For a year or so, in the mid-2000s, I lived in a flat located off a well-known square in Brussels called, in Dutch, Vossenplein â so named after the nearby Vossenstraat. In French, however, it has a very different name; in reference to a ball game which was popular at the time of the squareâs creation in the mid-19th century, it is known as Place du Jeu de Balle.1 The square is best known for its daily antique and flea market. I can still vividly recall the buzz amongst the tourists and vintage enthusiasts as they eagerly sought out their bounty; and the local poor searching for anything that might have been left-over as the stalls were packing up: it is telling that the public swimming pool located on this square still provides baths and showers for those without access to such facilities at home. On the square, one could also find a cafĂ© called Skieven architek (Figure 1.1). I remember wondering what this strange name referred to; only later did it become clear. The neighbourhood surrounding the square is called the Marolles. Historically dense and working-class, it is now largely gentrified although the area still contains pockets of poverty. With its antique shops, curiosities and cobblestoned streets, it is a lovely neighbourhood for a stroll â if you do not mind a bit of topography, that is. This is, after all, a point of transition between Brusselsâ dense downtown area and the leafier, more affluent upper-town. Whilst strolling through the area, glimpses of a shiny golden dome occasionally appear between the outline of the buildings (Figure 1.2). This mysterious dome is quite difficult to locate, but if you take the public elevator which connects the Marolles neighbourhood with the Place Poelaert, it will be revealed in all its glory. Yet this magnificent structure is only the surface level manifestation of a much vaster building which exists underneath: the enormous, intimidating, and somewhat gloomy Brussels Palace of Justice. In a documentary about Belgium, the architectural writer Jonathan Meades described it as âboth laughable and frightening, buffo and Babylonianâ.2 Designed in the second half of the 19th century by Joseph Poelaert, its scale is so vast that part of the Marolles had to be cleared to enable its construction: its breathtaking scale is confirmed by the fact that the restoration works on the dome in the 1990s and 2000s took so long that even its scaffoldings needed renovation.3 Whilst, for some, the Palace of Justice is a landmark building to be celebrated, to others it elicits mere derision; it is more infamous than famous. The Brussels dialect makes this clear by means of a popular insult â architek. Invented by the inhabitants of the Marolles, it decries the megalomania of its architect, Poelaert. In popular Brussels culture, calling someone an architek is a severe insult. This is especially the case in the Marolles, and in those other inner-city neighbourhoods whose population endured repeated waves of bulldozers, cranes, modernisation fever, and hygienist measures, often at the expense of local livelihoods. Returning to the Skieven architek, that cafĂ© off the Place du Jeu de Balle, we can now start to make sense of its name. The full understanding of the name, including the meaning of skieven, will become clear in the last chapter of this book. Important here is that architek refers to a landmark building in Brussels, namely the Palace of Justice; located in the capital city of Belgium, of Europe. And yet this is not a city that connects the profession of architecture with unbridled optimism, but rather with a derogatory word. It is a city whose population has been traumatised by architects and developers, but passionately fought back.
1.1 During a visit to Brussels in January 2015, the café called Skieven Architek turned out to have closed. Photograph by the author.
1.2 The dome of the Palace of Justice can be seen on several occasions when walking through the Marolles neighbourhood. Photograph by the author, 2015.
What makes a city? What makes architecture? And, what is to be included in the discussions of architecture and the city? In Brussels, the Palace of Justice surely helps to make the city. But what about the word architek? Does architek, in this specific setting, not equally shape the city? Are the public baths not also part of the cityâs spatial infrastructure and, thus, contributing to the workings of the city? If so, should such buildings be included in the discussions of architecture and the city? And what about the cafĂ© called Skieven architek? Does it, despite the cafĂ©âs architectural modesty, participate in Brusselsâ architectural culture as a material reinforcement of the insult architek? Can urban traumas, and the urban struggles of the inhabitants, take part in an architectural discourse? And what about language? In a French-Dutch bilingual city like Brussels, language performs an intriguing role by enacting differing references (Vossenpein / Place du Jeu de Balle) and, therefore, different ways of making-city.
Cities are fabricated through landmark buildings, but they are equally enacted by citizens, users, mind-sets, words, and all sorts of mundane infrastructures and practices. Very different in their nature and performance, these practices also make-city. In this book, we will discover how landmark buildings, architek, urban traumas, language, and even public urinals contribute to architectural discourses and production in the specific setting of Brussels. In doing so, the complexity, ambiguity, and social ambition of Brusselsâ architecture will be revealed.
Confronted with this specificity of Brussels, the theorising of cities through external referents seems odd. Are we not to take the specificity and complexity of cities more seriously, and study how they are practised rather than how they fit a theoryâs predefined categories and concepts? Would such an approach not offer a more realistic account of how a city, and its architecture, actually works? As a particularly complex city with a turbulent architectural and urban past, Brussels calls for an alternative mode of analysis. It calls for an understanding of how the city works as a consequence of, rather than in spite of, its complexity, and how its architecture emerges not just through a portfolio of important buildings, but also through a series of mundane practices.
This book is about Brussels as much as it is about architectural theory. It responds to recent debates in architectural theory related to the critical agency of architecture and the locus of critical action. Whilst criticality has for a long time been associated with theory, recent architectural debates have emphasised practice as a locus for critical action. This book puts the potential of such criticality through-practice to the empirical test. Through the study of a series of critical actions which occurred in Brusselsâ architectural and urban culture after 1968, this book will contribute to a better understanding of architectureâs processes of critical engagement and the tools which can be mobilised for that purpose.4
I believe that the exploration of criticality through-practice can offer a different type of criticality â one which I call âcriticality-from-withinâ. Through conceptualâempirical explorations, this book will show how such a criticality allows for different understandings of how the city and its architectural production work; understandings that, ultimately, allow different theories and different cities to become possible. We will discover how an emphasis on practice does, however, not inform a dismissal of theory as a locus for criticality. On the contrary, through a specific, situated account of critical practices in Brussels, I will ask: How can theory better contribute to the formulation of a critical agenda for architecture? Can theory itself operate as a practice?
In this first chapter, I will guide the reader, step by step, through the combined methodologicalâcritical task set-out by this book. I w...