Louis Le Roy & Brussels Wild Louis Le Roy & Brussels Wild

In collaboration with the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam and the Vereniging Deltametropool, we will seek out untamed nature in the city at the tail end of the summer. We are screening two films that address the subject in different ways: Louis Le Roy and Brussels Wild.

For this occasion, The New Garden, designed and planted by artist Frank Bruggeman and ecological gardener Hans Engelbrecht, will act as an outdoor cinema. The garden also inspired the choice of films: Brussels Wild and a short film about Louis Le Roy. The programme starts at 8 pm when, before darkness descends, we will talk about how wild the city should become and who is to decide this. With contributions from Hans Engelbrecht, Frank Bruggeman and urban ecologist Geert Timmermans

Arrive in plenty of time so you can enjoy the Thursday Dinner at 6:30 pm with the speakers and programme organisers. Drinks are included.

Louis Le Roy spent forty years of his life building the Eco Cathedral in Mildam, basing his efforts on the belief that humans should not control nature but rather work with its power of growth. Long before terms like slow architecture gained currency, he was pointing to time as an essential ingredient of spatial quality.

Louis Le Roy, Eindeloos werk in tijd en ruimte, 2007
Directed by Beate Lendt, 14 minuten

As the Brussels film-maker Bernard Crutzen cycled home one evening, he came face to face with a fox. The animal looked at him with a brazen expression as if to say: "What are you doing here?" Bernard Crutzen wants to turn things around and ask: "And you, what are you doing here in Brussels? Is the city really the place for you?" The same might be asked of the falcons, toads in the fountains, grass snakes and beetles in the capital. A city dweller views these 'wild animals' with a combination of fascination and distrust. The film Brussels Wild investigates this coexistence of man and (wild) animal and asks: how far apart do we want or have to live?

Bruxelles Sauvage, Belgium, 2015
Directed by Bernard Crutzen. Documentary film, 65/52 minutes

With The New Garden, artist Frank Bruggeman and ecological gardener Hans Engelbrecht propagate ecologically valuable nature with a rich variety of species found commonly in the city. In contrast to parks like Museumpark, which are filled with cultivated plants (plants refined by people), in The New Garden they have introduced native wild plants as well as a number of intrusive exotic species. Some ecologists want to ban such plants, Bruggeman and Engelbrecht show that even these difficult plants can find an ecologically and aesthetically valuable place in the garden through the creative management of vegetation.

AFFR is an annual film festival that screens films, shorts, animations and documentaries about architecture, urban development and urban culture. The 2015 festival takes place from 8 to 11 October at Lantarenvenster cinema.

The Vereniging Deltametropool (Delta Metropolis Society) is a broad public organisation that assumes responsibility for the sustainable development of the Delta Metropolis. Bringing together trade and industry, public interest groups, research organisations and government bodies, the society makes it possible to work on a socially accepted design for the metropolitan area of the Netherlands, based on welfare, prosperity and strengthening its competitive position internationally.

Have the films fired your enthusiasm? On 6 September, Het Nieuwe Instituut is organising a nature safari through Rotterdam. Contributions from designers and ecological experts will ensure that you come to see urban nature in a very different way. Reservations are taken by Eventbrite