BRUSK

This guide to BRUSK in Bruges opens on an argument over meters: city officials wanted a modest exhibition hall no taller than five and a half meters, but the architects Robbrecht en Daem and Olivier Salens spent seven years insisting a painter needs the same tall northern light a classical studio gets. It traces the tucked-away school site that stood there for years unnoticed, and the patient, house-by-house negotiation that talked a city hemmed in by a Gothic belfry into allowing something far larger. You'll hear how the objection period played out once the case had been made. Listen for the carillon drifting over the rooftops as you step inside.