Every time I’m exploring this city it keeps surprising me. Usually through constructions I come across on my trips that then take me a lot of effort to know more about. But sometimes it goes the other way around. This housing project came onto my radar through researching interesting housing complexes in Brussels. Marked it on my “to explore” map and kinda forgot about it. Until a trip through the eastern border of Brussels made me make a detour to check what this mysterious mark on my map was all about.
Amplified by it’s air of “spaceship dropped into an unsuspecting neighbourhood” it left me in awe when I finally saw it in real life. I have developed a love for 60s and 70s architecture that hasn’t forgotten the core ideas of modernism and tries to update them. Architecture that evolves through incorporating new insights rather than embellishing bad ideas like post-modernism did far too often.
One of the biggest new ideas here was to mix people with disabilities with able-bodied people. Building for everyone so that people with a physical disability aren’t discriminated is still not common practice. My own experiences with managing public building projects have made it clear that even the best architects forget or struggle with a thoroughly inclusive design. So it was a big surprise to discover such an ambitious public housing project thought up in the late 1960s. Certainly because the ambition goes far beyond who this project was meant for. The urbanistic and architectural decisions go well past what was common back then (or even now). Read more about it in this remarkably extensive article on the Brussels heritage inventory.
Aesthetically it is a child of its time but with a exceptional attention for detail and it has aged far better than a lot of its contemporaries. Currently the buildings are being renovated but if the few images I found are anything to go by it will lose part of its character like with so many updates to get old buildings in line with current energetic norms. Another planned upgrade, which looks more promising, is the masterplan for the surroundings.
About the architects I haven’t found much more than another, similar housing project in Woluwé listed in the inventory. Apparently the office moved its activities to France shortly after the Woluwé projects. Can’t say I’m as much in awe with the projects listed on their as I am with the Cité de l’Amitié. But architectural practices rarely age well in my opinion.
Well, this is well worth the trip and perfect to combine with the Alma campus of the UCL, which is a treat on itself with the contemporary and not dissimilar work of Lucien Kroll and other bits of interesting architecture.
NOT IN YOUR GUIDE (BRUSSELS) 