A vast area unfolds on Pottelberg, containing a multitude of former factory and office buildings, built through the course of many decades in different building styles. Several of these structures are adorned with the stylized image of a seahorse. This blue and white logo was designed in 1950 by Flemish artist Octave Landuyt for Van Marcke, Belgium’s leading sanitary and heating distributor that recently moved their activities from this terrain to their current state of the art facilities outside the city. This chapter of the site proves to have been preceded by a long history of consecutive activities, as archeological finds have documented occupation since the Mesolithic period. The name, meaning pot’s hill, must refer to the clay deposits in the soil, as the famous Pottelberg roofing tiles were produced on a massive factory site further down the road. Starting in the early 20th century, Kunstwerkstede De Coene had their headquarters at this very location. Initially a furniture and interior workshop inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, the company later introduced laminated wood and produced for the likes of Henry Van De Velde, Marcel Breuer, Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, Renaat Braem, Léon Stynen, Eero Saarinen and Harry Bertoia. After the Second World War, the company expanded into prefabricated laminated trusses for the construction industry, becoming a company operating worldwide and building many of the pavilions for the Expo ’58 World Exhibition in Brussels. One of these can still be found on the premises. The emergence of the Biënnale Interieur in 1968 would be hard to imagine without the dynamic presence of De Coene in Kortrijk. When De Coene was dissolved in the 1970s, the company Van Marcke took over the terrain and the existing buildings, from where they kept expanding until their recent relocation. Today the area is being redeveloped into a hotbed for innovative projects through LandMarck.
Whilst we navigate past different building layers of the abandoned site, the passage of time becomes tangible and memories of recent and distant pasts seem to float in the air. Recurringly appearing as a déjà vu, the swirling shape of the seahorse becomes a spirit guide through the desolate alleys and corridors, revealing hidden corners and forgotten traces of previous lives. The Latin name for the seahorse is Hippocampus, which happens to be the same name given to a mysterious part of the human brain that is called after the marine creature because of their physical resemblance. Similar to the earth that is divided into two hemispheres in cartography to communicate spatial information for navigation, the brain is divided into two cerebral hemispheres, each of these containing their own hippocampus. Though the exact workings of the human cerebrum remain elusive to neuroscience, these hippocampi seem to be instrumental in the creation and retrieval of memories, and subsequently in spatial orientation which enables navigation. For the occasion we invite you to allow the seahorse in our minds to draw the chariot, escorting us on this labyrinthine journey through the currents of space and time.
