Edited by Breandán Kearney, Belgian Smaak

In June 2015, something strange happened outside Brussels’ stock exchange building. Boulevard Anspach, a 19th century thoroughfare turned 20th century four-lane highway, was pedestrianised. In place of exhaust fumes and harried drivers there were now potted plants, table tennis spaces, and humans. Inside things were happening too. The stock brokers and businessmen who walked the parquet floor of the Bourse de Commerce for the best part of a century were gone, their chalkboard tabulation and horsetrading - like the building itself - made redundant by the advent of digital trading. But the City of Brussels had plans for the Bourse. Like their 19th century forebears, the city government had plans to restitch Brussels’ urban fabric, and a renovated Bourse would be at the centre of it all

In early July 2015 they unveiled their plans. The central hall of the Bourse would become an indoor agora, home to events and exhibitions. The upper floors would be given over to a brand new Belgian beer experience. The whole building would be the crowning achievement of the wider redesign of central Brussels - less car-centric, walker friendly, and attractive to tourists. 

The twin projects of pedestrian zone outside, and beer experience inside, had much in common. Both were launched more or less officially in 2014,reactions to a movement to reclaim parts of the city for its residents. And both were accompanied by torrents of criticism from their inception. But while the pedestrian plans for the streets around the Bourse could trace their lineage back to 50 year-old fights to wean Brussels off its addiction to cars, the notion of the city needing a beer museum was a relatively recent phenomenon. And the initial spark came not from the streets of Brussels, but 700 kilometres away, in a bar suspended over the Dublin skyline, accompanied by a pint of Guinness.

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A Brussels ketje born and raised, Sven Gatz was a young-ish member of the Flemish parliament in the early 2000s. Gatz remembers a childhood growing up in Molenbeek with streets smelling of freshly brewed beer from nearby breweries, and as an adult he wrote a Brussels pub guide in 2002. When Gatz found himself in Dublin on a city trip in 2006, the Guinness Storehouse was an obvious visit. Gatz was impressed. “I had this connection with how the Irish were telling the story of their beer,” he says. “This is something I recognise as a Belgian.” Gatz thought Belgian beer could benefit from a similar but broader, cultural and less brand-centric approach to telling his country’s beer story. Turning to his wife up in the sky bar after the tour, Guinness in hand, Gatz claimed that Brussels needed this, one way or the other. 

Brussels, the World Capital of Beer

A Belgian beer museum was not a revolutionary idea. In fact, Brussels already had two: one in a converted schoolhouse in Schaarbeek, open to visitors since 1994 and run by volunteers; and another in the basement of the 17th century Brouwershuis, the Belgian Brewers Federation’s headquarters on the Grand Place. But these were small-scale endeavours in cramped surroundings, and Gatz’s ambitions required a larger canvas. Returning to Brussels, Gatz thought he had found the perfect location - the abandoned Belle-Vue lambic brewery on the western banks of the Brussels canal. 

In early 2008 he made a pitch to the building’s corporate owners AB InBev to make Brussels the ‘“world capital of beer”, with an international visitor’s centre celebrating belgian beer housed in the old brewery. But it wasn’t to be; later that year AB InBev sold the Belle-Vue site, and it was eventually converted into a hotel and art museum. Gatz commissioned a benchmark study on the beer museum’s viability, but the idea lost momentum. Then, in 2011 Gatz resigned his seat in the Flemish parliament. In September 2011 he re-emerged as the newly-appointed director of the Belgian Brewers Federation. He entered the Brouwershuis in Brussels with his dream of a Belgian beer museum still intact, only now he was fighting for it from the other side. 

