Cité-Jardin Kapelleveld: Avant Garde housing in shades of grey

The garden village Kapelleveld at Woluwe-Saint-Lambert near Brussels is an example of a modernist interpretation of the garden city model, here translated into a garden suburb or suburban garden village. The housing is mostly modernist, with a small section in a traditionalist style. The housing with the flat roofs and the dark roof trim is similar to that seen in La CitéModerne, another modernist garden village near Brussels.

Of the three tree-lined avenues two remain. The central avenue has a tram and the southern avenue has a garden-like central reservation. The northern avenue was never replanted after WW2. Cars and parking now dominate the edges. As this avenue was intended as a major thoroughfare the dimensions can handle present-day traffic.

In the 1950s some blocks of terraced housing were added along the Avenue Albert Dumont. This housing by Paul Posno (right) is similar in size to the original housing (left), but much less detailed. Also the block is treated less sculptural and the proportions are much less harmonious -the blocks are evidently not designed with asset of harmonious proportions in mind. The Avenue Albert Dumont was named after an architect of French origin who is well known for designing many villas and cottages, especially on the Belgian coast. He was also one of the promotors of the Garden City Movement in Belgium.

The original housing was arranged along kinged streets that ran off the avenues at a right angle. The side walls form the entrances to the residential streets. This way of separating street along function is common in New Objectivity housing in the Benelux and Germany.

The kinked street marries the ideal of short view creating a sense of place which fits nicely with Sitte-esque design theory and the Unwinesque elaboration of it. Apart from this the garden village at Kappelleveld has no typical features of the Garden City Movement aesthetic.

The blocks of terraced housing are sculptural compositions with a strong cubist aesthetic. The short chimneys at the corners of the main blocks are used in a decorative way to break the flatness of the roofline which is emphasised by the black wooden trim. The staggering of the building line is very effective and creates a pleasant flow along the street.

Another type is basically a modernist semidetached house with protruding sections at the corners, reminiscent of standing bays. In places this type has been linked to form row housing (left). The design plays with verticality and horizontality with the narrow high windows at either end and low and wide windows in the middle.

The standard type with the low chimneys all have rendered facades. The colour can vary from off white, via light grey (on the left) to dark grey (on the right at the front). The wooden trim is always painted black to unify the sculptural blocks in the streetscape.

All housing has a front garden. In true garden village style these gardens were edged by a hedge. Here privet was used. All gardens were made uniform by using a similar green edge. Sadly the hedges have bene removed in places, or have bene replaced by hedges made from a different plant species (mostly beech and box). At the end of the streets the orange clay tile roofs of the intermediate section are just visible.

The southwestern section of the garden village was designed in a mixed style with pitched roofs covered in clay tiles above cubist blocks. The result is an Avant Garde marriage of the traditional and the modern. All the facades are rendered, with wooden trim in black and white. The chimneys are practical and not used as a decorative device. The bays and dormers are used in that way however.

The intermediate housing has flat dormers with a protruding roof directly above the window frames. Al woodwork of the doors and windows is painted white, as well as the underside of the eaves (right). The front of the box gutter is painted black. The awnings above the front doors are treated similarly.  

The contrast between these two sections is remarkable. This makes that the garden village Kapelleveld is defined as three neighbourhoods by the architectural expression of the buildings. The central core is modernist, sculptural and cubist, the southwestern section is Avant Garde mix of traditional and modern and the southeastern section is traditionalist with a sculptural treatment of the facades in brick.     

Gartenstadt Welheim, Bottrop: vernacular ensemble architecture

The village-like suburb of Bottrop at Welheim is a good example of a garden village, although it was built as factory housing for the neighbouring mine Vereinigte Welheim. Gartenstadt Welheim has been lovingly restored and the post-war replacement buildings blend in well to the overall ensemble that was created here between 1914 and 1923. There is a great sense of place here!

The street Am Kämpchen (at the little field) is typical for this garden village. The curved street is lined with terraced housing in long blocks with a variable roof treatment. The block in the middle is much simpler in execution and design, but stull retains the overall design with rendered walls and red clay tiles on the roof: this is an example of a post-war replacement block.

