Take off at the exhibition Flight in Brussels
Humans have always wanted to take to the skies like birds. For them, it's natural, but we need the help of technology. The exhibition Flight offers an eye-opening look at this fascinating phenomenon.
If you think about it, our skies are teeming with both natural and artificial wings gliding their way through the air. The natural ones belong to birds. Thanks to their aerodynamic shape, muscle power, light hollow bones, a tail and some flying lessons from their parents, they are guaranteed to get off the ground. Unfortunately, we humans lack most of these things. In the Middle Ages, daredevils thought that all they had to do was jump off a high church tower wearing a suit of feathers and that God and the wind would do the rest. It didn't end well for them. No, if we want to get airborne, we first need to take a good look at how birds, bats and insects do it, and then try to copy them with various mechanical accessories.
Before the motorised aeroplanes developed by famous aviation pioneers, there were hot-air balloons and the ill-fated Zeppelin. The helicopter, the increasingly common drone, the paper aeroplane, the glider, the Concorde, the lightning-fast peregrine falcon, the hummingbird that can fly backwards... they all feature in this exhibition, which stands the intersection of nature and technology.
The exhibition runs until 9 August 2026, plenty of time to fly along and check it out.