architecture to oscillate between visibility and disappearance.
Herkenrode Abbey was once among the wealthiest Cistercian abbeys in the Low Countries. Founded at the end of the 12th century, the site gradually expanded into a vast monastic ensemble organized around cloister gardens, galleries, convent buildings, infirmaries, and a Gothic church. Following centuries of deterioration, fires, and demolition, most of the central structures of the abbey disappeared entirely, leaving only fragments of the original complex standing today.
all images by Jan De Wilde, unless stated otherwise
Belgian artistic practice Gijs Van Vaerenbergh proposes a spatial drawing that restores the ensemble through outline, rhythm, and perspective. The installation reconstructs the missing buildings at their original scale and position using a lightweight grid of steel tubes that appear to dissolve into the surrounding landscape. Depending on the viewpoint of the visitor, CLAUSURA alternates between near-invisibility and precise legibility, producing a constantly shifting reading of the site.
Vaults, windows, towers, and rooflines emerge momentarily from the network of lines before fading back into abstraction. Existing remnants of the sisters’ quarters, infirmary, and arcade are stabilized and extended with new steel frameworks that replicate traces of former roof structures, creating sheltered areas for temporary use while preserving the surviving masonry.
a large-scale intervention that reconstructs the lost heart of Herkenrode Abbey in Belgium
CLAUSURA continues the longstanding interest of the studio in architecture as perceptual experience. Across projects such as Reading Between the Lines in Borgloon, Labyrint in Genk, and Colonnade for the Bruges Triennial, Gijs Van Vaerenbergh revisits the field of architecture as something closer to drawing, atmosphere, or optical condition. Its structures are often reduced to skeletal frameworks or repeated elements that challenge assumptions around solidity and permanence.
At Herkenrode, this approach makes absence spatially perceptible. Visitors move through a reconstructed void where architecture survives as an outline, positioning heritage as an active negotiation between what remains, what disappeared, and what can still be imagined. CLAUSURA is currently being realized in three phases, with the first and largest phase scheduled to open on June 18th, 2026.
an almost ghost-like steel framework
The project coincides with Fictional Ruins, a publication and exhibition celebrating twenty years of the practice. The book examines six projects through themes of reconstruction, erosion, and architectural memory, including CLAUSURA alongside works such as The Upside Dome, Inverse Ruin, Harbour Castle, and Kansas City Spirit.
Opening at BAC Art Lab in Leuven, the accompanying exhibition expands these investigations into space through scale models, film imagery, and architectural fragments that trace fifteen years of work by the Belgian duo. Each project departs from a condition of absence, featuring architectures that are incomplete, vanished, or surviving only through memory, plans, and images.
Through abstraction, fragmentation, and deliberate incompleteness, the works position ruins as constantly reconstructed cultural fictions shaped by interpretation and imagination.
the project revives the vanished cloister of the site at full scale
thin steel tubes sketch the outlines of absent buildings directly into the landscape
Herkenrode Abbey was once among the wealthiest Cistercian abbeys in the Low Countries
a spatial drawing that restores the ensemble through outline, rhythm, and perspective
CLAUSURA model, featured at Fictional Ruins exhibition | image by Matthijs van der Burgt
Inverse Ruin model (read more about the project here) | image by Matthijs van der Burgt
Fictional Ruins at BAC Art Lab | image by Matthijs van der Burgt
designers: Gijs Van Vaerenbergh | @gijsvanvaerenbergh
location: Herkenrode Abbey, Hasselt, Belgium
opening first phase: June 18th, 2026
This article was originally published by Designboom.