Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). The town of Louvain-la-Neuve emerged from the ground in Walloon Brabant in the early 1970s to accommodate the French-speaking university after the split, for linguistic reasons, of the Catholic University (UC) of Louvain, until then bilingual. To give shape to this new city, the authorities called on various visionary architects including André Jacqmain (1921-2014), who was given carte blanche to design the entire Place des Sciences, the city’s first square. The most imposing building was the UCLouvain Science and Technology Library. Like all the constructions on the square, it was entirely made of reinforced concrete poured on site. A technique which allowed great freedom in the creation of volumes and curves. Its facade with its stepped terraces supported by square-shaped pilasters, its acute-angled roof and its monumental volume make it a singular work, not assigned to a style and resolutely innovative for its time. For the interior, Jacqmain called on designer Jules Wabbes who designed metal rails and covers, latches and handles.
A complete ranking
Changing destination in 2015, the building has been occupied since 2017 by the Musée L, after a scrupulous restoration carried out by UCLouvain architects. The final step in its long-term preservation, the old Science Library has just benefited from classification, both interior and exterior, by the Walloon heritage authorities, making it the first building in Louvain-la-Neuve to receive such a measure of protection.
A major player in post-war architecture in Belgium, André Jacqmain experienced several periods which led him to evolve from modernism to functionalism and brutalism. From the first, we will remember the Villa Urvater in Rhode-Saint-Genèse. From 1960, he also participated in the development of the Sart-Tilman campus with the law faculty, the large restaurant and the brutalist-style student residences. In 1967, he founded the Genval Architecture Workshop where he designed the Place des Sciences in Louvain-la-Neuve, but also the Belgian pavilion at the Osaka Universal Exhibition in 1970.
Due to a lack of historical perspective, undoubtedly, the heritage of the second half of the 20th century still rarely benefits from a complete classification. Long devalued, unloved by the public, brutalist architecture arouses new interest and begins to be the subject of documentation and promotion, as evidenced by the work Brutalism in Belgium (Prisme Éditions, 2024). Many of these buildings are deteriorating because their structures, where concrete predominates, no longer meet contemporary standards, particularly in terms of energy, which poses numerous challenges for their renovation. If a few rare Brutalist buildings have been subject to renovation, following private initiatives, others are currently threatened with demolition, transformation or left abandoned, highlighting the urgency of action to preserve this heritage.
