Brussels “Flower Carpet” in 2024 (15-18 of August) was the most beautiful and conveying the city’s DNA in recent years. In the ephemeral Art Nouveau style that has flashed so quickly but vividly on the architectural and design scene of Europe and of which it is one of the capitals. Just 4 days of blooming on one of the most beautiful squares in Europe – it has brought joy to thousands of Belgians and tourists.

This year the design of the Carpet was entrusted to an artist whose specialty by its very name is to decorate the streets of cities – street art. The Liège magician, Océane Cornille was inspired by a metaphor from the life of flora – Brussels as a giant plant with branched rhizome of neighborhoods and municipalities breaks through the asphalt into the sunlight as a beautiful flower. The roots intersect to create a dense and organic network that reflects the diversity and vitality of Brussels. Each line of the “Flower Carpet” reflects a street, avenue and social connection in the city. The depicted “iris”, the symbol of Brussels and one of the main decorative elements of Art Nouveau, is the tradition and device of the city, water is the flow of urban life and creative energy.

In 2024, the Belgian queen of floral arrangements, the begonia, was supplanted by the dahlia, a smaller but more resilient flower. Which required more work from the volunteer pavers. 80 percent of the Carpet contained 450 flowers per square meter (!).

Watch an interview with urban designer Océane Cornille, who has lent her inexhaustible creative energy to the Carpet. She travels the world extensively, painting on the road, making street collages and experimenting with new techniques. Her creations live on a wide variety of substrates: paper, glass, walls. Painting, dancing, screen printing, sewing. Her universe is a vast territory where experimentation takes on new meanings. Under the pseudonym Whoups, the artist composes what she calls “graphic poetry filled with symbols, in which both feelings and materials are mixed”. Let’s just say that her graphiti is even on the walls of the prison in Dendermonde.