A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Constructed landscapes for collective recreation Victor Bourgeois's open-air projects in Belgium
Victor Bourgeois, architect, urbanist, teacher and founding member of the CIAM, was a key figure in Belgian modernism. However, his work, especially from the 1930s and the post-war period, has been disregarded by historians and critics of the past decades like Albert Bontridder, Geert Bekaert or Pierre Puttemans. The architect is considered as influential for his writings and thoughts. But his built work is deemed too dogmatic, showing an obsessive wish of organisation. More recently, Iwan Strauven, in a PhD about Bourgeois, has brought some nuance to the discourse by reconnecting Bourgeois’s theory and practice and pre-and post-war works. Nevertheless, the leisure-oriented projects studied in this chapter were still neglected by Strauven. Only some of them are briefly addressed in his thesis, presented as projects where architectural composition didn’t matter and where Bourgeois mainly emphasised the importance of realising a social program, indicating a shifting moment in the architect’s career, where urbanism took place over architecture. These considerations will not be denied (as the dogmatic aspect of Bourgeois’s work will appear in the fourth section). But they will be put momentarily aside, in order to recompose another narrative from these marginal projects and their cultural and political context. Indeed, highlighting this part of Bourgeois’s career constitutes above all an opportunity to explore the construction of a modernist proposition for collective life, in close relationship with the public-sector contractor and rooted in a landscape approach.
Constructed landscapes for collective recreation Victor Bourgeois's open-air projects in Belgium
Victor Bourgeois, architect, urbanist, teacher and founding member of the CIAM, was a key figure in Belgian modernism. However, his work, especially from the 1930s and the post-war period, has been disregarded by historians and critics of the past decades like Albert Bontridder, Geert Bekaert or Pierre Puttemans. The architect is considered as influential for his writings and thoughts. But his built work is deemed too dogmatic, showing an obsessive wish of organisation. More recently, Iwan Strauven, in a PhD about Bourgeois, has brought some nuance to the discourse by reconnecting Bourgeois’s theory and practice and pre-and post-war works. Nevertheless, the leisure-oriented projects studied in this chapter were still neglected by Strauven. Only some of them are briefly addressed in his thesis, presented as projects where architectural composition didn’t matter and where Bourgeois mainly emphasised the importance of realising a social program, indicating a shifting moment in the architect’s career, where urbanism took place over architecture. These considerations will not be denied (as the dogmatic aspect of Bourgeois’s work will appear in the fourth section). But they will be put momentarily aside, in order to recompose another narrative from these marginal projects and their cultural and political context. Indeed, highlighting this part of Bourgeois’s career constitutes above all an opportunity to explore the construction of a modernist proposition for collective life, in close relationship with the public-sector contractor and rooted in a landscape approach.
Constructed landscapes for collective recreation Victor Bourgeois's open-air projects in Belgium
2021-01-01
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
720
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