Incoming 

End grain parquet in afzelia wood from the former printing house of the Belgian National Bank

Every single Belgian banknote issued between 1952 and 2020 has been printed above this floor! End grain parquet (kopshout / bois debout) is a type of flooring made up of wooden tiles cut perpendicular to the growth direction of the wood. In post-war architecture, it was often used for floors that had to be hard-wearing, or express a sense of grandeur, or both. Entrance halls to museums, restaurants in bank headquarters, etc.

This one is made of Afzelia wood, and it comes from a workplace that few people have seen in action: the printing plant of the Belgian National Bank! The ‘imprimerie’ was built between 1950 and 1952, together with the National Bank's HQ. Designed by Marcel Van Goethem, the two buildings face each other on the Berlaimont Boulevard in Brussels. For seven decades, this was the only place where Belgian banknotes were printed. It was truly a factory that operated in the heart of Brussels. To give you an idea, it has produced 3.9 billion banknotes since the introduction of the euro. A few years ago, it was decided that Belgian banknotes would be printed in Portugal and Austria, so the BNB sold the 'imprimerie'.

The building is now being converted by 3d real estate and Burco, with a design team led by DDS Plus, to house a mixed programme. At an early stage, the project team decided to organise the reuse of the end grain parquet flooring present in the building. The social enterprise Batiterre was contracted to carry out the dismantling.

But that's not the end of the story! The material we received presented glue and cement residue on the back of each piece of wood. With 204 blocks in a single square metre, this was a real barrier to reuse. After some trial and error, we found a way to remove this residue semi-automatically. Helped by workers from adapted company Travie, we are now treating the thousands of Afzelia blocks to make them ready for reuse. We can't wait to see what projects will be created with this fantastic material!

As our processing capacity is limited, we will publish the quantities we have processed on a rolling basis. First come, first served!

Pictures of the printing hall before works: Burco