Cité-Jardin de la Roue: fading glory of social housing.

The oldest housing is located on the northside near the Rue des Loupes / Wolvenstraat. These houses are halfway between the older tradition of workers housing in long terraces of identical dwellings and the garden city approach with short terraces and a great diversity in individual expression. Here the long rows of houses are visibly broken up in the architecture thus emphasising every single dwelling.

The 1030s Art Deco church stands on the Place de la Roue / 't Radplaats, an open space created on the side of the garden village along an older route. Behind the church a playground was built that still functions as such. The garden village aesthetic comes across clearly in the use of privet hedges lining the streets and front gardens. This gives great unity and the hedges link the separate terraces and semidetached houses.

The architecture around the Plaine des Loisirs / Lustplein is typical for the first phase of construction (on streets with a strong socialist theme). The houses are often part of terraces of 6 to 8 houses mixed with shorter ones (of 4). The architecture is typically vernacular with facades faced in brick and render.

The corners are given extra attention to emphasise the spatial distribution of housing blocks and the short sight lines so typical of the garden city aesthetic. In the oldest part a kindergarten (Kindertuin / Jardin d'Enfants) was built in the same style as the housing as the first community facility.

The Plaine des Loisirs is a large open space behind the kindergarten laid to lawn and surrounded by trees (horse chestnuts, a typical plant for the 1920s). Due to the law that regulated for an eight hour working day, the working classes now had spare time to enjoy. This large open space was aimed at facilitating leisure activities, hence also the name.

The functional details are used as ornament in this style of vernacular architecture. Here the side of a short terrace with an impressive chimney, a dainty corner window and a mansard roof creating a third storey and thus greatly increasing the living space. Short terraces of 4 or 6 (shown on the right) dominate the straight streets. The facades and roofs are broken up creating an interesting visual experience.

The vernacular architecture of the garden village Cité de la Roue is consistently designed with few layouts in many types. Each type differs in the position of the front door, the distribution of brick verses rendered portions and the shape of the often expressive compound roofs. The wide streets with front gardens and small trees give it a typical garden village feel.

The housing in the second phase of construction (on the streets named after notable socialist figures) is less elaborate compared to the first phase. The basic design component are still used in the same way with facades in a combination of brick and render and privet hedges around front gardens.

The architecture in the second building phase is very similar to that of the first phase, but with shorter terraces and less elaborate details. These semidetached properties are located on the Place Ministre Wauters. Private decisions on colour effect the overall effect of the buildings, but better a two-tone facade than the neglect visible in other parts of the Cité.

The buildings built during the letter stages of the second building phase are different in the use of fully rendered facades, few decorative details and simple roofs. The garden village feel is however retained, even though the placement of the buildings is more orthogonal. This is typical for developments from the late 1920s into the early 1930s.

The houses around the Place Ernest S'Jonghers are in the same simplified fully rendered style. The houses here are lower and have been designed using typical Unwinesque layouts creating a classic close around a communal garden.

Cité-Jardin de la Roue, Brussels

In the twenty-year period when the garden city movement flourished in Belgium several medium to small sized developments were built, mostly near large cities. The ideas for building these garden villages to relieve larger cities by building self-sufficient neighbourhoods come from England and the Netherlands (mainly through the book Tuinsteden by  G Feenstra from 1920). The aim was to create new garden villages on the edge of the overpopulated suburbs of Brussels. Around Brussels many were planned, but only some 15 projects were built. Three of these are located in Anderlecht an historic city that is now one of the nineteen municipalities that make up the Brussels-Capital Region (and thus comparable to a London Borough).

The Housing Society Anderlechtse Haard (Hearth of Anderlecht) was founded in 1907 after the example of Dutch Housing Cooperatives that were created from 1901 onwards. The Housing Society played an important role in delivering new social housing. In three places this took the shape of a garden village: La Roue / Het Rad, Bon Air / Goede Lucht and Moortebeek.

