OUR PHILOSOPHY
Architecture for pioneers who dare to invest in “ultimate” buildings.
“Conscious Creation”
It encourages us to take the time to ask ourselves the right questions, in order to make meaningful choices. And to explore simplicity, a rare privilege.
- Realise a global vision
- Give heritage value to our buildings
- Take our buildings into the circular economy
- Revisit ancestral techniques
- Design autonomous and resilient buildings
- Draw inspiration from pioneer buildings
- Prescrire livingmaterials
- Integrate our buildings with their environment
- Enhance the fulfillment and wellbeing of inhabitants.
Conscious creation generates “ultimate” architecture.
Architecture That Makes Sense
Conception — Exploitation — Transmission
Conscious architecture interacts with its environment – to reduce energy needs and benefit from natural inputs.
It uses living materials capable of managing the quality of the indoor atmosphere, to make these buildings actively passive.
It favours low tech, for greater resilience.
It makes judicious use of high tech in order to achieve peak performance adapted to contemporary lifestyles.
It enhances the connections between inside and outside, and dialogues with the elements of the site.
Goeminne Architects & Partners conscious architecture means designing custom-made buildings, designed to let us thrive. It means building a temple, a benevolent cocoon, to help us regenerate without damaging nature.
The “Ultimate” Building
Five ways to design a building:
1. High-performance buildings
The principles of this approach are to reduce or eliminate energy consumption, reaching the established “passive building” standard or even exceeding it by means of technological solutions. These objectives are achieved through passive solar design, bioclimatic concepts and purely technological installations. Emphasis is also placed on insulation to reduce heating requirements. This type of construction requires numerous upstream studies to ensure hyper performance.
2. Healthy, natural and biodegradable buildings
These types of buildings are mainly constructed from natural materials: wood, straw, hemp, cellulose, cork, lime, clay, earth brick, slate and stone. These materials have the advantage of keeping the occupants in excellent health thanks to, amongst other benefits, their intrinsic virtues of maintaining air quality, letting the building breathe, and suppressing electromagnetic fields. 100% biodegradable, the composition materials can return to earth if the building is abandoned or destroyed.
3. Mini buildings - Tiny houses
This type of construction approaches the energy issue from the angle of reducing the surface area to be heated. The aim is to construct living space with the smallest possible surface to reduce costs significantly, making it affordable for everybody. Tiny houses give architects great freedom and can be constructed alone or as part of a larger development.
4. Low grey-energy or carbon neutral buildings
The reduction of our ecological footprint takes into account the energy consumed in the entire life process of a building – from the extraction, manufacture and transport of building materials through to the energy consumed in the building during use. This philosophy also involves labels and certifications. The aim may be to offset the building’s carbon footprint, thereby encouraging the use of materials that store carbon or the purchase of certificates (“carbon credits” or “carbon offsets”).
5. Resilient and autonomous buildings - Earthships
The basic values of these types of buildings are freedom and independence. They aim to be completely independent of fossil fuels in order to cope with any future shortage of natural resources. Similar to Noah’s Ark, these earthships free themselves from economic and political systems or external infrastructures, advocating recycling and a circular economy. These buildings are designed to collect water and make it drinkable, to produce electrical and heat-producing energy for its inhabitants, and even to produce the necessary food.
The challenge for Goeminne Architects & Partners is to work with you to synthesize these five basic principles.
- To be highly efficient by giving priority to bioclimatic design.
- To avoid the use of synthetic materials as much as possible and design a habitat that preserves the health and wellbeing of its occupants.
- To examine the surface area required for comfortable living and develop intelligent and luxurious layouts.
- To aspire to reduce the construction’s carbon impact as much as possible by a judicious choice of materials and processes that favour the local and human environment.
- To aspire to be autonomous and equipped to meet the needs of the occupants.
But also, to place all these projects within a wider vision of the sustainability of natural environments, to create a heritage to be passed on to future generations, and to promote soil permeability, demineralisation and an increase in plant-covered surfaces.
It is a philosophy for the habitat that seeks the greatest possible synergy with our natural environment.
OUR EXPERTISE
Consultancy and strategic advice
Goeminne Architects & Partners helps you clarify your dreams. Whether you have an architectural project, a real estate investment or a renovation programme, many questions are bound to arise.
Why invest in real estate? Buy or rent? Renovate or a new build? In town or the country? And which neighbourhoods? How do you select the right architect? How to choose an investment? How to buy sensibly, and when? What is the philosophy of your project: green, hi-tech, social, energy related, circular, etc.? How to manage the project as a couple, taking into account the feelings of both? What should you do with inherited property?
The coaching sessions that we organise enable us to explore all the possibilities and resources with you. We run over all the factors objectively, helping you to create a programme that combines your wishes, your means and how you, yourself, see the project.
Goeminne Architects & Partners’s advice can include, for example:
- clarification of the philosophy of your project
- confirmation of its financial viability
- the energy strategy
- phasing of the project
- a search for the architect best suited to your needs
- optimisation of land and investment
- development of coherent projects, both on a human and environmental level
The architectural mission
- Feasibility study
- Matching the client’s project with its administrative and technical feasibility
- The site and its constraints
- Urban planning regulations and development strategies
- Foundations, volumes, surface capacities
- Financial plan, property profitability
- . Project design
- Architectural sketches, preliminary design, building permit
- Phase that brings together all the architect’s artistic, technical, administrative and human skills to give shape to the project
- Formatting by B.I.M. (building information modelling, CAO)
- Project realisation / implementation
- Coordination and technical support for implementation of project
- Execution details
- Site monitoring
- Approval of work
OUR EXPERIENCE
25
years
of experise
+350
completed
projects
160
housing
projects
+60
commercial
projects
OUR PLATFORM
Frédéric Goeminne
Founder of Goeminne Architects & Partners
Architecte
Coaching & Consultancy
Conception
Architectures Parallèles
GAP Brussels
Atelier 348
GAP Brussels
dek-A(rchitect)
GAP BrusselsJoint projects and partnerships
S. Van Wauwe, T. Lootens, A. Lestienne, K. Vanderpoorten, T. Hsu, C. Wolf, M&C Marijnissen, Manger Nielsen Architects, L3M Architecten, P. de Thier, Desamedt et Ramon Arch., AS studio, NBM, Atelier d’architecture DDV , Tractebel, A.A.Ravestijn & Partners, Meyer en van Schooten Architecten…
