Shaping Collective Life in Twentieth Century Belgian Social Housing

Abstract

During the twentieth-century the rise of social housing programs triggered two specific architectural transformations: firstly, the process of rationalization of the domestic realm; secondly, the integration of residential units with open spaces, civic buildings and services. The latter became central to spatially structure the relation between autonomous individual living patterns, the social needs of everyday life and the political/ideological implications of this relation. The paper discusses the transformation of social housing projects in Belgium during the twentieth-century focusing on two cases, the garden settlements in the 1920s and the Modernist neighborhood units of the 1950s and 1960s, where the question of collective life became central. Acknowledging the opposition between “community” and the “social” throughout modernity, the paper interrogates how these cases attempted to reconfigure urban and architectural principles in light of the shifting value of collectivity in housing.

Keywords:

• social housing
• collective space
• community
• housing programs
• urban theory
• modernity
• Belgium

Notes

1. With the rise of the nation state, the “social” becomes a precise field of investigation, description and management of the population. For an introduction to the notion of “social” see Gilles Deleuze, “The Rise of the Social,” in The Policing of Families (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), ix–xvii.

2. The expression “social housing” is changeable and controversial. In current use, it refers to public or not-for-profit, subsidized forms of accommodation, mostly rental, targeting the lower and vulnerable classes. On the topic, Kathleen Scanlon, Christine Whitehead, and Melissa Fernandez Arrigoitia, “Introduction,” in Social Housing in Europe, ed. Kathleen Scanlon, Christine Whitehead, and Melissa Fernandez Arrigoitia (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 1–20.

3. The impact of Taylorism and rationalization on inter-war architecture is discussed in Mary Mcleod, “‘Architecture or Revolution’: Taylorism, Technocracy, and Social Change,” Art Journal 43, no. 2 (1983): 132–147. On discussion of the rationalization of domestic space at CIAM II and the politcs of the Existenzminimum see Andrea Migotto and Marson Korbi, “Between Rationalization and Political Project. The ‘Existenzminimum’ from Klein and Teige to Today,” Urban Planning 4, no. 3 (2019).

4. Pascal De Decker, “Facets of Housing and Housing Policies in Belgium,” Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 23, no. 3 (2008): 155–71. The Belgian politics and culture of home-ownership are thoroughly analyzed in Catherine Mougenot, “Promoting the Single-Family House in Belgium. The Social Construction of Model Housing,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 1988.

5. Exposition Internationale de La Coopération et Des Oeuvres Sociales. Livre d’Or (Gent: Société coopérative “Volksdrukkerij,” 1924).

6. In Dutch, De Nationale Maatschappij voor Goedkope Woningen en Woonvertrekken.

7. Catherine Mougenot, “Logement, Assistance et Promotion En Belgique,” Les Annales de La Recherche Urbaine 33, no. 1 (1987): 78–86.

8. The historiography of inter-War housing programs is vast. For a general overview consider Manfredo Tafuri et al., Architettura Socialdemocrazia Olanda 1900/1940 (Venezia: Arsenale Cooperativa Editrice, 1979); Timothy Benton, “Le Corbusier and the Loi Loucher,” AA Files 7, (1984); Ludovica Scarpa, Martin Wagner e Berlino. Casa e Citta’ Nella Repubblica Di Weimar 1918–1933 (Roma: Officina Edizioni, 1983). The sui-generis case of Vienna is analyzed in Eve Blau, The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919–1934 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998).

9. De Decker, “Facets of Housing and Housing Policies in Belgium.” For an account of the Belgian reconstruction, see Marcel Smets, ed., “Resurgam.” La Reconstruction En Belgique Apres 1914. (Credit Communal de Belgique, 1985).

10. A reference work is Emile Vandervelde, L’exode Rural et Le Retour Aux Champs (Paris: Felix Alcan Editeur, 1903).

11. Marcel Smets, L’avènement de La Cité-Jardin En Belgique. Histoire de l’habitat Social En Belgique de 1830 à 1930 (Brussels-Liège: Pierre Mardaga, 1977).

12. Affiliated companies were of three types: public, private, cooperative. “Le Program de l’Habitation a Bon Marche,” L’Habitation a Bon Marche, 1921.

13. For a philosophical history of the notion of “community,” see Roberto Esposito, Communitas. The Origin and Destiny of the Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).

14. Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

15. Dennis Hardy, Alternative Communities in Nineteenth Century England (London: Longman, 1979).

16. Pëtr Kropotkin, Fields, Factories, and Workshops: Or Industry Combined with Agriculture and Brain Work with Manual Work (London: The Anarchist Library, 1912).

