Photo portrait of Renaat Braem in his studio, late 1940s.
Photograph: © VIOE

Renaat Braem, study design for the Administratief Centrum Antwerpen, early 1950s.
Photograph: © VIOE

Antwerp, apartment buildings in city quarter ‘het Kiel’ (architect: Renaat Braem), 1953.
Photograph: © VIOE, Kris Vandevorst

Antwerp, exterior of Renaat Braem’s own house, 1957–58.
Photograph: © VIOE, Oswald Pauwels

Renaat Braem 1910-2010
Curators: Sofie De Caigny, Elke Hoornaert, and Katrien Vandermarlieree

deSingel EXPO, Antwerp
1 October 2010 – 9 January 2011


Renaat Braem, the godfather of Belgian modernist architecture, at his peak held such an authority with his fellow planners and architects that he could write a book on Belgian urbanism entitled Het Lelijkste Land ter Wereld (The Ugliest Country in the World, 1968). Braem may have been born a century ago, but his inheritance is still with us. To demonstrate this fact is clearly the aim of the exhibition Renaat Braem 1910-2010. A big introductory panel at the entrance strongly emphasizes the current relevance and influence of Belgium’s main modernist architect, as does the exclusive use of the present tense for the accompanying texts and the organization of the exhibition in the new wing of the Antwerp art campus deSingel, recently built by Stéphane Beel.  Braem is treated as an architect who is still relevant in 2010.

Consequently, the exhibition does not focus on a chronological layout, but is thematically organized into eight sections: ‘Utopia’, ‘Individual and Collectivity’, ‘Visionary’, ‘The Historic City’, ‘Art and Nature’, ‘Functionalism’, ‘Experiment’, and ‘Biomorphic Dwellings’. Apart from the two huge biographical panels at both sides of the entrance, the layout and sequence of the items seem random, the setting of the material within each section a little chaotic.

‘Utopia’ shows the original drawings of Braem’s thesis project at the Antwerp Institute for Fine Arts, the so-called ‘Lijnstad’ (line city), dating back to 1934. This project was strong enough to convince Le Corbusier to offer Braem an internship at his office in Paris in 1937, a short but very important period in Braem’s career and the key to the biomorphic forms of his postwar designs. ‘Functionalism’ exhibits the architect’s early housing projects in what seems to be a less inspired part of the show. ‘Individual and Collectivity’ covers Braem’s largest and best-known projects, namely the huge dwelling complexes, including the Antwerp master project for ‘het Kiel’ and the ‘Ideal City’ at the Heyzel, Brussels.

The famous, several-meter-long drawing for ‘Bandstad’, an evident source of inspiration for the designs of linear cities by Luc Deleu’s Belgium-based T.O.P. Office, is displayed under the theme ‘Visionary’. Together with some intriguing project drawings like the ones for the ‘Plastic House’ (1960) and the ‘European House’ (1957), both part of the topic ‘Experiment’, they occupy the perimeter of a somewhat strange, elliptic room at the centre of the exhibition space, in the middle of which – quite literally – the biomorphic houses of Braem’s postwar production are shown. ‘Art and Nature’ presents what seems to be the most important part of Renaat Braem’s built legacy, combining the project for the Middelheim sculpture pavilion (1963) and the Schoten library (1968). Finally, ‘The Historical City’ focuses on the intrusion of some bigger programs into the core of the historical city of Antwerp, with the ACA tower (Administration Centre Antwerp, 1952-67, now the police headquarters) as the most notorious and controversial.

The exhibition succeeds in showing Braem as a superior architect, whose strong formal focus is visible in the numerous plans and sketches for houses and public programs. There is abundant documentation on his social commitment, too, though these topics never go beyond the stereotypical image of Braem. Here we arrive at the central weakness of the show: it simply plays it safe and ignores challenging links and comparisons. The small topic of Braem’s participation in the CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), for instance, is a missed opportunity to confront the architect’s work with that of his European contemporaries or his constructivist idols such as Konstantin Melnikov, while the drawings of the ‘Bandstad’ are mentioned as paying tribute to Julien Schillemans’ brilliant work on ‘World City’ (1928 and later) without further explanation. There is no reference to the work of other Belgian architects operating at the same time but coping with modernity in a very different way, such as Victor Bourgeois, Willy Vandermeeren, Peter Callebout, or Lucien Engels. It is not that space was lacking, though, as the large gallery at the rear is completely reserved for the display of the interesting documentary ‘Renaat Braem Architect Urbanist’ (1980).

One has to know the past to understand the present. Trying to position daredevil Braem in a present-day context would have benefited from a view of the past broader and more daring in scope than that represented in Renaat Braem 1910-2010. The photo series by Anja Van Eetveldt and Maurice Nijhuis on Braem’s architecture in the corridor leading to the exhibition, however, shows what is there to show: brilliant form that can gather dust and feed moss without blushing.


Tijl Vanmeirhaeghe
Department of Architecture and Urban Development, Ghent University, and BARAK, Ghent


Publication related to the exhibition:
Jo Braeken, ed., Renaat Braem 1910-2001, Architect, Brussels: Vlaams Instituut voor het Onroerend Erfgoed and ASA Publishers, 2010, 2 vols., 800 pp., colour and b&w ill., € 99, ISBN 978-94-6117-004-0

Websites related to the exhibition:
www.braem2010.be/index.php
www.balansvanbraem.be
(both only in Dutch)