ABSTRACT

The Kennedy ensemble is one of the most relevant expression of modernism in Liège. Completed in 1971 by the architects Jean Poskin and Henri Bonhomme, the ensemble is maybe the most emblematic project of the urban regeneration in Liège occurred after the Second World War. At the foot of the tower, the plinth volume houses since its construction the biggest public library in Wallonia but unfortunately, the collection will move to a new building in 2022 and will leave the modernist ensemble empty. This situation held the question of “how to reuse the modernist city?”

This thesis has the aim to give a contextual and theoretical approach to the process of adaptive reuse of the Kennedy ensemble. It will find what were the challenges of the time and how modernist utopia evolved through time. The research showed that the modernist utopia suffered from a sort of disgrace at the end of the XXth century in Europe. But it also revealed a certain nascent interest in the population, especially in Belgium, for the movement in the beginning of the XXIst century.

This thesis presents a specific program tailored for the Kennedy ensemble to give to the building a second life and make it part of the society again. The architectural culture, as some practical examples already exist in Brussels, has the power to give a new energy to some modernist buildings. The transformation of the Kennedy ensemble into an architectural hub would become a starting point to enhance the modernist heritage in Liège and initiate the reuse of the modernist city.

In the aftermath of WWII, many cities in Europe suffered from considerable housing shortages, leading to new housing developments, many of which were high-rise housing estates, built following the principles of the Modern Movement and CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne). The ideology is based on the concept of the ‘Functional City’, implemented through ideas such as function-based city zones, with minimum dwellings together with collective infrastructures; low-rise and high-rise buildings in extensive green areas; the ideal of ‘air, light and nature’ combined with high-density living and standardisation; open ground-floor plans and pedestrian areas separated from traffic routes. In the context of an urgent need for housing, the strong, uncompromising approach was accepted without hesitation. Politicians and planners built according to architectural notions, in which high-rise served as a potent symbol of a ‘new architecture for new people’ in a modern post-war age of multi-family living, communal facilities and social equality. Despite the lofty ambitions of the Modern Movement, many of these projects have undergone a critical shift in meaning, and are today associated with problematic living conditions, deprived areas, isolated locations, a low-income population, social isolation, pollution, crime etc. As a consequence, questions emerge about how to solve these problems, in many cases resulting in demolition, even of the most iconic projects, such as the Pruitt-Igoe in St, Louis, USA, or the Smithsons’ Robin Hood Gardens in London.

Despite the negative connotations of this architectural typology, some interesting refurbishment projects have been executed over the past decades, in which the pre-existing was not eliminated.

Marie Moors Reviving the modernist utopia

This master thesis is the result of several month of research on modernism but moreover an answer to several years of questioning towards those concrete ensembles.

As a growing architect at University of Liège, I had the opportunity to work on the Brasserie des Alliés in Marchienne-au-Pont near Charleroi, a modernist building completed in 1937. It is with a taste of too little that, when I arrived at University of Hasselt, I decided to lead my research on modernism.

As I always found its shape very elegant and iconic when I used to cross the passerelle to go to school, I made the choice to work on the Kennedy ensemble to express what I had to say about it, but also as an opportunity to learn more about modernism. The more I progressed in my research, the more the Kennedy ensemble appears as one of the most representative example of the modernist mutation in Liège.

I decided thus to write this thesis to understand what were the architectural and urban challenges during the XXth century in order to have a better comprehension of the modernist utopia. But I was also really intrigued by the negative meaning that those buildings have for many and decided to then to find out what were the reasons of this reject.

This master thesis is then a version of my researches on the Kennedy ensemble and on the modernist movement in general. It aims to give a clear historical and theoretical framework to the adaptive reuse design. The Kennedy ensemble and this research are dear to me have the ambition to give an answer to the reuse of the modernist city.