Anorak was founded in 2004 by Cécile Chanvillard, Cédric Libert et Vincent Piroux around common ambitions and architectural interests. Gilles Vanderstocken joined the team in 2006. The practice now collaborates with 9 people on projects varying from 17 m² pieces of furniture to 100 000 m² urban structure.
The firm is based in Brussels. It has successively occupied workspaces of a public nature : a shopwindow inside a derelict shopping center, a workshop in a collective center for business & art development and nowadays a converted office building, emblematic icon of the modernist spirit in the 60's. This deliberate settlement in the heart of the urban field testify their interest in being positioned and operating within the public space.
Anorak produces architecture within several contexts simultaneously – conceptual, programmatic, social, historical, urban, landscaped, or geographical contexts.The diversity of contexts feeds a continuous process of thought regarding modalities of both an intellectual organization of the project and a sensorial experience of space itself.
To practise architecture is the act of materialising a statment by means of a specific spatial articulation. Anorak singularizes strong spatial proposals that engage speculative and practical stakes, extending fonctionnalities to the domain of architectural experience. The projects are envisaged as the narration of contextual, programmatic and imaginary conditions.