Lunch with an Architect is intended as a forum for reflection and discussion to improve the quality of architecture in Brussels.

Through 3 meetings a year, Lunch with an Architect, in cooperation with Flagey, provides the real estate world with a window on the major contemporary events in the world of architecture, the more specifically Belgian issues, and the emblematic projects under way.

Set up in 1975 by Rem Koolhaas, OMA is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. Ellen van Loon is one of the partners leading the offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, Doha and Dubai.
OMA’s buildings and masterplans around the world insist on intelligent forms while inventing new possibilities for content and everyday use. AMO, its sister company, is a research and design studio that works in areas beyond architecture that today have an increasing influence on architecture itself: media, politics, renewable energy, technology, publishing, fashion. AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines.

The main objective of any design exercise executed within the ?rm is to provide the client with new, original concepts and a practical architecture with visionary ambitions. In all projects, OMA strives to go beyond the standard solution and is consequently able to de?ne new typologies. Its strategy to tackle projects is based on two fundamental principles: research and collaboration.

Within research, OMA’s philosophy rejects any rush to architectural form. It is its proven experience that by taking adequate time to think with the clients before starting to design, the practice can ultimately accelerate the design process and provide buildings of greater quality for a given budget.

During every phase of the design process, OMA leads an extended series of intimate collaborations—brainstorm sessions, presentations and workshops—between clients, engineers, architects and other crucial participants of intellectual collaborations such as curators, sociologists, and anthropologists mobilized by AMO think tank; as well as practical collaborators such as cost estimators, construction managers, contractors, and specialty consultants.

Through these events, programmatic and engineering concepts are fully integrated in the formation of the initial design concepts, rather than being an ‘afterthought’ to aesthetic imperatives; this provides the client with the maximum built quality. By means of this approach, the knowledge of all advisors can be used to come up with an optimal design from which all criteria have been analyzed. The design is therefore a product, which is realized in close collaboration with the client.

OMA's completed recent projects include Fondazione Prada, DAC/BLOX in Copenhagen, Rothschild's London headquarters and Fondation d'Entreprise Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Earlier buildings include Casa da Música in Porto,Euralille masterplan, CCTV Headquarters in Beijing and Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003).

OMA-designed buildings currently under construction include Taipei Performing Arts Centre, the Axel Springer Campus and the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, the RAI NHow Hotel in Amsterdam, Norra Tornen in Stockholm and Prince Plaza in Shenzhen.

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