International creative agency Base Design, a multiple PRINT Award winning studio, recently unveiled the full 360° brand world for Kanal, a transformative new cultural institution opening in November 2026. Housed inside Brussels’ monumental former Citroën garage—Kanal isn’t simply launching a museum. It is proposing a new civic model: an ever-evolving public project that merges art, architecture, performance, food, and public space under one vast roof.
Kanal brings together modern and contemporary art in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou under the banner of Kanal–Centre Pompidou, alongside architecture and landscape programming, live arts, workshops, performance spaces, and even a bakery and food experiences woven into the site’s civic life. It is hybrid by design and porous by ambition. That multiplicity required more than a static visual identity; it demanded a brand world capable of holding complexity without losing coherence.
Base responded by building a multisensory system that extends far beyond logos and typography. The identity encompasses a complete visual and motion ecosystem, a sound identity developed in collaboration with Kiosk Radio, and a set of behavioral principles that shape how Kanal acts, welcomes, and communicates. Motion and rhythm are not decorative add-ons but structural ideas, capturing the pulse of the building and the city around it. The tone of voice is flexible yet distinct, designed to move seamlessly from large-scale international exhibitions to everyday encounters in public space.
The Base Design team helped us to define an identity system that captures this perpetual state of becoming. It is a brand rooted in dialogue, movement and long-term civic relevance.
Dieter Vanthournout, Communications Director at Kanal
At the heart of the system lies a strategic concept Base calls “Flow and Overflow.” It’s a phrase that captures Kanal’s fluctuating energy—its openness to change, diversity, and even imperfection. Rather than positioning the institution as fixed or monumental, the identity reflects expansion and contraction, movement and pause. Visually and sonically, the brand behaves like a living organism, responding to context and scale. More importantly, the philosophy shapes programming attitudes and audience engagement, embedding adaptability into the institution’s cultural DNA.
Dimitri Jeurissen, Founding Partner and Executive Creative Director at Base Design, has described the challenge as creating a brand for a cultural organism rather than a conventional institution. Kanal’s scale, hybridity, and civic ambition required a system fluid enough to accommodate evolution while unified enough to anchor Brussels’ cultural identity for decades. It’s a balancing act between structure and openness—between industrial heritage and future-facing experimentation.
This project involved creating a brand for a cultural organism rather than a conventional institution.
Dimitri Jeurissen
Base Design brings significant cultural experience to this undertaking, having collaborated with institutions such as Fondation Louis Vuitton, Fondation Cartier, and Grand Palais. Its Brussels studio has longstanding ties to the city through projects with Bozar and La Monnaie / De Munt. That international perspective and deep local knowledge played an important role in Base’s unique ability to deliver a comprehensive brand experience.
What ultimately distinguishes this project is its method. The identity was not imposed; it was co-created in dialogue with the Kanal team, with cultural partners, and with the building’s industrial legacy. That collaborative depth is visible in the system’s flexibility and confidence. It feels less like a brand applied to a space and more like a language grown from it.
A project of this scale only comes to life through deep co-creation. 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. Our priority has been to articulate Kanal’s ambition as a generous, open public space for all residents of Brussels.
Thomas Leon, Design Director at Base Design Brussels
When Kanal opens in November 2026, it will present more than galleries. It will debut as a living prototype for what a public cultural institution can become in Europe: hybrid, socially engaged, architecturally grounded, and strategically fluid. By positioning Kanal as an ever-evolving cultural force rather than a fixed monument, Base Design has created an identity that moves at the speed of the city it serves—and in doing so, has set a new benchmark for cultural branding worldwide.
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