ABOUT
Zaventem Ateliers is not a collective, it is a framework. A vast, repurposed paper factory near Brussels, stripped back to its bones, now sheltering 26 fully independent ateliers. Each studio stands alone, with its own rhythm, tools, and obsessions. The building does not lead, it listens. It holds space. It offers walls, weight, and light, and lets the rest unfold.
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let the brutality of the place produce collisions
Zaventem Ateliers is a place for artisans, artists, designers and set designers to meet, discuss, create and produce.
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Here, furniture makers, sculptors, textile artists, metalworkers, lighting designers and others coexist. They work side by side, not under a single vision, but through the friction and freedom of proximity. What binds them is not aesthetic or discipline but a shared commitment to matter, its resistance, its potential, its transformation.
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Group exhibitions by Zaventem Ateliers work not because of uniformity but because of tension. Each project speaks its own language, but the power comes in the chorus, the clash, the echo, the unexpected alignments. It is this convergence of independent practices that creates a living, breathing installation.
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Zaventem Ateliers is not just a physical space. It is a statement. A belief in slowness, in process, in making things with hands and meaning. And when its inhabitants move together, they make things that extend far beyond the building’s walls. Baranzate Ateliers in Milan was one such moment, transforming an abandoned industrial space into a collective work of presence and force. So was Hells Kitchen, where shared chaos turned into shared ritual. Or the project in support of Ukraine, where the act of making became an act of solidarity.
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A Living Manifesto
Zaventem is at its most powerful when it acts as one body made of many voices. Plural, independent, and free. Not a brand, but a system. Not a style, but a way of working. A manifesto carved in dust and time, in steel and wax, in earth and fire.
