Brusselization

Brusselisation ( Brusselization English bruxellisation in French and verbrusseling in Dutch ), verb: brüsselisieren, refers to the urban planning concept of the controlled insertion of office buildings of modern architecture in the architectural context of historic neighborhoods, like him, partly in Brussels, but also in other European cities can be seen.

This pejorative designation applies to all cities developments, their pattern of rather uncontrolled development of Brussels corresponds in the 1960s and 1970s, the lack of territorial regulation and a laissez -faire attitude of the city government, specifically in the case of the Manhattan plan in the northern district and the construction of the EU seat in the Quartier Leopold, resulted.

The example Brussels

From 1960 until the 1980s

Known as Brusselisation design was originally a type of urban planning that was used by the City Council in the context of the Brussels Expo 58. To prepare the city for Expo 58 buildings were torn down regardless of their architectural or historical significance to make room for office buildings and apartment blocks that had a correspondingly high capacity. It continues boulevards and tunnels were set up to deal with the population increase in an appropriate and to increase the efficiency of the infrastructure.

Through role of Brussels as the seat of the EU and NATO administration other infrastructure measures, which led to a progressive Brusselisation have been made, including the construction of the site of the European Commission.

In protest against the run of Mayor Lucien Cooremans building policy, numerous citizens' movements were under the Brussels residents and within the international architecture scene. Nevertheless Cooremans continued the renewal of the cityscape against civil society through resistors; as a well-known example is to call the demolition of Victor Horta's Art Nouveau Folk House ( a major construction of architectural modernism of 1889) in 1965, which was implemented in spite of the protest of 700 architects from all over the world.

The architectural experts named in connection with the protests, the urban development form as Brusselisation. Spokesmen in this context were Léon Krier and Maurice Culot who formulated an anti-capitalist urban development in opposition to the prevailing uncontrolled modernization of Brussels. Although similar, as Verbrüsselung to be designated to monitor developments in other, mainly European cities, however, is to differentiate with respect to the fact that the process of modernization in the late 1960s was mainly driven by the office space requirements of EU institutions.

Other historical examples of the modernization of Brussels

The inhabitants of Brussels have been repeatedly witnessed a modernization of the city. To model were established in the 19th century Parisian avenues. Furthermore, the connection of the northern and southern parts of the city is to be mentioned as modernization measure.

By King Leopold II as a model for large capitals with imperial claim should arise at Brussels.

In the mid-20th century, a major alliance between entrepreneurial city developers and the city government was to operate visionary urban development, the residents not taken into account, however.

1990s: From the Brusselisation for coring

Since the early 1990s, laws were introduced that would restrict the demolition of buildings with historic or architectural value. The city council expressed in 1999 explicitly against the unstructured construction of skyscrapers and named it as architecturally incompatible with the aesthetic of traditional historic building.

Through the Urban Planning Regulation 1991 area administrations demolition applications could refuse to historical, aesthetic or culturally relevant buildings. Furthermore, dedicated areas could be identified as cultural heritage through historic preservation ordinance of 1993 in order to preserve it from demolition. In 2007 was implemented in Brussels by the regional administration of the International Development Plan ( IDP) what specific and partly questionable performance criteria for major development projects provides, which were observed among others in the construction of the Square Meeting Center, the Europe House, and Monts des Arts.