ABSTRACT
In Brussels’ European district, through deliberate policy as well as concurrent inadvertent action, new ‘urban imaginaries’ are emerging of a capital that is ‘European,’ rather than ‘national’ (Huyssen, 2008; Cinar & Bender, 2007). With the rise of electronic media, the Internet has become another domain in which the EU can represent itself, placing key buildings in new contexts and selectively depicting the physical environment in photographs and abstract drawings. Many of the actual buildings of the EU institutions in Brussels are anonymous corporate structures, but they have nonetheless helped make Brussels European. Through its demand in regard to location, size and function and sometimes through concrete architectural requirements each institution has co-shaped its own urban footprint, and each building they occupy tells important stories: about an institution’s role in designing ‘Europe’; about each institution’s particular history, its evolving institutional form, its expanding territory; and about its perception of the importance of visual representation in the city. Numerous other functions have come to the European district or its vicinity because of the presence of the European institutions. Hotels, restaurants and shops cater to the EU employees, their visitors and tourists and co-create the European character of the city that is visible in many details from flags, to signs, from international journals to the type of trinkets sold in kiosks.
