PART OF THE CITY

This chapter will observe the place of modernism in the city and in the society. It will present the initiatives to protect the modernist heritage and promote its place in Brussels. Then, this chapter will present the fall of modernism in Liège and the potential of the Kennedy ensemble, located in the heart of the city to restore its place in the city.

In Belgium, the modernist vision vigorously modified the face of the country. During the second half of the XXth century, the urban policy for many cities was the introduction of bureaucracy and large road development. The consequence of this policy is the destruction of several working-class neighbourhoods. In Brussels for example, the profusion of modern project, and particularly the transformation of the north district into a business district, triggered many populistic protest. The word “bruxellisation” appeared in the 1970’s to name the ravages of the modernisation of the capital.

In 2000, a collective of architects and geographers, named Disturb, was formed in Brussels around the demolition-reconstruction project of the Martini tower. Disturb developed its activity towards the promotion of the modernist architecture and its heritage figure. The collective defends places that emanate from modernist architecture, it is that they are ‘exemplary’ places, presented as ‘rare’ in Brussels. Disturb criticise the lack of quality in the contemporary architecture due to a certain political timidity, the existing cronyism between the politics and several architecture offices, and the imaginary for some associations like the Atelier de recherche et d’action urbaines (ARAU) of a pastiche city. “It would be a question of reappropriate these gestures and at the urban level, to consider the discontinuous nature of the urban fabric as a driving force for creation, and no longer to patch up the city.”30 Today, the modernist architecture in Brussels aims at defining an strong identity for the country and gets a real place in the architectural heritage consciousness.

In Liège, the modernist period was also synonym of a traumatic event from which demolitions and expropriations arise. The ensemble of Droixhe in the north of the town turned out to gain a negative connotation and the expression of an insecure neighbourhood. In 2008, seven of the thirteen towers were destroyed after several years of debates and attempts for renovation. But this event was undoubtedly inevitable following the financial crisis and the negative meaning that the modernist architecture suffers from. A real disinterest in this style marked the deep decadence in the entire city for the modernist architecture. The renovation of the Val Benoit is the expression of the sudden regain of interest in the XXth century architecture in Liège. The architecture office from the region BaumansDeffet are in charge to give a second breath to the former industrial building at the south fringe of town. The project will house some, educational areas, economic and cultural spaces, dwellings and a restaurant. This project is maybe the first durable strategy of renovation of a modernist building in Liège. But the distance with the city centre and the isolate character of the ensemble seems to brake with the example that this project can give in the modernist revival in Liège.

The Kennedy ensemble, situated in the heart of the city, suffered as well of this negative meaning given to the modernist ideas. But the authority expressed a disinterest for this building and wants to move all the cultural activities in a new building. The ensemble completed in 1971 is yet perceived as the most iconic expression of the brutalist modernism in Liège. It constitutes maybe the only lever that can promote the modernist era as heritage for the city. As the voice of the regeneration of an entire neighbourhood, but also of the cultural expression during the last fifty years, the building has a true potential to become the main figure of the shift interest towards modernism. A new identity around the architectural culture would allow the Kennedy ensemble to become a real hub in the city but moreover to be an active public area in relation to its users. In order to prevent from crisis in the architectural debate, and to give the architect a real role in the development of the city; a mixed program with different actors of the architectural culture would set a strong image for the modernist ensemble in the city. The Kennedy ensemble would thus become the image of the re-appropriation of the modernist heritage in Liège and be the expression of the potential of adaptive reuse of those architectures in order to reinvent the city.