Next door to Gatz’s new office, in Brussels’ town hall, the city’s mayor was about to become the owner of an iconic city centre location with little idea of what to do with it. A week after Gatz took up residence in the Brouwershuis, then-mayor Freddy Thielemans, announced the buy-back of the lease to Brussels’ stock exchange from Euronext for €4.7m. Euronext was formed from the merger of the Brussels, Paris, and Amsterdam stock markets in 2000, and they inherited a building opened in 1873 by Belgium’s King Leopold II. The Bourse de Commerce was a confident projection of an ambitious new country reaping the benefits of the industrial revolution and its nascent, and ultimately destructive, colonial project in central Africa. 

The neo-renaissance Bourse was part of a wider reimagining of downtown Brussels by its late-19th century politicians. Gone was the dirty river Senne, and in its claim came a Haussmanian vision of bourgeois apartment buildings along wide thoroughfares. The Bourse was the project’s commercial centerpiece, welcoming bankers and traders with ballrooms, pool halls, restaurants, and elaborate stone friezes on the building’s facade sculpted by a young Auguste Rodin.

And so it functioned for over a century, until modernity arrived in 1996 and traders haggling in rooms flanked by walls covered in chalkboards listing stock prices were replaced by prefab offices and computer terminals. From 5,000 people at the height of its productivity by 2011 the 12,000 square metres surface area of the Bourse was home to just 30 Euronext employees. 

“This is becoming serious”

With no need for this massive space, Euronext planned to install a business school in the building. But the City of Brussels had different intentions, so they bought back the lease. A museum, maybe. What kind of museum, they weren’t entirely sure, and their big idea - a contemporary art museum - was nixed because the building was entirely unsuitable. Sitting in his Brouwershuis office a couple of doors over from the town hall, Sven Gatz seized his moment. “When I joined the Brewers in the summer [of 2011], I could say, this [idea] is becoming serious,” Gatz says. “There is not just my translation of the Dublin vision, but we also have a [potential] building now.” 

Gatz set about lining up support from key Federation members. “We did a tour of the breweries to see their interest,” he says. “The brewers are always looking at each other to see what the other is doing. And if one moves, the others will move too.” Two breweries in particular were crucial in getting people moving. “From a political point of view it’s not possible to have a Belgian beer world without AB InBev and Duvel Moortgat,” Gatz says. “But on the other hand, everyone understands that if you don’t have some local small players it’s not credible too. It was the art of making a deal between all the brewers.” Which he managed, following that deal with one with the mayor’s office. In early 2012 the news was leaked: a Belgian Beer Temple would open in the Bourse by the autumn of 2014. 

But the 2014 deadline passed with no grand opening. In the same year, Gatz left the Brewers Federation and returned to politics as Flemish culture minister. The history of Brussels’ urban planning is littered with unrealised architectural projects that exist only on paper. And one of the few things as challenging as shepherding ambitious plans through the city’s bureaucratic lasagna is getting a disparate group of Belgian brewers to define a shared vision of what Belgian beer culture actually means. Without its progenitor and main patron, the Belgian Beer Temple could have gone down in history as an unfulfilled footnote in Gatz’s political career.

And then, in July 2015, as the streets in front of the Bourse were being reclaimed from cars for people, a breakthrough. The City of Brussels finally published plans by Flemish architects Robbrecht & Daem for the Bourse and the (newly-christened) Belgian Beer World. The large central hall would be transformed into a public space hosting events and exhibitions. The entrances would be adapted, with a new one on the side of the Grand Place, a new passageway created linking the streets flanking the Bourse, and a brasserie, shop, and restaurant installed on the building’s ground floor. 

Belgian Beer World would wind through the first and second floors, and culminate in a rooftop tasting bar. The whole thing was intended to attract 300,000 visitors annually, create 50 jobs, and cost €25m. While the city and the Belgian Brewers Federation were waiting for planning approval, they had time to work out what exactly this new ‘experience’ would look like on opening day, set for sometime in early 2019.

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“The plan is to make it a representative place for Belgian beer.” It’s January 2020, and Krishan Maudgal is sitting in a makeshift office on one of the Bourse’s upper floors, explaining the Belgian Beer World concept. Finally, after securing planning approval in 2018 and blowing through the original 2019 launch date, work is now underway under Maudgal’s oversight. 

