"The contradiction between Belgium's reputation as 'a country without architecture', and the evident 'success story' of recent Belgian architecture, makes the subject of Something Completely Different . Perceptively told, sometimes with irony, van Gerrewey turns Belgium's troubled relationship with architecture into an allegory for the architecture of our times." --Adrian Forty, Professor Emeritus of Architectural History, UCL "Christophe Van Gerrewey excels in the depiction of events and works that draw on the peculiarities of Belgium's cultural and political history. He analyzes a number of architectural achievements as singular, radical responses to a series of exacerbated common issues in that country, weaving experiences of his own life into his narrative. Precisely researched, convincingly argued, smartly constructed, and subtly written, this is an enlightening, inspiring book, which also reads as 'something completely different' in the field of contemporary architectural writing." --Françoise Fromonot, architect and critic, Professor at ENSA Paris-Belleville "No other territory is so well suited to Christophe Van Gerrewey's essay writing as that to be found at the crossing of the architectural history of his native Belgium and the currents that locate it in the world. In a series of voyages across this modestly scaled yet exceedingly rich terrain, Van Gerrewey builds an image that both exploits and survives its contradictions. This Belgian echo of Boyd's Australian Ugliness offers an incisive yet sympathetic encounter with the last two centuries of Belgium and that for which it can be made to stand, told through architectural projects, artworks, infrastructure, and literary fragments.

These pages revel in the local and the specific while deftly showing how they are, really, neither, entirely." --Andrew Leach, Professor of Architecture, University of Sydney.