Saving the steamship: Brussels’ Maison de la Radio and the urban emotions of a broadcasting institution

ABSTRACT

In the late 1990s, a sustained outreach campaign saved the former headquarters of Belgium’s national public broadcaster from demolition. This article analyses the heritage designation for the Maison de la Radio in the context of the emotional value attributed to it at different moments of its existence. In the 1950s and 1960s, Brussels became synonymous with widespread urban renewal practices, and the radio building’s preservation has come to symbolise a turn to more conservationist urban planning policies. Only by accounting for the often unspoken and hidden memories of the radio-listening public’s emotional connection to the building can we understand how this iconic Art Deco structure withstood the tide of demolitions in a politically fragmented country where little value was accorded to modern and functionalist architecture. Drawing on sound studies, emotions history, and recent work questioning ‘authorised heritage discourse,’ this article analyses both the campaign itself and the way public memory of the building developed through its broadcasting past. It argues that preservation efforts in the present are implicated in sensorial and emotional understandings of urban space that are constructed through deeper historical time, exemplifying the extent to which materiality and emotion are imbricated in conceptions of heritage.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage
• emotion
• sound
• radio
• Brussels

Acknowledgement

My thanks to Evdoxios Doxiadis, Roxanne Panchasi, Aaron Windel, and two anonymous readers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Christophe Loir offered many helpful suggestions for the research while Jos Vandenbreeden of Sint-Lukasarchief and Philippe Charlier of the Direction des monuments et sites provided access to crucial materials. I am grateful to Mr Vandenbreeden, to Sandra Bettiol (SONUMA), and to Eric van de Graaf of Joseph Diongre’s estate for permission to publish the images that appear in the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The INR’s role in the post-war cultural renaissance of Brussels is explored more fully in (Kenny 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicolas Kenny

Nicolas Kenny is a member of the History Department at Simon Fraser University.  His research examines the way sensorial and emotional experiences shape understandings of city life and urban landscapes in nineteenth and twentieth-century North America and Europe.  He is the author of The Feel of the City: Experiences of Urban Transformation (University of Toronto Press, 2014) and of Bruxelles et sa radio : émotions et sonorités, 1923-1960 (CFC Éditions, 2019).