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.     

Cité-Jardin Kapelleveld: a modernist interpretation of a garden village

On the rural outskirts of Brussels several small villages were to be found. Sometime in the 11^th century the wood around the river Woluwe was cut down on the instigation of Park Abbey in Louvain and was administered by the Benedictine Abbey at Vorst (Forest). In the twelfth century the area was spilt into two parishes Woluwe-Saint Pierre and Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, each named after the respective patron saint (Peter and Lambert). The villages were located on the edge of  a narrow river valley at the foot of a large fertile plateau, hence the French name Montagne aux Sols (mount of the fertile soil). The Dutch name Kapelleveld relates to the nearby Chapel of Our Dear Lady of Sorrows (Maria Dolorosa) that was in part funded by a tithe of these fields.

After WW1 the housing need in Belgium peaked and the National Society for Cheap Housing and Dwellings (Nationale Maatschappij voor Goedkope Woningen en Woonvertrekken) was founded in 1920. This national building promotor realised that the disused fields near Wolume-Saint-Lambert were ideal for the realisation of a garden city inspired suburban development. So in 1922 the Cooperative Society ‘La Cité-Jardin du Kapelleveld’ was founded with the aim to build affordable housing near Brussels. The NMGWW provided government-backed low rate loans to local building coops.

The building coop employed Louis Van der Swaelmen to draw the plans for this low-density suburban development. He retained the height differences of the original terrain and designed a housing district as a fan of tree-lined streets interconnected by side streets and two separate features (am undulating avenue and a triangular garden square) at the southern edges of the oddly shaped site. The layout of streets has great affinity with garden design of the time. 

The garden village designed by Van der Swaelmen has a rather odd layout which is a mix of formal radiating fan of streets with kinked and curved streets connecting to these. His original design included  two closes (c) that were never built, a school (s) a church (+), a football stadium (fs), a tennis club (tc) and football pitches (fp). The circles between the gardens were designed as playgrounds. The easternmost section was executed in a different style of architecture with pitched roofs and brick facades (yellow outline). The rest was executed in a modernist style with flat roofs or pitched roofs with clay tiles (orange outline).

The housing is placed rationally along the kinked side streets. The three radial streets of the fan all serve as thoroughfares. Thus the plan has affinity with New Objectivity. This can also be said of the housing in most of the development which is designed in a sculptural cubist modernist idiom. The eastern section, however, has buildings in a traditionalist vernacular idiom. Thus the whole feels like a compromise -much like Tuindorp Watergraafsmeer near Amsterdam- especially with the expansion east of the Ideaallaan (Avenue de l‘Idéal) after WW2 with piecemeal sections of rather random streets lined by brick-built semidetached and terraced housing and brick-clad low-rise apartment blocks.

Building density is low compared to the Brussels average. Great attention has been paid to planting trees and providing residents with a front garden and an ample back garden. Leisure facilities were also incorporated in the plan with tennis courts, a football stadium with some practice pitches and several playgrounds. Several architect (Antoine Pompe, Huibrecht Hoste, Jean-Francois Houben and Paul Rubbers) collaborated in the design of over 400 houses in 19 different types. Ten houses were equipped with a shop room at the front. All housing was built between 1922 and 1926. The suburb was designed as an independent social entity with communal spaces such as a library, shops, community hall, sports facilities, office for the cooperative, school and church. The last two wouldn’t be built until later. In the Arthur André Street a station on the Brussels-Tervuren railway line was opened. The coop employed Paul Posno to design the 1951-71 expansion. Also some blocks were added as infill. In 1968-69 some streets were extended southwards and some housing was added.

The changes and later additions have changed the garden village around the edges. This makes the whole even more of a compromise than originally intended. Along the Avenue Albert Dumont blocks were added along the street. The large gardens on the south-eastern side were developed with terraced housing. A church was built in stead of the school and where a church was envisaged a school would be erected. The sports facilities have been altered with some buildings built on the edges (a school and a centre for handicapped children). The additions have little spatial and architectural merit and are rather incidental.