17. Ebenezer Howard, To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1898)

18. For a criticism of the culture and ideological intentions behind Howards's model, see Jean Yves Tizot, “Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City Idea and the Ideology of Industrialism,” Cahiers Victoriens and Edouardiens, no. 87 (2018): 1–11.

19. Herman Stynen, “Le Cite’ Jardin Tra Naturalismo e Razionalismo,” in Rassegna 34/2, 1988, 16–23.

20. Smets, L’avènement de La Cité-Jardin En Belgique, 140.

21. Karina Van Herck and Evert Vandeweghe, “Sociale Huisvesting: De Tuinwijkgedachte (1919–1926)” 2016. https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/themas/124

22. “Le Probleme de La Construction Dans Le Faubourg-Jardins,” L’Habitation a Bon Marche, 1921.

23. “Salubrité Des Habitations et Mesures Diverses. Project de Reglement,” L’Habitation à Bon Marché, 1921.

24. “Le Probleme de La Construction Dans Le Faubourg-Jardins.” Translated by the Author.

25. On the politics of garden settlements, see Raphael Verwilghen, “La Section de l’habitat à La Section de La Reconstruction,” La Cite’, 1919 and Jan Eggericx, “Le Principes Essentiels d’un Quartier-Jardin,” La Cite’, 1920.

26. “La Cité-Jardin Du Kapelleveld,” L’Habitation a’ Bon Marche’, 1924.

27. Herman Stynen, Urbanisme et Société: Louis Van Der Swaelmen (1883–1929). Animateur Du Mouvement Moderne En Belgique (Brussels: Pierre Mardaga, 1979).

28. Smets, L’avènement de La Cité-Jardin En Belgique.

29. Cécile Vanderpelen-Diagre, “Le Monde Catholique et Les Cités-Jardins à Bruxelles Dans l’entre-Deux-Guerres,” Archives de Sciences Sociales Des Religions 165 (2014): 163–183.

30. The idea of individual and community imagined by cooperatives was similar to that developed by inter-war theories of Personalism. For an introduction to the essential notions of Personalism see Emmanuel Mounier, Rivoluzione Personalista e Comunitaria (Milano: Edizioni di Comunita’, 1955).

31. “Compte Rendu de l’activite de la Société Nationale des Habitations à Bon Marché,” L’Habitation à Bon Marché, 1926.

32. Anne Martin-Langlet, “L’habitat Collectif et Les Initiatives Patronales Dans l’Industrie Textile Septentrionale Entre Les Deux Guerres,” Revue Du Nord 374, no. 1 (2008): 153–72. For a general overview on factory-towns, see Marcelo J. Borges and Susana B. Torres, eds., Company Towns. Labor, Space and Power Relations Across Time and Continents (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012).

33. Giorgio Piccinato, La Costruzione Dell’urbanistica. Germania 1871–1914 (Roma: Officina Edizioni, 1977). The tenets of neo-classical economics were outlined in Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013).

34. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977).

35. In 1956, the NMGWW was renamed NMH (Dutch for Nationale Maatschappij voor de Huisvesting).

36. Cyrille Crappe, “De Parkwijk van Het ‘Plaine de Droixhe’,” Wonen, 1962. Translated by the Author.

37. Hilde Heynen, “Belgium and the Netherlands: Two Different Ways of Coping with the Housing Crisis, 1945–70,” Home Cultures 7, no. 2 (2010): 159–177. On European postwar housing programs, see Kenny Cupers, The Social Project. Housing Postwar France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Miles Glendinning and Stefan Muthesius, Tower Block. Modern Public Housing in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1994).

38. Michael Ryckewaert, Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State: Infrastructure, Planning and Architecture 1945–1973 (Rotterdam: 010 Publisher, 2011).

39. Katrien Theunis, “De Wet De Taeye. De Individuele Woning Als Bouwsteen van De Welvaartsstaat,” in Wonen in Welvaart. Woningbouw En Wooncultuur in Vlaanderen, 1948–1973, ed. Karina Van Herck and Tom Avermaete (Rotterdam: 010 Uitgeverij, 2006), 66–77; Fredie Floré, Lessen in Goed Wonen: Woonvoorlichting in België 1945–1958 (Leuven: Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2010).

40. The urban situation after the war in two exemplary industrial cities, Antwerp and Liège, was assessed in Jan Gaack, “De Huisvesting Politiek Te Antwerpen,” Wonen, 1960 and J. Stassart, “Bevolking En Woningen in Het Luikse,” Wonen, 1962.

