Tuinwijk Moortebeek, Brussels

The initiative for the development of the garden village of Cité de Moortebeek or Tuinwijk Moortebeek resulted from the foundation of the Housing Cooperative Collectieve Haarden (Hearths Collective) in 1921 by 120 members.

In 1922, aged 26, the architect Jean-Francois Houben won the design competition for the northern part of the new garden village of Moortebeek north of Anderlecht. With his design he placed himself firmly within the decorative strain of modern architecture. His projects, that also includes the garden village of Kapelleveld, show a strong Dutch influence with charming small dwellings with clear lines and decorative constructive elements. The houses south of the Avenue Shakespeare designed by the established architect Joseph Diongre show an even more expressive style of architecture and are probably of a later date. Extensions built after 1952 were designed by René Bragard (apartment blocks in the north) and Josse and Achille Mouton (apartments and terraces in the south).

The  dwellings of the two original sections of this garden village are characterised by the reoccurring use of off-white plaster for the rendering of the outer walls. The street facades have been emphasized by the use of simple details and the use of colour blocking (by Diongre). The placement and treatment of the buildings is related to long and short sight lines within and out of the garden village.

The Cité-Jardin Moortebeek is a garden village with a clear and rather repetitive layout which is much more varied in situ than comes across from the plan. The earliest part (A) is located north of the Avenue Shakespeare; the later part (B) directly south. After WW2 the former playing fields were built over with apartment buildings (C). South of the Avenue Shakespeare an area was developed with medium-rise blocks of flats and terraced housing (D). Around the garden village large high-rises have been erected, like the brutalist Parc du Peterbois (literally Peterwood Parc). The garden village consists mainly of housing with a school (s) and a community hall (H) on the edge of a large expanse of green at the northern entrance just of the Ninoofsesteenweg an important thoroughfare.

The garden village of Moortebeek is characterised by a very clear and regular layout with parallel streets running of an central elongated green space with an angled connection that alleviates the straightness of the streets. The layout with parallel streets is not Unwinesque but modernist in nature making the most of the sloping terrain and providing a similar aspect for most of the houses. When looking closely at the street layout it is evident that the garden village was originally intended to be larger with the Avenue Shakespeare extended further southwest and have more parallel streets. The layout was changed after WW2 and is more in keeping with what is commonplace in urban design in the 1950s.

The garden village is an intervention on a sloping site between pre-existing old farm roads (in yellow) and the nineteenth century thoroughfare Ninoofsesteenweg (literally: Stone paved road to Ninove - a city in Flanders). Here a number of more or less parallel streets were laid out around a central public garden. This Avenue follows an older road that has been incorporated as a footpath. The northern section also had two large green spaces on the edges.

The garden village now includes 330 family houses in terraces and semidetached houses and 124 apartments in post war blocks of flats. The houses were originally built in three so-called classes - first, second and third class. This system was especially common in the Low Countries and Germany and was probably introduced into Belgium from Germany via the Netherlands. A similar system was utilised by the Model Housing Societies during the Victorian era in England and was used as a way of active community building by managing the social mix of an area.. Third class housing does not mean third rate housing, but signifies the dwellings with the lowest rent aimed at the lowest paid workers. Such houses are often less decorative and smaller that first class housing, especially on the inside. But basic amenities are always included, as such social housing was aimed at improving the living conditions of all the working classes.

Once the garden village was located on higher ground between two brooks (the Broekbeek and Moortebeek) surrounded by fields. These have been since developed and this enclave is now surrounded by high-rises on all sides. The whole ensemble is in good condition and recent restoration work has made the houses look almost new in some places.

More blossoms

The blooms just keep on coming this year, especially the blossoming trees like these Japanese ornamental cherries (left and centre) and the crab apple with its single flowers (right).

Cité-Jardin Bon Air: rural living re-imagined

The entrance to the Cité Bon Air directly from the main road is dominated by these blocks in striking architecture. The bright buildings refer to German examples, which is clear in the roof treatment and the use of concrete moulded stone on the facade aimed at resembling natural stone.

This kind of architecture is typical for the period around 1930. It is unclear when this part of the Cité was built, but judging by the style of architecture it is the last part to have been completed, possibly as early as the latter part of the 1920s. The architecture is in a distinct modernist style best described as decorative functionalism. The door is typically emphasised by a Dutch awning (left). Most of these blocks consist of 4 dwellings, some have 3 and a few have 2. Individual expression in painting the window frames (seen on the right) rarely improves these buildings.

On streets where two building phases meet the contrast is evident. On the left hand side we see the simple vernacular architecture of the second phase with the contrasting modernist buildings on the right hand side. The street with front gardens and small cherry trees is typical of garden city movement principles.

The architecture of the first building phase is very similar to that of the Cité de la Roue. To emphasise the rural location great care has been taken to create long vistas out into the landscape from specific point in the garden village. Here a view down the Rue de Bonheur towards the forest at the edge of the Broekbeek valley. The brook itself is only visible from its banks, never from a distance.

The Rue the Bonheur is typical of Unwinesque urban design with a curving street picked up in the placement of the buildings on a greater curve  creating room for a broad green verge with trees between the road and the front gardens on one side making for a rural idyll.

A comparison between the architecture of the first phase (left) on the Rue de l'Enthousiasme with that of the second phase (right) on the Place Séverine shows similar architecture with simpler handling of the building mass and fully rendered facades instead of a play with combinations of brick and render. This is comparable to Cité de la Roue.

These buildings on the Rue Jean Lagey show the simplified architecture of the second phase clearly. The first block still has the characteristics of the first phase with the use of both brick and rendered sections. As this road is part of the main structure of the street layout it is not unthinkable that the long terrace was constructed in the first phase before the rest of the housing in this part of the Cité.

The Place Séverine differs in layout with the rest of the street plan. The stark orthogonal structure is emphasised in the placement of the housing at right angles. The southside has an equally orthogonal setup with a primary school and a kindergarten on the axis of the Avenue Auguste Bourgeois.

The placement of a semidetached pair of houses in the corner of a T-junction at an angle is a typical Unwinesque design device. So, although the architecture of the second phase is altogether less attractive some effort has been made to perpetuate the underlying ideal of creating a rural idyll on the edge of the metropolis.

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!

Plant Fair

Silly me thought it would be relaxing to visit a Belgian garden fair last weekend. To say it was busy with people would be an understatement of the long queues at the entrance, at the café and at the toilets. I arrived an hour after opening to find that some stands were already through half of their plants. This lead me to a spat of power shopping moving at pace along the stands and exhibits. And sure I bought more than I ever intended despite the shopping list I had prepared. Well, such is life!