Chris Poulissen, from the Flemish part of Belgium, has created a number of striking bridge designs
together with his partner Laurent Ney, including in the Netherlands. Yet he prefers not to call himself an
architect. "Forget that word. Architecture isn't important. There are so many more serious matters in the
world, so many bigger challenges."
'Architecture is a misconception' 3 2017 4
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Chris Poulissen, from the Flemish part of Belgium, has created a number of striking bridge designs
together with his partner Laurent Ney, including in the Netherlands. Yet he prefers not to call himself an
architect. "Forget that word. Architecture isn't important. There are so many more serious matters in the
world, so many bigger challenges."
'Architecture is
a misconception'
1
Cement's editorial staff talk to Chris Poulissen,
keynote speaker at the fib Symposium 2017
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1 De Oversteek, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2 Ghatkopar Koparkhairne Bridge, Mumbai
credits: Ney & Partners
Career
Chris Poulissen began his career at AWG (Bob van
Reeth's Architect Work Group). He soon met
Laurent Ney (during the renovation of the
Koning Boudewijnstadium, for example), who
was working as an engineer at engineering
firm Bureau Greisch. In 1995 Poulissen
launched his own firm: Architectenbureau
C. Poulissen, which later became Poulissen &
Partners. Poulissen and Ney have always
cooperated closely. Increasingly, they have been
focusing on designing bridges. When they received
the assignment to design the Oosterweel Link in Antwerp,
they founded the firm Ney-Poulissen Architects & Engineers, which was renamed NP-Bridging
in 2011. They now work all over the world, including in the Netherlands, India and Japan.
Well-known Dutch projects include De Oversteek and De Lentloper, both recently built in the
city of Nijmegen.
"I can't stand misery
in the world"
Ask Poulissen where he gets his ideas for his designs and he
will tell you he doesn't know. "The best designs evolve gradually,
in a process with multiple people. You have to consider all of
the interests at play. Things like ecology, flora, fauna, noise
pollution, contamination. It's barely about the form. For example,
when Laurent and I were working on the bridge project 'De
Oversteek' in Nijmegen (photo 1), we didn't anticipate before-
hand that those arches would be there. That idea materialised
during the project, in part because of the limited budget. That
forced us to find clever solutions. And the solution with the
arches turned out to cost a lot less, and it doesn't require much
maintenance. There are no joints, no bearings. The design for
the bridge 'De Lentloper' (photos 3 and 6) didn't fall out of the
sky either. We turned the reference design, which was based on
prefab girders, completely inside out. In the end it resulted in a
design that cost 30% less than the budget and also generated
25% more surface area (fig. 4)."
Design competitions
The most important challenge in a design process is not what
something will eventually look like, but what the real needs are.
That's why architecture is a misconception according to Poulis-
sen. "It's not about architecture, it's about the bigger picture,
where you stand in life." Poulissen and Ney had to fight for two
to three years to get a footpath onto their design for two mega-
bridges in Mumbai (fig. 2). The overwhelming majority of the
city's 20 million inhabitants doesn't have a car. "In my view they
also had a right to move from one side of the river to the other.
For me, that's the essence of bridges. De Oversteek was about a
footpath too. It was supposed to be 1.5 km long, but according
to the municipality that's why it would never be used. But as it
turns out, it's a huge success, almost too huge if you look at how
busy it is there sometimes."
That explains why Poulissen is not a fan of the design competi-
tion phenomenon. During a contest for Groenplaats, the
historic square in Antwerp, Poulissen went so far that he barely even showed his design. "I did have a design on me, but I said beforehand
that I didn't know if that would be it and that I didn't know what would be it
either. I also said that if you want to get yourself into a huge mess, you
should make a design and say 'this is it'. I advised them to talk to the people
who live and work near the square to find out what their interests are. We
had no choice in my opinion. We had to ask these people before putting even
a single line onto paper."
Another major disadvantage of design competitions is the waste according to
Poulissen. "We have to stop making each other miserable. Take De Oversteek.
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?Architecture is a misconception? 3 2017
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the raw materials, the nature of the needs. You should be
guided by the materials. That's what will tell you what form it
should have, so to speak."
Indeed, cooperation is important to Poulissen. It's taken for
granted in the Netherlands. "It's really part of your DNA. It's for
good reason that you're pioneers in public-private partnerships.
But in Belgium people don't trust you if you suggest working
together. It makes them wonder, 'what does he want from me?'"
