From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52

From 1937 to 1952, the young architects from Liège that formed Group L’Equerre and served as the secretariat of the Belgian section of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) initiated a reflection about the development of the Liège industrial agglomeration and its population center...

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Main Author: Geoffrey Grulois
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universitat Politècnica de València 2015-04-01
Series:VLC Arquitectura
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Online Access:http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/VLC/article/view/3414
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author Geoffrey Grulois
author_facet Geoffrey Grulois
author_sort Geoffrey Grulois
collection DOAJ
description From 1937 to 1952, the young architects from Liège that formed Group L’Equerre and served as the secretariat of the Belgian section of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) initiated a reflection about the development of the Liège industrial agglomeration and its population centers. What sources did they mobilize to build a reflexive and multi-scalar approach to urban planning from the regional scale to that of the inhabited neigbourhood? The discovery of the original drawings of the survey of the Liège Region (1948-1952) and plans for a neighborhood unit on the plateau of Trixhes (1937-1952) in two archives—Archives of the city of Liège and the archives of architecture of ULB—allow us to explore an emerging practice of regional planning and neighborhood design in Belgium. In this article, we trace how architects from Group L’Equerre took advantage of the advance in human geography and regional planning to build a specific planning approach to Belgian cities that goes beyond the CIAM principles of the functional city in order to incorporate concerns for the natural environnement and traditional community levels. In this way, the paper questions the supposed dominance of the Athens Charter for modern urbanism on the development of postwar town planning in Belgium by identifying the emergence of landscape and community issues in the practice of regional and local development.
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spelling doaj-art-a67abfcd58cb4cf1beb435f08c35df722025-08-20T02:50:48ZengUniversitat Politècnica de ValènciaVLC Arquitectura2341-30502341-27472015-04-012113110.4995/vlc.2015.34142907From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52Geoffrey Grulois0Faculté d'Architecture Université Libre de BruxellesFrom 1937 to 1952, the young architects from Liège that formed Group L’Equerre and served as the secretariat of the Belgian section of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) initiated a reflection about the development of the Liège industrial agglomeration and its population centers. What sources did they mobilize to build a reflexive and multi-scalar approach to urban planning from the regional scale to that of the inhabited neigbourhood? The discovery of the original drawings of the survey of the Liège Region (1948-1952) and plans for a neighborhood unit on the plateau of Trixhes (1937-1952) in two archives—Archives of the city of Liège and the archives of architecture of ULB—allow us to explore an emerging practice of regional planning and neighborhood design in Belgium. In this article, we trace how architects from Group L’Equerre took advantage of the advance in human geography and regional planning to build a specific planning approach to Belgian cities that goes beyond the CIAM principles of the functional city in order to incorporate concerns for the natural environnement and traditional community levels. In this way, the paper questions the supposed dominance of the Athens Charter for modern urbanism on the development of postwar town planning in Belgium by identifying the emergence of landscape and community issues in the practice of regional and local development.http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/VLC/article/view/3414urbanisme moderneaménagement régionalunité de voisinageGroupe L’EquerreCIAM
spellingShingle Geoffrey Grulois
From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52
VLC Arquitectura
urbanisme moderne
aménagement régional
unité de voisinage
Groupe L’Equerre
CIAM
title From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52
title_full From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52
title_fullStr From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52
title_full_unstemmed From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52
title_short From region to neighborhood unit: the urbanism of Group L’Equerre, 1937-52
title_sort from region to neighborhood unit the urbanism of group l equerre 1937 52
topic urbanisme moderne
aménagement régional
unité de voisinage
Groupe L’Equerre
CIAM
url http://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/VLC/article/view/3414
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