Skip to main content
Brussels ’50s ’60s
  • fr
  • en
  • nl

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

Secondary

  • About
  • Links

The taste of authenticity

Despite competition from cheaper artificial materials such as reconstituted stone, genuine stone retains its popularity. There is a taste for the rustic style, as attested to by the many slabs of schist and by quarry stone that is roughly squared as in robust rural buildings.
Blocks of blue and green stone, Rue de Heembeek 199, Brussels-Neder-Over-Heembeek, architect Josse Franssen, 1952.
Schist facing of various origins, Boulevard Émile Bockstael 18, Laeken, architects Raoul J. Brunswyck and Roger Moureau, 1960.
Schist facing, Rue Alfred Dubois 1, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, architect Jean-Pierre Van Den Houte, 1964.
Pebble facing, optical store, Avenue Charles Woeste 327, Jette, architect Raoul J. Brunswyck, 1959 (photo Denis van Praet).

Navigation principale

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