Kapelleveld is one of the garden villages (or Tuinwijken / Cités-Jardin) that were built around Brussels. The houses were constructed with cinderblocks (or breeze blocks), a light-weight concrete construction element made up of a mixture of ash, sand, water and cement. The facades are rendered with a wide trim in wood at the top. The colour of the outer walls varies from an off-white via light grey to dark grey. As an Avant Garde enclave the housing of Kapelleveld is still recognisable in the urban chaos that is Greater Brussels. Although inspired by the Garden City Movement, this suburban enclave has none of the Sitte-esque features of German and Dutch garden villages, nor any of the Unwinesque features characteristic of British examples. It is basically a modernist interpretation of the type.

Großsiedlung Törten: a modernist suburban satellite

Near the tiny village of Törten a few miles south of Dessau a suburban satellite was planned in the 1920s. After the move of the Bauhaus School of Architecture and Applied Design from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, Walter Gropius decided to build model housing on modernist principles. The Groβsiedlung Törten was set up as an exhibition of prefabricated family housing.  

The Stahlhaus was designed by the architect Richard Paulick with Georg Muche, painter, graphic designer and an important teacher at Bauhaus. This construction in steel and precast concrete panels was finished in 1927 and is an elaboration on the ideas advocated by Gropius. The building is named after the innovative steel frame and translates as “steel house”. This 90 square meter detached house is located directly north of the Bauhaussiedlung.

The buildings of the Bauhaussiedlung were also built by joining precast reinforced concrete panels. The central join between panels is a narrow fluted concrete standard that is clearly visible in these row houses. The openings for the windows and doors were integrated into the panels.

The cubist white houses with darker trim accents line streets that are typical of 1920s suburban housing estates. The streets are lines by trees and grass verges that replace the front gardens that characterise standard garden city estates. Here the straight street called Doppelreihe (double row).

The houses in this estate are built in only three types that are all composed of similar standardised concrete building panels. By varying the building line, resulting in a castellated row, visual interest is created along the streets.

The streets of the Doppelreihe and Enkelreihe are straight with a setback section at the entrance conform Unwinesque principles. The other streets all curve, thus following the artistic principles advocated by the followers of Camillo Sitte. The houses in these streets have front gardens.

Some of the buildings show the original intentions. Many other buildings -yes even those listed as monuments of architecture- show unsympathetic alterations and improvements by the owners. The buildings were conceived as cubist compositions with the horizontal and vertical lines emphasised by coloured accents that were inspired by the Dutch Style Movement made famous by Piet Mondriaan.

These houses along the north side of the thoroughfare, that was built as part of the housing estate, show the construction manner with prefabricated elements with panels that were slid between. The elements that were placed first are higher and give the facade a lovely rhythm.

These brick faced blocks of flats were built in 1930 around a concrete frame with concrete floor slabs. These slabs show on the outside as horizontal bands that recall the banded renaissance architecture with banding in natural stone. At the front these floor slabs extend as external walkways or galleries.

The Laubenganghäuser don’t look very special, but these low blocks of flats are a prototype of the gallery flat buildings that were an important type of mass housing of post-WW2 international modernism. The flats are arranged in sequence on each floor. Access is provided by an outdoor walkway instead of an internal corridor.

The southern section of the housing satellite was built in the 1930s in a traditionalist style that was favoured by the regime of the day. This style is also known as the Stuttgarter Schule (Stuttgart School) and can be seen as the opposite of the modernist idiom of the Bauhaus.

The Meisterhäuser were built as model villas on the edge of Dessau to showcase Bauhaus principles. These cubist compositions are still viewed as the summit of modern architecture. The large windows connect outside and inside. The villas were built by the city of Dessau to be rented to the main teachers of Bauhaus, here the Haus Kandinsky/Klee.

All remaining examples of Bauhaus architecture in Dessau are part of the Unesco World Heritage site and are linked by a cycling tour: the Bauhaustour. This tour takes you through the whole of Dessau. One of the stops on the tour is the iconic Bauhaus building that is still used as a school and a centre for design.

A far outlier on the Bauhaustour is the Kornhaus Pavilion on the Elbe. This recreational pavilion on the dyke along the river was commissioned by the city and the Schultheiss-Patzenhofer Brauerei AG (a brewery). Carl Fieger a long-time assistant of Gropius was responsible for the design. It is still in use as a café.