Boussoles elles & eux The illusionist There’s more to Bernard Dubois’s hypnotic architecture than meets the eye. Countless perspectives jostle beneath his use of serene, humble materials. That architect Bernard Dubois’s project is solid, there’s no no copycat, but rather an innovator. In order to assemble the doubt: with its 6,000 bricks, the flagship Aesop store in Brussels, bricks, normally used outdoors, within this narrow interior which opened on Rue de Namur, is offering customers an array space and to achieve a more sculptural effect for the curved of 82 creams and ointments designed to purify, tone and illumi- walls, he performed a neat sleight of hand, cutting them in half nate skin. Trained at the Brussels-based La Cambre architec- lengthwise and placing them vertically instead of in the classic tural school, the tall, fair-haired 39-year-old with an engaging horizontal position. They stand side by side, in a design that smile, famous for his shops and determined to design everything looks almost waffle-like—aligned, modern, tinged with nostal- from housing to hospitals, is super proud of his Belgian origins. gia, a kind of distorted reflection of a long, quintessentially “I’m considered minimalist, whereas I see the various stores I’ve Bruxellois stylistic tradition. In between skin treatments, visi- designed as being filled with details,” he says. “I’m like Belgium, tors have plenty of opportunities to reflect on the subtlety of calm and pale on the outside, yet in reality bubbling up inside, the artist’s approach. a mixture of arrogance and simplicity.” The shop’s layout creates an impression of a narrow perspec- The look of each of the Australian brand’s shops is based on tive, ultimately drawing visitors into a smaller room with a the local environment, so Dubois, who co-curated the Belgian round table made with the same bricks and a brushed metal Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2014, sought inspiration in tabletop. “Placing the bricks vertically,” explains Dubois, a Belgian proverb: every Belgian is born with a brick in the “brings to mind the tall ceramic facades you find in Mexico belly. He opted for a small yellow Roman brick of a kind found and Brazil.” Suddenly, in the middle of the beautiful gray tones in abundance in North Sea seaside villas, the Central Station of Brussels, there’s a glimmer of tropicalism. The architect is and the magnificent Hôtel Wolfers designed by Henry van de currently at work on over 15 projects. Rest assured, he’ll be Velde in 1929, on Rue Alphonse-Renard in Brussels. Dubois is giving us plenty of reasons to travel. Bernard Dubois dans la première boutique bruxelloise d’Aesop. Bernard Dubois in Aesop’s first Brussels store. 70