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Synthesizing "the problem of the home": The Buildings and Dwellings Pavilion at the Brussels Worlds's Fair of 1958

par Flore, Fredie;Devos, Rika
Editeur scientifique Caramellino, Gaia;Dadour, Stéphanie
Référence The Housing project. Discourses, Ideals, Models and Politics in 20th Century Exhibitions, Leuven University Press, Leuven, Ed. 1, page (290-309)
Publication Publié, 2020

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Résumé :

20th century housing exhibitions have often functioned as sites of experimentation for architects and designers. Liberated from regular building regulations, new ideas on housing were explored and tested in true size installations. Several of these experiments entered the canon of architectural history, the Weissenhof Siedlung (1927) being one of the well-known examples. Other housing exhibitions were far less prolific in architectural terms or even failed to realise their proclaimed ambitions. However, the dynamics of some of these failures offer most revealing insights in the complex relations between architecture, policy making and politics in a given place at a specific moment in time. This chapter discusses the Buildings and Dwellings Pavilion in the Belgian Section of the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958 as an example of such ongoing tensions between progressive and conservative architects and their institutional and political supports. The Building and Dwellings Pavilion was conceived as an ambitious project demonstrating the societal importance and prestige of the Belgian building sector, in particular in relation to housing. The Building and Dwellings Group responsible for the financing, conception and design of the pavilion intended to present ‘a synthesis of the problem of the home’ along with an overview of the nation’s progress in solving this ‘problem’. The Group was led by the modernist architect Léon Stynen (1899-1990), who had experience in working in government circles. Other members were representatives of various national societies of architects, urban developers and the building industries. Henry Van de Velde (1863-1957), one of the father figures of modern architecture in Belgium and first director of the Bauhaus-inspired Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et des Arts Décoratifs in Brussels (known as La Cambre), was honorary president. Although many of the conditions seemed to be there to translate the Group’s initial ambitions into a coherent presentation for a broad specialist and non-specialist audience, the pavilion turned out differently. The pavilion design, a project by the architect Charles Van Nueten (1899-1989), was originally conceived as a fragment of a high-rise apartment block on pilotis containing about twenty fully equipped model flats. In addition, one or more free-standing family houses were planned for as well. However, the pavilion as built did not reveal these ambitions: it was a plain exhibition hall containing a series of thematic presentations. Next to it, one prefabricated single-family house was erected. As a whole, the Buildings and Dwellings Pavilion left a rather fragmented, confused impression. Analysis of the design and development process of the pavilion revealed that the classification system of the fair, the financing mechanisms of the Belgian pavilions, but also general, national housing concerns and politics provided a most challenging cocktail of power relations that even an experienced manager-architect like Stynen struggled to deal with. Instead of synthesising ‘the problem of the home’ in Belgium, the pavilion ended up highlighting its various commercial building materials and technical aspects.