Brutalism in Belgium

Belgium absorbed concrete modernism early through Le Corbusier's Antwerp-connected contemporaries, and after the war its churches, universities and savings banks became laboratories for raw concrete. Léon Stynen, the leading Flemish modernist, ran a prolific practice whose influence carried into the 1970s. The expansion of the Catholic universities at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve generated some of the country's densest brutalist ensembles, including work by André Jacqmain.

Church building was the other engine: Marc Dessauvage renewed Flemish liturgical architecture in concrete and brick, while Alfons Hoppenbrouwers designed the Westrand Cultural Center (1973) in Dilbeek, a landmark of Belgian brutalism. In Wallonia, Roger Bastin built the Musée Royal de Mariemont (1975), a museum sunk into a historic park.