This contribution is part of an investigation exploring the history of architecture exhibitions in Flanders, Belgium, from the 1980s to 2000s. It focuses on exhibitions (co)produced and/or hosted by architectural platforms active during this period: Stichting Architektuurmuseum (S/AM), Centrum voor Architectuur en Design (cAD), deSingel and Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi). Each of these initiatives was invested in the development of discourses on architecture and the built environment through the production of publications, exhibitions and public programmes. Looking at their professional, intellectual and educational role sheds light on how they contributed to the institutionalization of architecture and urban culture in Flanders. Whereas several observers refer to an ‘absence’ of public and intellectual debate about architecture in Flanders until the 1980s, the period from the mid-1980s onwards has been considered as a shifting moment in which initiatives by groups of architects and their allies started to engage more steadily in cultural and discursive activities. It is also a period in which urban design and territorial planning broke through as part of an extended architectural discipline that increasingly prompts a larger public discussion. Among the aspects that contributed to make Flemish architecture distinctive during this period was its strategy to develop singular projects acting upon a supposedly featureless and normative Belgian suburbia and a conscious engagement with and absorption of its spatial context, while exposing its production within a cultural sphere. A series of thematic exhibitions that focused on urban design and territorial projects are being confronted to address this claim and determine how displaying an extending scale and field of architecture could contribute to support alternative tools and visions for the spatial practice and assert its developments as a matter of public concern.