Anderlechtse Haard funded the first social housing to be built in Anderlecht in 1908 on the Rue des Colombophiles (Duivenmelkersstraat) and Rue des Citoyens (Burgerstraat). After WW1 a garden village was developed on the adjacent land. This Cité de la Roue or Tuinwijk Het Rad was built during the 1920s on a site near the Canal Brussels-Charleroi and the railway to Ghent. The name of the new garden village was derived from the former breaking wheel of Anderlecht that stood here. Such a wheel was a torture device used for capital punishment of the worst criminals and as a means of displaying the body.

Work started in 1921. The placement of the buildings and the layout of the streets and public spaces was designed by the well known urbanist Louis Van der Swaelmen. The new garden village was spatially little more than an extension of the late 19th century neighbourhoods of Anderlecht built for rehousing people displaced by the construction of the Law Courts in the Marolles-district of Brussels and the covering of the Senne. It greatly differs however from the neighbouring areas in layout and type of houses built. The plan comprised of short streets around larger open spaces with short terraces amounting to 688 dwellings in total.

The houses designed by the architects Pompe, Meckmans, , Brunfaut, De Koninck, Jonghers and Voets are based on the so-called Dutch type. Each house had a similar floor plan with a reception room, separate kitchen, three bedrooms, an attic and a small garden. The houses were designed in a limited number of layouts that mostly differed in exterior design and materials used and that were situated along the streets alternatingly to prevent monotony. In total almost 60 different looking houses were built. In 1938 a school, designed by Henri Wildenblanck in a modernist cubist style and a church dedicated to St Joseph, designed by Van Hove in a brick art deco style, were added. The primary school dates from the first building phase.

The garden village of La Roue / Het Rad (literally The Wheel) was built in several stages between 1922 and 1928 and has a layout of streets parallel to a main thoroughfare with some open public spaces that anchor the older roads and new oblique streets into a father formal street plan. These open spaces are the Plaine des Loisirs (1), Place Ministre Wauters (2) and Place de la Roue (3). Two closes have been incorporated: Place du Confort (4) and Place Ernest S'Jonghers (5). No shops were part of the garden village, only community buildings such as primary school (A), secondary school (B) and the church of St Joseph (C); a community hall was originally part of the plans, but was never built. The garden village nestles between pre-existing buildings and notably the old social housing of 1908. 

The older streets have prospective socialist names: Rue de l'Energie / Wilskrachtlaan (Will-power Street), Avenue de la Persévérance / Volhardingslaan (Perseverance Avenue), Rue de la Volonté / Wilstraat (Free Will Street), Rue des Huit Heures / Achturenstraat (Eight Hour Street), Place du Confort / Komfortstraat (Comfort Street), Plaine des Loisirs / Lustplein (Leisure Plain), Rue du Savoir / Kennisstraat (Knowledge Street), Rue de la Mécanique / Werktuigkundestraat (Mechanics Street), Avenue des Droites de l'Homme / Mensenrechtenlaan (Human Rights Avenue), Rue de l'Emancipation / Ontvoogdingsstraat (Emancipation Street), Rue de la Solidarité / Solidariteitsstraat (Solidarity Street), Rue du Symbole / Zinnebeeldstraat (Symbol Street), Rue des Plébéiens / Plebejersstraat (Plebeian Street), avenue de la Société Nationale / Nationale Maatschappijlaan (National Housing Society Avenue) and Rue des Citoyens / Burgersstraat (Citizens Street). Later streets were named after important socialist figures and politicians: Minister Joseph Wauters, Guillaume Melckmans, Jacques Boon, Ernest S'Jonghers, Guillaume Hoorickx and Pierre van Winghen.

The garden village is at present one of the most deprived areas in Anderlecht. Maintenance of the complex is lax at best and in places empty properties have been boarded up. It is a shame to see how Belgium treats its urban heritage. The Cité de la Roue is not even designated as a protected site of historic and social importance. The inhabitants have however successfully prevented the demolition of the Cité and have secured investment to improve the area.

Blossom burst

When ornamental cherries from Japan were first introduced in Europe they became an instant hit. The often double flowers lasted longer, were bigger than those of indigenous cherries and came in a single flush in often vivid colours like pink. Although these trees bloom for only a short period of about three weeks it is something I look forward to every year!

