First phase of Europe’s largest mural debuts in Brussels

Artists have finished the first section of a new mural on Avenue Louise in Brussels, which, when finished will be the largest public mural in Europe. Eventually, all three sides of the concrete portion of the IT Tower will be covered.

The concrete tower is attached to – and even taller than – the 25-floor IT Tower at Avenue Louise 480. It is windowless, housing the IT Tower’s technical applications and utilities.

In the works for a year now, the mural on one side of the building has made its debut, and a second side is nearly complete. Called ‘Ground Up’, it looks like paint and was designed by three Brussels street artists, but it is actually made up of stickers.

“The entire surface of the building – 4,000 square metres – has been carefully split into numbered sections,” Olivier Geelhand of Promo Signs told VRT. “We basically made a gigantic puzzle and printed every section separately onto vinyl stickers.”

Harmony

More than 1,000 stickers are needed to cover the 95-metre high tower, owned by AG Real Estate. The company hopes it will become a tourist attraction.

The urban artists responsible for the design of ‘Ground Up’ – Alvari, Kool Koor en Mino1 – are all fans of 1980s graffiti. The starting point was to “create a work that would bring together architecture and nature and bring harmony to the city,” Kool Koor told VRT.

The owner, artists and signage professionals all watched another company attach the stickers to the side of the building. Alpibat is specialised in carrying out project in hard-to-reach areas using climbing equipment. “I’ve been working with climbing gear now for 30 years,” said Luc Dethine, who hoisted himself 90 metres in the air to place the stickers. “In all those years, I’ve had a few crazy projects like this, like renovating the Atomium and placing lightning rods in the nuclear power plant at Tihange.”

Dethine and his fellow workers should have the rest of the building finished in about a month.

Photo ©Nils Quintelier/BELGA