Modernism appears in Europe after the First World War. The first actors of the movement have a militant approach. Convinced that human happiness requires a rationalisation of construction, they advocate functional architecture, in concrete, steel and glass with a radically bare aesthetic.

The modern movement only truly gets a foothold in Belgium at the end of the 1930s. After the Second World War, it is accompanied by a significant renewal: purely functionalist precepts give way to a desire to soften and humanise. New trends appear that present architecture which is on a human level.

Rue Auguste Vermeylen 58-60, Evere, architect Gaston Brunfaut, 1957.