Cités-Jardins, the implementation of new ideas on planning in Brussels

Belgium had a tradition of building housing for workers by enlightened factory owners from the late 18th century, especially in the francophone part of the country. These ideas were subsequently exported to for instance the new mining area in the Flemish Campine region. Building social housing remained however a private enterprise with little to no guidance by the government. The idea(l)s of the Garden City Movement struck a chord with architects and the labour movement, but politicians remained wary of any state intervention into the housing market. This changed after WW1 when socialism became an important political force and the devastations of war created opportunities to improve the urban landscape and the living conditions of the working classes.

From 1918 the Belgian government declared housing a priority and implemented a plan to rebuilt the great number of destroyed buildings by introducing planning and state-funded social housing. Brussels was already developing rapidly before the Great War, but many more people were drawn there afterwards due to the devastations endured by the countryside. Garden villages and planning both stemmed from the ideas of the Garden City Movement and provided an economic choice as repetition, standardisation and a limited number of materials could provide for a rapid roll-out of new housing. In Belgium these Cités-Jardins or Tuinwijken are often little more than neighbourhoods or small garden villages, new garden city satellites were never planned.

For their construction and management special housing associations were founded. Many of these have their roots in the labour movement with a strong focus on communal facilities. Housing took the shape of terraced family houses with large gardens, apartments and lodging houses. Allotment gardens are never part of the Cité-Jardin in Belgium. Seen as urban living in the countryside these housing projects also provided a good living environment for the influx from rural communities not adapted to living in the city.

Around Brussels only 16 garden villages were developed, mostly between 1918 and 1930. The first was Cité sociale de Jouët-Rey in Etterbeek completed in 1909. Development stalled until during the boom years many garden villages were completed: Cité de la Roue (1908,1923 & 1928), Cité de Moortebeek (1922), Cité-Van-Lindt (1922), Cité Floréal (1922), Cité Le Logis (1923), Cité Forest-Vert (1923), La Cité Diongre (1923), Cité Bon Air (1923), Cité de Tuinbouw (1924), La Cité Moderne (1925),  Cité Verregat (1926), Cité Kapelleveld (1926), Cité Terdelt (1926) and la Cité du Homborch (1930). The economic crises of the 1930s prevented the construction of many planned garden villages. Of these only the Cité à Bon Marché d'Auderghem was built between 1949 and 1952. The focus in planned house building shifted towards the ideas of CIAM. The Cité Modèle designed by the famous architect Renaat Braam as a model of future social housing is an early example from 1958.

All the garden villages and neighbourhoods were developed on the rural outskirts of the city and still encircle the old city (in red). They are no longer suburban exclaves, but rather rural enclaves within the  expanded city. The Cités-Jardins of Brussels are: Cité sociale de Jouët-Rey (>),  Cité-Van-Lindt (1), Cité à Bon Marché d'Auderghem (2),Cité Le Logis (3), Cité Floréal (4), Cité du Homborch (5), Cité Forest-Vert (6), Cité de la Roue (7), Cité Bon Air (8), Cité de Moortebeek (9), La Cité Diongre (10), La Cité Moderne (11),  Cité Verregat (12), Cité Terdelt (13), Cité de Tuinbouw (14), Cité Kapelleveld (15) and la Cité Modèle (_*).

Magnificent Magnolia

Named after the French botanist Pierre Magnol, the large genus of Magnolia has a disjunct distribution in both Asia and America. Known for the often large and showy flowers in white, yellow, pink and purple, many species and hybrids are in cultivation. The flowers are primitive with only tepals and predate pollinating insects such as bees and hoverflies and are mainly pollinated by beetles and small animals. Magnolias are amongst the oldest flowering plants and are known from fossil records.

Magnolia kobus from Japan (left), the slower growing Magnolia stellata, and Magnolia x soulangeana a hybrid between two Chinese species (M. denudata and M. liliiflora) with pink and cream flowers.