It was love at first sight.
More than 10 years ago, André Demesmaeker, an architect for the Belgian government, was asked to investigate a ceiling collapse at the Palace of Justice, a 19th-century colossus in the heart of Brussels that houses the country’s sprawling legal system. houses. decades apart.
“I opened a door I hadn’t seen in ages,” Mr. Demesmaeker recently recalled. “I entered this attic and had to start climbing to explore.”
Thereupon – and on subsequent visits to the immense building – Mr. Demesmaeker discovered a maze of chambers and antechambers, some occupied by lawyers or judges, others abandoned and mouldering. The floors, roof and walls were falling apart. Water had seeped in, so the mold grew profusely. Homeless people sometimes broke in to sleep and drank it up next to stacks of filed legal files. Many hallways stank of alcohol and urine.
Some rooms seemed frozen in time: old magazines, a coat, a coffee pot. As if the people who worked there had disappeared one morning.
At that time, in 2010, the building had been under restoration since 1984, so long that the scaffolding around it gave way and needed its own renovation. Some called the building ‘the palace of scaffolding’.
But where others saw an eyesore and a bureaucratic nightmare, Mr. Demesmaeker saw beauty, a treasure trove of historical secrets.
Four years later, Mr. Demesmaeker, now 52, was put in charge of the restoration of the colossal stone facade. The scaffolding has been refurbished and is expected to come down soon; construction of the facade is about to begin. Work on the vast interior, overseen by other officials, is just being discussed. He hopes the exterior renovation will be complete by 2030, in time for Belgium’s bicentenary.
Mr. Demesmaeker, who shrugs his shoulders forward in embarrassment or cracks jokes when he talks about himself or his work, is undeterred by the burden of a nearly 40-year renovation job. He couldn’t hide his excitement recently when, like an explorer in search of lost riches, he led a two-hour expedition through some twenty rooms.
“That’s what I like: trudge, crawl, search, investigate,” he said, his eyes twinkling, as he turned spiral staircases to examine the gutters.
The palace opened in 1883 and was once the largest building in the world. Today it occupies nine square blocks in the center of Brussels and stands as a crumbling monument to Belgium’s notorious bureaucracy.
The country has three official languages (Flemish, French and German); six parliaments (one federal and five regional bodies representing different constituencies); more than a dozen political parties; and a separatist movement. Politics is so fragile that it has sometimes been without a functioning national government for almost two years.
So Mr. Demesmaeker’s job seems ideal for a master bureaucrat, a multilingual charmer who can deftly navigate the political forces that want to advance his project or eat into his budget.
Mr Demesmaeker says he is not.
He admitted not being particularly good at languages and said he was often as baffled as anyone about levels of government. Divorced with two sons, he speaks of himself as a homebody. “I was born in Brussels. I grew up in Brussels and with a bit of luck I could even die in Brussels,” he said.
As a teenager, he wanted to be a pharmacist, but he didn’t want to be stuck in a lab. He was drawn to architecture because he liked the idea of being outside, on construction sites.
He always loved to unravel mysteries, what he called the hows and whys of things. “My father would buy a new radio. I would break it up,” he said.
He started his career as a freelance architect, but at the age of 29 he joined the Belgian Buildings Agency, which manages all state properties and is responsible for the preservation of historic buildings.
Mr. Demesmaeker has never given an interview before. During the recent palace visit, he sometimes leaned into a reporter’s recording device to speak his talking points. But more often he blushed and whispered confessions – like when he said he couldn’t explain why the restoration of the palace has taken so long.
General bureaucracy is a factor. Two long stretches without a government didn’t help. A former construction company official was arrested on corruption charges. The company that installed the scaffolding went bankrupt. And the Buildings Agency has swung back and forth between ministries during various government reorganizations.
Jean-Pierre Buyle, the chairman of the Poelaert Foundation, which campaigns to preserve the building, said ministers crucial to the success of the project often come from Flanders and have little interest in launching a project in Brussels. to fund.
Mr. Demesmaeker considers the project the job of a lifetime, perhaps a reference to the building’s original architect who died a few years before the palace was completed.
But he remains focused on the immediate challenges.
Since the palace is in the center of the city, there is only so much room to work, meaning only one of the four facades can be restored at a time. Each takes about two years to complete, a timeline that can exceed budgets and political will.
Each step requires discussions and compromises with the judges and administrators of various courts, including Belgium’s Supreme Court and the country’s highest criminal court — plus the French- and Flemish-speaking lawyers who sometimes don’t even want to share the building’s library.
Mr. Demesmaeker has one quality that experts say makes him perfect for this moment: his love for the building.
“This monument has suffered greatly from a lack of love,” said Mr. Buyle.
Mr. Demesmaeker in particular likes the layered, parallel universes of the palace. The public sees the courtrooms and other public areas, such as the Hall of Lost Footsteps, the main public hall, lavishly decorated with ornate tapestries, porcelain vases, and ivory cabinets. But just a few feet above is another hall, once used to train police officers, now empty save for a few fading posters of martial artists and a row of cracked showers.
Mr. Demesmaeker saved many objects that workers sent to the dump. A stone with graffiti tags. Pieces of wood. A plaque reading “No lawyers allowed.” He keeps them in collections of other interesting garbage that he keeps at home or in the office.
His sons have begged him to stop collecting, but during the recent visit to the palace it became clear that there is nothing he can do about it. He surveyed a lone old tire among the rubble.
“I’ve been thinking about it for my collection,” he said.
The clock is ticking, but the list of what needs to be done keeps growing. An ecosystem of butterfly bushes and elderberries has taken root within the stone walls and must be removed. Graffiti needs to be soaped up. Another ceiling recently collapsed.
Can Mr. Demesmaeker meet his 2030 deadline? He leaned forward and spoke into the recorder, “I just hope I’m done before I retire.”