Description

The Cité Modèle 3 in Laeken, built at the time of the 1958 Universal Exhibition, was designed to demonstrate Belgium’s modernity in terms of housing. To achieve this, six architects were brought together – two Flemings, two Walloons, and two from Brussels – to design an entire neighbourhood based on the Athens Charter principles on a site of almost 17 hectares. The buildings are numbered 1–12 and, over time, more than ten architects contributed to the project, with the most recent additions dating to 2005.

Arranged on a rectangular grid, the buildings are free-standing in the middle of a large park. Within the estate, car and pedestrian traffic are separated. In addition, a series of collective facilities were planned, such as schools, shops, a community hall, playground, and chapel, allowing it to function in a self-sufficient manner. A square was built at the highest point of the settlement.

It is bordered by three 20-storey-high towers standing on 6- to 8-m-high pilotis. Each tower is served by a vertical core at one end. On each floor, six flats are accessed from an exterior circulation gallery, with four one-bedroom units bookended by two three-bedroom units. Storage rooms for the dwellings are found on the first and top floors. There is a laundry and drying room adjacent to a roof terrace. The façades of the building are made of curtain walls between prefabricated-concrete vertical edges.

To the east of the Cité Modèle 3 in Laeken lies an elongated volume more than 300 m long, the Cité Modèle 6, also built in 1958. The architects’ intention was to make the entire Cité Modèle a self-sufficient project, and to create with this particular volume a real barrier to the “chaotic nature of the traditional city”. In its centre, a very long ramp divides the volume in two and provides a monumental pedestrian entrance to the Cité. The volume itself is composed of several modules. The one to the north of the pedestrian ramp is built on stilts, allowing car traffic to pass on the ground floor. Two floors above, at pedestrian level, a long, covered street runs along the west side of the building. It is complemented two and four storeys up by two exterior circulation galleries, served by vertical circulation cores at the ends of the building.

The covered street and the first gallery serve three-bedroom duplex apartments. The upper gallery serves flats with only one very small bedroom, while simplex apartments can be found around the communal stairwells. Storage rooms for the dwellings are located on the first and top floors.

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Originally published in: Gérald Ledent, Alessandro Porotto, Brussels Housing. Atlas of Residential Building Types, Birkhäuser, 2023.