A chair as an artwork to reduce sewer overflows
Have you already spotted this special chair along the canal in Brussels? Are you one of the few people allowed to sit on it? The interactive artwork is meant to draw attention to the poor water quality of our waterways caused by frequent sewer overflows, and to help inspire solutions.
As you approach the chair, you are first confronted with a message written on the ground: ‘No seat for canal flushers’. Panels behind the artwork explain what this means: only those who have never flushed their toilet into the canal are allowed to sit on the chair. Many will automatically assume they’ve never done that. But the reality is different. Anyone in Brussels who has ever flushed a toilet during rainfall is a potential contributor to the pollution of the canal and the river Senne through sewer overflows.
When it rains, stormwater in Brussels flows directly into the sewer system, where it mixes with polluted wastewater. And because the sewers cannot handle all this water, they overflow through the sewer overflows, first into the Senne, and as a second stage into the canal. Each month, around five sewer overflows occur into the Senne and one to three into the canal. That is why you contribute to pollution when you flush the toilet during rainfall.
Learn more on this page about the problem of sewer overflows.
As you approach the chair, you are first confronted with a message written on the ground: ‘No seat for canal flushers’. Panels behind the artwork explain what this means: only those who have never flushed their toilet into the canal are allowed to sit on the chair. Many will automatically assume they’ve never done that. But the reality is different. Anyone in Brussels who has ever flushed a toilet during rainfall is a potential contributor to the pollution of the canal and the river Senne through sewer overflows.
When it rains, stormwater in Brussels flows directly into the sewer system, where it mixes with polluted wastewater. And because the sewers cannot handle all this water, they overflow through the sewer overflows, first into the Senne, and as a second stage into the canal. Each month, around five sewer overflows occur into the Senne and one to three into the canal. That is why you contribute to pollution when you flush the toilet during rainfall.
Learn more on this page about the problem of sewer overflows.
The chair is installed at the Molenbeek lock near the Ninoofse Poort, a spot where many people pass by. The aim is to reach as many people as possible and teach them something about the issue. The more people are aware, the stronger the public demand becomes to solve the problem and the more individuals can contribute themselves.
The artwork itself shows one of the solutions. Can you see it? No? The chair is made of several pieces of concrete, with the seat taken from a paving slab that was removed elsewhere in Brussels during a depaving project. At that location, rainwater can now infiltrate into the soil. And this is one of the things that must happen to reduce sewer overflows. We need to depave the city wherever possible so that rainwater can infiltrate where it falls. Anyone with a garden or driveway can do this themselves.
A second solution is disconnecting roofs, streets, and squares from the sewer system so that rainwater can no longer flow into it. This can be done by directing rainwater toward rain gardens or swales. During rainfall, these fill up temporarily, after which the water gradually infiltrates into the ground and disappears. If you’re unsure about doing this in your own garden, remember that it already rains in your garden anyway, the small extra amount from your roof won’t make a huge difference. In public spaces, this rainwater can be captured in many different ways, such as a lower‑lying football field that serves as a pitch in dry weather and as a storm basin during heavy rain. Or take a look at the plans we created for the park around the Basilica of Koekelberg if that roof were to be disconnected. The city of Copenhagen also has a beautiful Cloudburst Management Plan with 300 different projects throughout the city to disconnect rainwater. You can watch a presentation of the plan from our 2023 ‘Where Does The Rain Go’ conference.
A third solution is slowing down rainwater. If we succeed in doing that, not all the water reaches the sewer system at once, which means the sewers overflow less quickly.
Read more about our other projects around the sewage overflow problem:
For the creation of the chair, we drew inspiration from the artwork A Basic Instinct by Anna Aagaart Jensen and were led to the Belgian artist Lionel Jadot. Lionel creates many artworks from reclaimed materials and comes from a family of furniture makers, a perfect combination. He also happened to be working on a series of chairs made from dismantled pieces of asphalt: the Lost Highway Chairs.
The chair was inaugurated on 25 November 2025 in the presence of Lionel Jadot, the Port of Brussels, Brussels Environment, members of parliament, and other supporters. We asked all of them to sign the artwork as a gesture of commitment to working together toward reducing sewer overflows to zero, in order to achieve healthy and clean waterways. Would you like to make that commitment as well? Then don’t hesitate to go and add your signature to the chair.
