Cité-Jardin Bon Air, Brussels

The site where the garden village was built had initially been condemned, which is even more salient given the name of Cité Bon Air / Tuinwijk Goede Lucht that literally translates as Good Air Neighbourhood. The Housing Society Anderlechtse Haard starts work on building a new garden village on the site near the Avenue d'Itterbeeck, an important thoroughfare, in 1921.The new garden village is completed in 1923 in what was at the time the countryside outside the Brussels-conurbation. Nowadays the ring road of Brussels separates this garden village from the urbanized area of Anderlecht.

The parcelling maximises the plot available to accommodate the 225 houses on 28 hectares of which part was set aside as an orchard. The garden village is situated north of the Avenue d'Itterbeeck, an important thoroughfare that links Anderlecht to the village of Itterbeek. The site for the garden village is situated on the edge of the floodplain of the Broekbeek (literally: Marsh Brook). Before building work started the level had to be raised by piling on waste and soil from elsewhere. Commercial space was not provided for by the Housing Society, only leisure and education facilities. Shops were built on the old thoroughfare directly opposite the garden village.

The heart of the oldest part is the Place de Croix Rouge / Rode Kruisplein (Red Cross Square - C). Next to this a later functional unit is inserted into the layout consisting of a large playing field (Place Séverine - P), a secondary school (S) and a Kindergarten (K).The streets in the eastern part were given names commemorating socialist figureheads (indicated with *).

Most of the houses situated on curving streets and small squares are built in a style similar to that of Cité de la Roue. The name chosen for this garden village signifies the promise of a better life outside of the city in a semi-rural setting. At the time the development lay isolated surrounded by open fields which posed difficulties for the inhabitants in getting to their place of work. All the streets of the first building campaign were given uplifting names evoking this sense of a new and better life away from the city: Rue de l’Hygiène / Hygienestraat (Hygiene Street), Avenue de la Salubrité / Heilzaamheidslaan (Salutary Avenue), Rue de la Santé / Gezondheidsstraat (Good Health Street), Avenue de la Tempérance / Onthoudingslaan (Temperance Avenue), Avenue de la Fécondité / Vruchtbaarheidslaan (Fecundity Avenue), Rue du Bonheur / Geluksstraat (Happiness Street) and Rue de l’Enthousiasme / Geestdriftstraat (Enthusiasm Street). The streets in the second -eastern- part are named after notable people within the labour movement.

The layout of this garden village is clearly based on the layouts incorporated in the 1920s book Tuinsteden by G Feenstra. The street layout combines curving streets with shorter straight streets around a large open space. The street junctions are Unwinesque in character with housing blocks that are angled back creating mostly triangular, small greens. The treatment of the junction of the older roads (Avenue d'Itterbeeck and Rue du Pommier) as a village green suggests that another garden village was imagined further south.

The garden village was constructed in several building phase, the first of which lasted from 1921 until the end of 1923. Hereafter the houses in the northern half of the eastern part were constructed between 1925 and '28. The garden village was finished by subsequent buildings in the last quadrant. In the 1950s three apartment blocks were erected near the shops. The schools are part of the second phase of development, but the secondary school is stylistically later, from the late 1920s early 1930s. The building of the Kindergarten is akin to the one in the Cité de la Roue. In true socialist fashion no church was provided. A church was built during the 1970s on a site near the garden village.

The difference in street names can be attributed to the staggered way in which this garden village was developed. The streets in the first phase all bare iconic socialist names. Later these abstract concepts were replaced with people connected to the labour movement as a way of providing street names. 

The area around the Place Séverine / Séverineplein differs from the curvaceous Unwinesque layout by introducing an orthogonal insert. A central axis runs from the spot where the Avenue Tempérance meets the Avenue de la Fécondité to the Avenue d'Itterbeeck. This axis bisects the large green square, runs through the middle of both school buildings and is picked up as a formal avenue with trees (Avenue Auguste Bourgeois). Both the Rue Léon Nicodème and Rue Gaston Coudyser run parallel to this axis. The back building line of the houses on the place Séverine and the Kindergarten are oriented on small greens in the older layout (Rue de la Modestie and Place de Croix Rouge).

The orthogonal insert blends in well with its surroundings because the axis are oriented on important nodes in the older layout. Such a hybrid layout with worth curving and straight streets are also included in the 1920s book Tuinsteden by G Feenstra and can be traced to the contemporary garden design of the time.

As with many of these garden villages in Belgium the political climate changed to favour homeownership during the 1980s which lead to many of the houses owned by housing societies to be sold to the occupants or investors. This combined with little limitations towards home improvement have lead to often detrimental alterations. The whole of the garden village is still recognisable due to its isolated position on the other side of the motorway. The communal gardens and playgrounds behind the houses have been converted into parking spaces. Of the orchards edging the Cité Bon Air sadly only a few trees remain. The ornamental cherry trees in the streets still remain in large parts. This excellent example of a garden village could be easily restored to its former glory!