The Belgian way of life - eating, drink, beer and food

Krishan Maudgal has worked in Belgian beer for over a decade, for the likes of Alken Maes and its well-known Abbey brand Affligem. In 2021 Maudgal was appointed to Gatz’s old position as director of the Belgian Brewers Federation, and he’s worked for the brewers on the museum concept almost from the beginning, helping to shape what the project will be - and what it won’t. “It’s not a showroom for only the international major brewers of our country,” Maudgal says. “It’s to promote the Belgian way of living. Eating, drinking, beer and food.” His reference points are the Guinness Storehouse, Bordeaux’s Cité du Vin, and Edinburgh’s Scotch Whisky Experience. “We don’t want to copy [them], we want to bring something different….[We want to be] educational and entertaining,” he says. 

Maudgal’s departure point for the installation is Belgium’s Unesco-recognised beer culture. Over two floors and three distinct zones, an interactive “journey” will introduce visitors to Belgian beer culture from the early modern era on. “We’ll talk about gambrinus, our pouring rituals, and the fact that we have been a battlefield in the past, and a lot of influences were left here,” Maugdal says. “[How] Belgium was a patchwork of different habits and cultures….that is also the basis of the diversity we have [in beer].” 

Exhibits will sketch the evolution of Belgian beer - medieval brewing, the role of monasteries, the impact of revolution, independence and world wars, industrialisation, and the rise, fall, and rise of Belgian beer in the 20th century. Focus will then shift to the country’s “rebellious” brewers and their alchemical blurring of art and science that is the country’s brewing ethos. Then it’s up onto the roof for a tasting before exiting through the gift shop. 

What exactly visitors will end up tasting has been a source of tension, borne from the fact that, until recently, many smaller breweries were not members of the Brewers Federation. Maudgal was conscious this could cripple the project’s credibility, and has steadily expanded the group of participating breweries. From an initial five, the number of participating breweries grew to 104 by January 2020. It’s a group that includes local breweries Brasserie de la Senne, Brussels Beer Project, and L’Ermitage, alongside Trappist monasteries and new wave breweries like D'Oude Maalderij and Brasserie Minne. 

“It’s a fair question,” Maudgal says of concerns about the potential for national breweries to squeeze out their smaller rivals. “People have always been thinking that since AB InBev is involved it would become the ‘AB InBev Temple’ ....[But] I created a governance logic where we applied equality and fairness….People understand it is [supposed to be] a generic experience.”

“A project to make you vomit”

Fear of corporate dominance was just one of the criticisms Belgian Beer World received following the July 2015 announcement. The activists who had strong-armed the city government into pedestrianising the central boulevards were turning their attention to what this new public space would look like, and who it would be for. 

Soon posters began appearing in windows decrying a “Disneyfication” of Brussels caused by a city administration as more interested in catering to tourists than the needs of local residents. In Belgian Beer World they saw the corporate privatisation of what was nominally a public space. The entrance steps to the Bourse were long used as a rallying point for protests, for the celebration of sporting triumphs, and in 2016 - in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks - as a spontaneous memorial. Public intellectuals like Lieven Van Cauter feared the building would abandon this civic role in its new guise, saying it was a project to make you vomit. Brussels already had two beer museums, people argued, so why did this building need the gaudy appendage of something so crass a beer museum. One architectural lecturer in an opinion piece described the “banality of the Beer Temple” as a “stain” on the reputations of the architects involved. Some even suggested moving the Brussels Parliament into the building instead. 

