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Brussels ’50s ’60s
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Navigation principale

  • Nothing will ever be the same again
    • The birth of the consumption society
    • The car rules
  • Humanised modernism
    • Orthogonal strictness
    • Style 58
    • Organic poetry
  • Architecture of transparency
    • Curtains of glass
    • Walls vanish
  • Fascinating techniques
    • Airborne structures
    • The frame laid bare
    • Prefabrication
  • Enlivened façades
    • City of colours
    • The warmth of concrete
    • The taste of authenticity
    • The application of art
  • Between utopia and conformism
    • Nostalgic conformism
    • Modernity’s difficult comeback
    • American Dream
    • Cities within the city
    • Housing for all
  • An architecture in peril
    • Turning fifty

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The warmth of concrete

While in the inter-war period concrete, considered to lack nobility, was often concealed under a coating or facing, it is now shamelessly flaunted. Left in an unsurfaced exposed state, it retains the imprint of the wooden planks of its mould.
Hall of the Saint-Julien church, Avenue Gabriel-Émile Lebon, architect Simon Brigode, designed in 1961-1962, built between 1963 and 1965.
Detail of the unsurfaced exposed concrete, hall of the Saint-Julien church.
Chancel ceiling of the Saint-Julien church.
Chancel ceiling of the Saint-Julien church.
Bush hammered or washed concrete reveals the gravel in its cement.
Avenue d’Italie 45, Ixelles, architect René Stapels, 1960 (photo Gaëlle Balthasart and Ariane Goffart).
Detail of bush hammered concrete, Avenue d’Italie 45, Ixelles, architect René Stapels, 1960.
Athénée Madeleine Jacquemotte, Rue de la Croix 40, Ixelles, architect Marcel Lambrichs, 1953.
Detail of washed pebble concrete, Athénée Madeleine Jacquemotte, Rue de la Croix 40, Ixelles, architect Marcel Lambrichs, 1953.

Navigation principale

  • City of colours
  • The warmth of concrete
  • The taste of authenticity
  • The application of art
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