066 BELGIUM


In a much-quoted article from 1968, Renaat Braem described his homeland as ‘the ugliest country in the world’, leading to Belgians fl aunting that in the ‘Ugly Belgian Houses’ blog. However, the years since the 1980s have been considered De Wonderjaren – the wonder years. Legend has it that in 1998 when the fi nance minster, Wivina Demeester, was required to inaugurate two new buildings in the north of Brussels, she was so appalled by the new construction that she initiated the establishment of the Vlaams Bouwmeister in a politically-independent advisory capacity to promote the improvement of public architecture in Flanders. T e level of trust in the position and its continued relevance is in large part due to the role’s most eff ective instrument – the Open Call. It is hard to name


another European country in which the number of good fi rms has grown as consistently and impressively since the start of the new millennium or has produced as great a diversity of well-executed projects as Flanders. Of all the winners, a surprising number have been British.


Like most places, Flanders is grappling with an ageing population, the challenges of urban sprawl and the aff ordability of housing. Pulling together regional policy and local initiative, the Woonwel housing association, together with the town of Gistel, came up with a project that sought to integrate reasonably priced housing, social welfare and quality architecture. Witherford Watson Mann won the project for the master plan in 2003. T e fi rst residents in the new buildings did not


move in until 2015 when a new community started to take shape.


In 2002 the city of Antwerp put forward a new vision for the historic harbour quarter of Schipperskwartier. It had become a notorious red-light district. T e area was made up of 19th-century terraced housing, closed blocks of buildings, and small squares, with one of these being in Falconplein. T e master plan reconnected the site to its forgotten history and Caruso St John was one of a number of fi rms responsible for designing new buildings that included housing for sale and rent, offi ces, studios, retail and communal facilities like a kindergarten. T e project was completed in 2021.


Tony Fretton worked on a new administrative centre for Deinze from 2008 to


RIGHT: PETER COOK FAR RIGHT: TONY FRETTON ARCHITECTS


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