A petition against the project gained over 7,000 signatures, a street protest occupied the entrance, and legal action was considered to reverse the planning decision. Back in 2018, Sven Gatz already had his rebuttals ready. “These people are looking for arguments to say we are not against beer but we are against beer capitalism, and we don’t want that,” Gatz says, adding that throughout the 20th century, Brussels’ brewers would come to the cafes and restaurants around the Bourse to do business. “Beer has always been a connection between culture and economics.” Gatz was also keen to link the new use to the history of the site and to Belgian beer mythology. A previous archeological dig underneath the Bourse discovered the reputed grave of 13th century Duke of Brabant John I, otherwise known as Jan Primus or sometimes as the folk hero Gambrinus, the king of beer. As part of the renovations, the grave museum of which it was a part (Bruxella 1238) would be accessible through the Bourse.

Pride in Belgian beer culture

Maudgal emphasised that the beer experience would only take up a modest footprint in the building, and most of the building would be accessible without a ticket. For Maudgal, the Bourse is a suitably grand building for a project that seeks to express a rediscovered pride in Belgium’s beer traditions. “Beer is one of the [few] assets we still have in Belgium,” he says. “[And] it’s my personal opinion that we actually for once try to be proud about something we have, that is valued worldwide.”

The protests ultimately came to nought, bar several adjustments to the original plans including a smaller, less visible canopy for the rooftop bar. Planning secured in 2018, by January 2020 work was underway to strip out the unwanted century architectural interventions before they set out on their own invasive remodelling of the building.

“It really needs rethinking and restoration,” says project leader Nel Vandevannet, looking from a second floor balcony down to the echoey central hall. Floor by floor, Vandevannet and her team peel back the historical layers that have accreted on the building’s frame. There are the remnants of a marble stairway that goes nowhere, work of an unfortunately-named city architect Malfait. Zigzag parquet that replaced a mosaic floor, the dust of which was claimed to have been responsible for the deaths of several traders in the 1890s. Scrawled writing on the walls left behind by traders making quick calculations on wallpaper. Abandoned bathroom stalls with chipped tiles and leaking taps. Stacks of old benches, tables and so-called courbeilles - what look like upturned iron wrought rubbish bins used by traders to haggle over deals and sell shares - blanketed in dust in a storeroom underneath the ceiling. 

Vandevannet navigates a set of wobbly wooden stairs that lead from the base of the Bourse’s squat dome up onto the corrugated metal roof. The view spreads out across Brussels’ unkempt skyline towards the filigreed spire of the town hall, with the golden equestrian statue of Karel van Lotharingen perched on the Brouwershuis just behind. Even if it doesn’t tower over nearby buildings, the Bourse’s chunky heft towers over surrounding streets. “It wasn’t a public building. it was built to dominate the city,” Vandevannet says. When the renovations are finished, and visitors mill about on the rooftop terrace or stand at the bar waiting for a beer, Vandevannet might just have turned that intent inside out, bringing Brussels and its residents back into the building.

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Epilogue - June, 2021

18 months later, scaffolding has engulfed the Bourse. In front of the building, workers are putting the final touches to a new fountain, the last unfinished piece of the new pedestrian zone. Like most ambitious plans for Brussels, the street is a messy compromise. An improvement on what came before, but with enough niggling issues to elave residents pondering how much better it could have been. 

The Bourse project is a compromise, too. Between the needs of a modern, accessible tourist attraction, and the importance of protecting an architectural icon. Between public and private impulses for scarce urban space. ANd between the competing agendas of corporate power and insurrectionist upstarts. It’s taken Belgian Beer World a long, uncertain time to get where it is now, at a point of no return. Gatz, Maudgal and their fellow-travellers have tread a careful path between bureaucratic and brewing interests. And it will be several more years before their efforts can ultimately be judged a success. 

Pandemic or no, there’s a new date planned for the grand unveiling: 2023. For Krishan Maudgal, now ensconced in Sven Gatz’s old office a couple of hundred metres away from the Bourse in the Brouwershuis, he’s got two more years to find out if they have been successful, in his words, in building “a landmark for Belgian beer in its widest and broadest meaning.” 

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