Base Design builds a brand that breathes for Brussels' vast new cultural centre, Kanal

When Brussels' former Citroën garage reopens in November 2026, it won't be as a showroom. The 40,000-square-metre site is becoming Kanal, a new cultural centre bringing together modern and contemporary art, architecture, performance, food and public space, with Centre Pompidou behind its artistic programme.

Base Design was brought in to create an identity to match. Rather than a conventional visual system, the studio has built what it calls a multi-sensory brand universe – spanning visual, sonic and motion layers – designed to flex across everything from major exhibitions to everyday encounters in public space.

"As the only museum of modern and contemporary art and architecture in Brussels, Kanal is committed to engaging with the city and its people in a way that is open, plural, and in constant evolution," says Yves Goldstein, general director at Kanal. "We're not presenting a finished institution, but a cultural project in motion – one that listens, adapts and grows with its audiences."

That's a broad ambition, and the identity system had to match it. The programme spans exhibition spaces, architecture and landscape initiatives under Kanal Architecture, live arts, workshops, performance venues and public food experiences. Base Design's challenge was to create coherence across all of it without flattening its diversity.

The guiding concept behind the system is 'Flow and Overflow' – a reference to the canal that runs alongside the building, as well as to the institution's ambition to remain open to change, diversity, and even imperfection.

In practice, that means a visual identity that expands and contracts depending on context, paired with a motion language built around rhythm and pulse. A bespoke sound identity, co-created with Brussels-based Kiosk Radio, adds another layer. The system is designed to work across everything from large-scale international exhibitions to everyday moments in public space.

"This project involved creating a brand for a cultural organism rather than a conventional institution," says Dimitri Jeurissen, founding partner and executive creative director at Base Design. "We aimed to build a system that holds all of this: fluid, expressive, and unified enough to define Brussels' cultural identity for decades to come."

The commission carries particular resonance for Base Design's Brussels studio, which has longstanding ties to the city through its work with institutions such as Bozar and La Monnaie / De Munt Opera House.

"A project of this scale only comes to life through deep co-creation," says Thomas Leon, design director at Base Design Brussels. "The identity has been built together – with the Kanal team, with Brussels, with the building's industrial heritage and with the partners who help it resonate."

When it opens in November 2026, Kanal will be unlike anything else in the city. Base Design's job was to build an identity that can keep up.