NEW BOOK: Brussels Housing: Atlas of Residential Building Types

I am excited to announce the release of my book «Brussels Housing: Atlas of Residential Building Types», co-authored with Gérald Ledent and published by Birkhäuser.

Brussels housing is extreme diverse as anyone walking around the city will notice. Its traditional urban block consists of terraced houses, usually two to three storeys high and with a garden at the back. Here, this bourgeois housing type evolved into a particularly varied and inspiring form – including the well-known Art Nouveau residences – and still forms the DNA of the city. Today, Brussels’ residential building types comprise narrow gabled-roofed houses standing side by side with modernist apartment buildings, 19th-century mansions and brand-new condominiums. This typical Belgian layering of housing solutions is a visually poetic chaos, creating at times a surreal cityscape. The three chapters of this publication explore Brussels’ housing typologies from the origins of the city to the present day. More than 100 selected case studies are documented with scaled drawings and photographs. The works by photographer Maxime Delvaux delineate a promenade and a poignant journey through Brussels and its varied cityscapes. The book offers a broad panorama and a history of the architecture and urban development of Brussels.