The Flöttestrasse is an old lane that connected the hamlet of Welheim with the floating watermill (a Flötte Muhl) on the Boye Brook. It has been completely incorporated into the garden village and this leafy residential street is lined by large semidetached houses and short terraced of row houses.

The Ulmenplatz (Elm Square) is one of the typical “places” that feature heavily in Sitte-esque design. Here the place has been designed as a garden square surrounded by asymmetrical long blocks of terraced housing. The trees on the square are actually elm trees, a nice detail!

Each house was given a small glass awning above the front door. The entrances are often grouped in pairs with the floor plan of each dwelling mirrored. The original doors in green with the small window have been restored or reinstated where they had been replaced as part of the restoration in 1993. The houses are set back a little from the street with a typical street profile with a narrow green verge planted with trees. The front gardens are laid to grass and have no hedges or fences.

The streetscape is typical of a garden village. The housing on the streets is a mix of semidetached houses and row housing in long blocks. These terraces typically have protruding sections at the ends and dormers that create a certain rhythm. In the middle of the picture a high grey concrete structure can be seen from this street Streuwiese. This is the bunker that stands on the central Mathias Stinnes Platz that was named after an important coal shipping mogul.

 

The Apselstrasse is another typical street wth vernacular architecture lining a long slightly curved street with a green verge planted with trees on one side of the road. The corner plots often do have a hedge (visible on the right) to provide more privacy for the residents.

The street Im Holzgrund show the typical treatment of corners which are kept open. Angled blocks are seldom used in this garden village. This supports the idea that it is more German than English in character with a focus more on places and informal arrangement of blocks combined with the symmetrical ensemble of asymmetrical buildings in an overarching vernacular style.

That vernacular staple of half timbered panels are not often used in this garden village. Here such non-structural detail is used to differentiate blocks and create more visual variety using a limited number of basic floorplans and designs. Here two blocks of up-down apartments that are identical internally but differ greatly in external appearance. The low annex with two coal sheds are part of the total design. In some blocks they connected at a different point or are built detached from the main building.

These double villas on the Welheimer Strasse have been connected by a low annex that again contains the coal sheds. The individual houses are emphasised by the treatment of the roofs. These larger buildings are situated on the edge of the garden village near the underpass of the railway that gave access to the colliery site beyond.

The Lindenstrasse (Lime Street) is a clos-like narrow street with a symmetrical layout of asymmetrical blocks of terraces housing at either side. By creating a set-back in the middle of the street a place is created. The lime trees would have been cut back regularly, but have now grown very high. There are no true closes in this garden village. This staple of the English garden city movement was less used in continental Europe for safety concerns, as dead end streets were seen as undesirable.

The Hugo Stinnes Strasse (named after an industrialist, who owned the United Welheim Mining company) was bayonetted with a small place at the shift in street alignment. This is again typical for Sitte-esque urban design. The houses are of a basis type similar to the rest of the garden village, but feature many porches with rounded arches, a sand-coloured render and a low plinth.

The dormers above the walls in sandy yellow render are clad in wood shingles. The entrances are again paired. The arched entrance porch reappears in other places. But only as a corner feature. The reuse of such a feature gives the whole garden village a great sense of consistency of design.

Im Sundern is one of the streets that feature a wide expanse of grass as a linear green along the street. This creates space in the street layout and also emphasises the anti-urban character of this Gartenstadt. The trees follow the street and thus focus the view.

At the corner of the Gungstrasse and Im Gungfeld a defacto entrance to the garden village was created by two angled blocks and pushing the corners back to have a rounded green that connects to the linear green along Im Gungfeld. This is one of the few places where angled blocks were used.

On the other side of the Gungstrasse the Horstbruch (a name indicating marshland with a thicket) shows replacement blocks on either side of the street. A bomb destroyed the original terraced housing here; it was replaced by apartments. Two original blocks can be seen at the entrance to the street (at the back). These blocks are typical of the 1950s but blend in well.