Asfalt Billboard Coiffeur. Notes on Bizet Bizar

This book tells the story of Bizet Bizar, an activation of a former car park in Brussels, Belgium, between 2022 and 2024. As part of the Bizet Sustainable Neighbourhood Contract, Dear Pigs, Werkplaats Walter, and MUS-E were appointed to breathe new life into the site pending a new urban development.

From three perspectives – urban nature, art, and community – various processes emerged that make the site what it is today. Project partners, residents and neighbourhood organizations found each other in unexpected collaborations; new networks took shape. At the same time, the process raised many questions: When will the garden finally be ready? When will the gate be open?

In this book, we outline the development of Bizet Bizar through an alphabet of words and images. Each word opens a window onto the rich archive of the place. The abécédaire inspired six authors – Sonia Dermience, Gideon Boie, Pascal Gielen, Eleonora Campenella, Edith Wouters and Jolien Naeyaert – to reflect on the project. The ‘alphabet primer’ and essays interlock and engage in dialogue with each other. They can be read in any order: an exercise in open-endedness that invites us to reflect on and fantasize about how we can shape our social environment.

Bizet Bizar continues to produce and collect stories. This book is therefore neither the conclusion of two years of action, nor a classic project documentation, but rather a look at future actions in the urban space.

With this publication, Dear pigs takes up a position within the architectural and urban planning discourse that advocates the importance of experimental development models and practices of permanent temporariness. Not to offer solutions, but to create space for questions, for cross-pollination, for the unfinished. We hope that readers will be challenged to celebrate unexpected twists, chance encounters and open endings as ingredients of an inclusive city.

The typefaces used are Exposure by 205TF and Neue Haas Grotesk by Christian Schwartz.

Main text is set in Exposure, a typeface that balances an intentionally unfinished character with full legibility. Secondary content is set at a slightly smaller point size in Neue Haas Grotesk.

Graphic design by Els+Onno. Concept and composition by Dear pigs, (Martha Meijer, Jasmien De Ryck, Jan Laute and Lode Vranken). Photography by Sarah Michielsen and others.

Asfalt Billboard Coiffeur. Notes on Bizet Bizar is available from Public Space.