41. Onderrichtingen Aan de Aangenomen Vennootschappen Voor Het Opmaken van de Bouwontwerpen (Nationale Maatschappij voor de Huisvesting, 1953).

42. In the document, terms like “community” and “public space” were subsumed in the more abstract couple “individual-collective.” Le Corbusier, La Charte d’Athènes (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1957).

43. Hilde Heynen, “Modernity and Community. A Difficult Combination,” in Making a New World: Architecture & Communities in Interwar Europe, ed. Tom Avermaete and Rajesh Heynickx (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2012).

44. Annie Pedret, Team 10: An Archival History (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 52.

45. Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi, “CIAM 8. The Heart of the City as the Symbolical Resilience of the City,” International Planning History Society Proceedings. 17, no. 2 (2016): 135–144.

46. Kees Somer, The Functional City. The CIAM and Cornelis van Eesteren, 1928–1960 (Rotterdam: NAi Publisher, 2007); Donald Leslie Johnson, “Origin of the Neighborhood Unit,” Planning Perspectives 17, no. 3 (2002): 227–245.

47. Geoffrey Grulois, “From Region to Neighborhood Unit: The Urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937–52,” Vlc Arquitectura-Research Journal 2, no. 1 (2015): 1–31.

48. Renaat Braem, “Vox Populi,” Bouwen En Wonen, 1955.

49. Pedret, Team 10: An Archival History, 89.

50. Francis Strauven, Renaat Braem. Architect (Bruxelles: AAM, 1985).

51. Gaack, “De Huisvesting Politiek Te Antwerpen.”

52. Els de Vos and Selin Geerinckx, “Modernist High-Rises in Postwar Antwerp. Two Answers to the Same Question,” CIDADES, Comunidades e Territórios, no. 33 (2017).

53. The importance of locating schools in proximity to residential units is remarked in the statement 19 of the Charte d’Athène.

54. E. J. Bastiaenen, “De C.M. ‘Huisvesting Antwerpen’ En de Sociale Woningbouw,” Wonen, 1960.

55. Renaat Braem, “Over de Wooneenheid Kiel-Antwerpen,” Bouwen En Wonen, 1955.

56. Siegfried Giedion, Fernand Léger, and Josep Lluís Sert, “Nine Points on Monumentality,” in Architecture, You and Me (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943): 48–51.

57. Emile Parent and Jacques Toint, “De Huisvesting in de Luikse Agglomeratie,” Wonen, 1962.

58. Crappe, “De Parkwijk van Het ‘Plaine de Droixhe’.”

59. “Le Complexe Du Champ Des Manoeuvers a Liege,” La Maison, 1957.

60. Lewis Mumford, “The Neighborhood and the Neighborhood Unit,” Town Planning Review 24, no. 4 (1954): 256–270.

61. Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (New York: Rizzoli, 1977): 9.

62. Anatole Kopp, Quand Le Moderne n’était Pas Un Style Mais Une Cause (Paris: École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, 1988).

63. Pascal De Decker and Caroline Newton, “At the Fall of Utopia,” Urbani Izziv/Urban Challenge, 20, no. 2 (2009): 74–82.

64. Kenny Cupers, “Mapping and Making Community in the Postwar European City,” Journal of Urban History 42, no. 6 (2016): 1009–1028.

65. The reflection has been recently posed again in Catherine Sabbah, “Ceci n’est Pas Un Logement Social,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 433 (2019). The recent bibliography on collective tenure and domestic architecture is growing. Among the latest see Dominique Boudet, ed., New Housing in Zurich: Typologies for a Changing Society (Zurich: Park Books, 2017) and Susanne Schmid, Dietmar Eberle, and Margrit Hugentobler, eds., A History of Collective Living. Models of Shared Living (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek [grant number 1S97119N].

Notes on contributors

Andrea Migotto

Andrea Migotto is an Architect and PhD student at the Faculty of Architecture of KU Leuven (Belgium). He studied at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and at the TU Delft (the Netherlands), where he was awarded his Masters in Architecture in 2015. His thesis work gained several prizes and has been widely published on magazines and in exhibitions. He worked as an architect for offices in Brussels (Belgium) and in Melbourne (Australia). His research project aims to tackle established notions, models and architectural forms of social housing. Funded by the FWO and thanks to a collaboration with a social housing company in Antwerp (Belgium), the PhD aims to identify innovative strategies to connect the field of social policies, development procedures and ownership models with experimental forms of collective living in Flanders.