Cultureel Centrum

Isia Isgour designed this building for a province that in the 1950s had nowhere adequate to put a theatre company: Hasselt's council resolved on a cultural centre in 1956, the foundation stone was laid on 18 May 1967 — the year of the architect's death — and the doors opened in 1972. Isgour was a modernist of the transparent school, and he filled the walls with glass and light metal, worked the exterior into the interior, and provided level entrances, adapted lifts and reserved seating for disabled visitors long before that was required of him. Two theatre halls, foyers and exhibition rooms make up the plan. The main auditorium was re-equipped in 2005, the central concourse rebuilt in 2011 as an indoor street, and the backstage rooms renewed in 2019. Eighty thousand people came to the festival that marked its fiftieth birthday in 2022.