In practice, not much always comes out of an integrated
approach. Architects design something that they think will
please the client. "It makes it easy to determine what kind of a
risk someone should take. That idea is out of date. Why not
have a designer bear part of the financial risk of a project for
once? I guarantee you that the world would look much differ-
ent. Undoubtedly more exciting, interesting, intense, serious
and responsible."
"So it's much more about what's important to people than it is
about the form. We always try to discover what the individual
interests are. In everything, in every project, in every conversa-
tion. For an investor, that means a return on your investment.
The bridge or the building is not the point at all. He couldn't
care less about that. Me either, for that matter. What I want is to
make the world better. I can't stand all this misery. I really can't
stand it. My body reacts to it. That's why I wanted to make a
small contribution in India to reducing the enormous gap
Do you really think that if one of the other seven candidates
had won it would be a much worse bridge? Our competitors
put a lot of time and energy into a design that didn't win and
therefor wasted valuable money. And money is probably not
even the most important problem. What do you think happens
to young people who miss out on a project, and miss out again,
and again? That's how you destroy ambitions and dreams. Of
course, I understand why these competitions are held. Clients
have to be able to justify their decisions. But I think we can do
better. And why shouldn't a losing team put their ideas at the
disposal of the winner, so he can make his design even better?
Now that knowledge is completely lost."
Cooperation
The process is still too scattered according to Poulissen. In
practice, it often comes down to an architect conceiving of
something based on form, and so he is creating a mechanical
problem that an engineer will have to solve. The engineer will
use all kinds of complex sums and complicated programs to
show that the construction meets a standard. And once he has
calculated everything, the contractor has to find a way to build
it. But the contractor isn't always aware of where the design
came from. Because we are not allowed to provide him with
information during the tendering stage. Sure, sometimes
there's this competitive dialogue, but that's in writing. That's
not a dialogue! His lack of information will cause the contrac-
tor to do everything he can to reduce risk. So he will think
of yet more ways to adapt the construction. That's not how it
should be done. You have to develop things together. Deter
-
mine together how a project should take shape, when and
how. It's about the nature of the construction, the nature of
"It's not about architecture but about the
bigger picture, where you stand in life"
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'Architecture is a misconception' 3 2017
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3 De Lentloper, Nijmegen,
The Netherlands
credits: Ney & Partners /
Thea van den Heuvel
4 The design of De
Oversteek originated from
a reference design based
on prefab girders and the
idea of making the best
possible use of the pedes-
trian surface of the cross
section
5 Making the pie bigger
gives the players more
space
6 De Lentloper
credits: Ney & Partners /
Thea van den Heuvel
themselves and therefore function better (fig. 5). That makes
people happy. In the end, I make sure that it's a coherent entity
again, that the pieces of pie come together again. You need
good people for that. I once heard that you can tell if someone's
intelligent because they will surround themselves with more
intelligent people. I firmly believe that. The people working in
my office are all smarter than me. Otherwise they wouldn't be
here, because we could do what they do ourselves. And luckily
there's Laurent. He's seven times wiser as me."
?
Jacques Linssen and Dick Hordijk
between the poor and the rich. The footpath that I mentioned
earlier is an example of that. Believe me, what the bridge looks
like doesn't interest me much."
Developer
"People sometimes say that I have a lot of luck. That's true. But
I did create situations that make it possible to have good luck. I
bought that ticket to India. I took the risk 18 years ago of devel-
oping that old warehouse on the 'Eilandje' Island in Antwerp. I
once said that I am a developer. Not in the conventional sense
of the word. But I do feel like a developer. I have brought
people together and instilled enthusiasm in them. I try to set
processes into motion. My role in doing so is to let people put
their heads together and come up with a design. I try to ask the
right questions. For as long as it takes until I understand what
people are saying. And then I grab a marker and draw it on a
flip-over. By talking and
drawing you're using two channels
simultaneously. That's a great help in understanding what's
meant. But take a look at a large engineering firm. There won't
be a flip-over anywhere in sight! Just a TV screen hanging
somewhere for presentations. But only one person out of ten
probably dares to go near the screen. People don't participate
nearly enough."
Intelligent
"I try to be the oil in the machine. It's what gets everything
running smoothly and effectively. I sometimes explain my role
using a pie as an analogy, in which everyone involved in a
project is a piece of that pie. What I do is try to make the pie
bigger so that everyone has more space, more chance to be
"Why not have a designer bear part of
the financial risk of a project? The world
would look much different"
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?Architecture is a misconception? 3 2017
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