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.