The Museums of the Far East are situated in Laken, to the north of Brussels, and currently adjacent to a traffic junction connecting the capital to Antwerp. They consist of three separate buildings: the Chinese Pavilion, the Museum for Japanese Art and the Japanese Tower. The Chinese Pavilion and the Museum for Japanese Art are located in the centre of a public park area. The Japanese Tower and surrounding garden are to be found on the other side of the Van Praetlaan, a busy road leading to the Canal of Brussels. The tower is surrounded by the private domain of the royal palace infrastructure. An entrance pavilion was added and the pedestrian tunnel infrastructure to connect both sides was renovated in 1989. All of these buildings have been closed since 2013 due to safety and structural problems. Since the 1980s various restoration works have taken place, with currently no end in sight. The public garden surrounding the Chinese Pavilion aims to provide an oriental atmosphere in accordance with the Belgian climate and was classified in 1997. The Chinese Pavilion and the Japanese Tower have been listed as heritage by the Brussels government in 2019.

The original buildings were conceived between 1901 and 1910 under the reign of Leopold II and designed by the French orientalist architect Alexandre Marcel (1860-1928) according to European construction principles, covered partly with exotic elements imported from Shanghai and Yokoyama. They were originally intended by the king to be part of a larger open-air exposition with more exotic pavilions, inspired by the Panorama du Tour du Monde by Marcel showing buildings from the four corners of the world at the Paris World Exposition of 1900. (The current front pavilion of the Japanese Tower is the original entrance building to the 1900 exhibition.) The larger concept was never realised, making the mentioned buildings the only witnesses of this plan.

The students were asked to investigate the architectural and programmatic transformation of the site into a sustainable and contemporary museum site, generating broader use and more public relevance. This included a new definition of the entrance and the underground connection and the possibility to provide additional exhibition spaces and/or functions. Also here, we challenged the students to develop ideas and concepts based on the existing qualities and develop a critical point of view on the future role of the museum and its orientalist design.