Designing the Belgian Welfare State 1950S to 1970S

This article was downloaded by: [UQ Library] On: 29 August 2013, At: 02:57 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Journal of Architecture Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjar20 Designing the Belgian welfare state 1950s to 1970s: social reform, leisure and ideological adherence Janina Gosseye a & Hilde Heynen a a Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning, K.U.Leuven, Belgium Published online: 11 Oct 2010. To cite this article: Janina Gosseye & Hilde Heynen (2010) Designing the Belgian welfare state 1950s to 1970s: social reform, leisure and ideological adherence, The Journal of Architecture, 15:5, 557-585, DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2010.519950 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2010.519950 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions 557 The Journal of Architecture Volume 15 Number 5 Documenting the modern public past (five essays) ———————————————— Designing the Belgian welfare state 1950s to 1970s: social reform, leisure and ideological adherence Janina Gosseye, Hilde Heynen Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning, K.U.Leuven, Belgium Introduction: Belgium, a pillarised state the redistribution of wealth, knowledge and political The Belgian welfare state came about, like most power. Hence all Western Europe saw the rise of others in Western Europe, as a political project at heavily subsidised housing estates and social infra- the end of the Second World War. The Social Pact structure, such as health facilities, cultural or com- that in April, 1944, was signed between representa- munity centres and sports facilities. The way in tives of the labour movement, leaders of the which these amenities were planned, financed and employers’ organisations and a few high-ranking managed varied considerably among the different civil servants, provided the basis for what later on nation-states. In some countries, such as the Nether- became a well-elaborated system of social insur- lands or Sweden, planning was very much centra- ance, covering health care, unemployment, old lised and the distribution of amenities was age pensions, child benefit and the annual carefully administered by national institutions. In vacation.1 In Belgium as elsewhere the political other countries, such as Belgium, a more decentra- basis for the grandiose new ‘social contract’ came lised policy prevailed that, thanks to subsidies from Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 02:57 29 August 2013 forth from the profound uncertainties that people the state, enabled local authorities to plan and had been exposed to during the war. Because realise these new facilities. quality-of-life prospects had become blatantly unre- Historical, sociological and philosophical studies liable, it was generally felt that social justice on an of the welfare state abound. Studies that focus on impartial basis should be guaranteed by the State.2 how the welfare state was translated into built In contrast with American corporate capitalism reality are scarcer. The domain of housing is by and Soviet communism, the welfare state project now reasonably well covered.3 Less attention, was an attempt to devise a specific European however, has been paid to the other built infrastruc- answer to Cold War politics and to emerging post- ture to which the welfare state gave rise: the cultural colonial realities. centres, sports fields, hospitals, schools, universities, In most European countries this resulted in strong retirement homes and other social amenities that legislation which offered social security to the were built as part of the effort to provide equal majority of the population, administered by a new access for all to provision that previously catered bureaucracy. This was paralleled by the establish- only to the happy few. These massive construction ment of planning institutions meant to facilitate programmes have so far not been systematically # 2010 The Journal of Architecture 1360-2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602365.2010.519950 558 Designing the Belgian welfare state 1950s to 1970s: social reform, leisure and ideological adherence Janina Gosseye, Hilde Heynen studied with respect to welfare state policies, survive in an era (from the 1960s onwards) cultural movements (such as modernism in marked by a general tendency towards pluralism architecture) or social tendencies. This article dis- and de-pillarisation.9 Researching the country’s closes this vast field by unravelling the development leisure infrastructure, we also recognise the impact of leisure infrastructure in the Belgian welfare state. of pillarisation in the early post-war period, and its For reasons that will become clear further in the lingering effects long afterwards. article, we focus mainly on Flanders; the northern, In Belgium this pillarisation also became visible in Flemish-speaking region of the country. architectural and urban forms. Immediately after the In Belgium, the emergence of the welfare state Second World War, two housing acts were was bound up with political evolutions based on a approved: a Catholic one stimulating private initiat- logic of pillarisation.4 Belgium was one of those ive (Act De Taeye, 1948) and a socialist one promot- European states that were strongly characterised ing public housing (Act Brunfaut, 1949). The Act De by this peculiar arrangement of political ideologies Taeye encouraged small-scale private initiatives by and social structures.5 The term ‘pillarisation’ offering subsidies to private builders, and by refers to a situation in which different ideological setting up a mortgage system that allowed builders sections of society—in Belgium, Catholics, Socialists to borrow up to 90% of their property’s value. It was and Liberals (the last smaller and less important)— beneficial to individual home builders, but also to organise themselves as ‘pillars’: tightly knit wholes specific Catholic organisations that started to build of affiliated and interconnected organisations that large estates of single-family homes that could be Downloaded by [UQ Library] at 02:57 29 August 2013 ‘serve’ their members with respect to housing, sold cheaply thanks to the De Taeye subsidies. The health care, employment issues and other areas of Act Brunfaut on the other hand was most relied life.6 The interconnection between welfare state upon by socialist-inspired housing corporations policies and ideological pillars was in many Euro- which used it to fund the collective infrastructure pean countries quite complex. In the Netherlands, needed for large social housing estates with blocks for instance, the housing policy that was initiated of flats rather than one-family houses (Fig. 1).10 from 1901 was implemented through the ideologi- When it came to leisure infrastructure, the entan- cal pillars and the first housing corporations were glement between pillars and welfare state initially established by ideologically committed organis- was also quite important. Before the state began ations that received state subsidies.7 Likewise, to subsidise these types of buildings, pillars already social security in Belgium after 1945 was distributed had some experience in providing for leisure and through unions and mutualiteiten (health insurance sports. The very first holiday colonies for children organisations) that bore clear ideological connota- in Belgium, for instance, were established by tions.8 These close affiliations between welfare political parties or by unions, and not by the state. state policy and pillarised institutions, it has been Starting as early as the late nineteenth century— argued, in fact have helped these institutions to when child labour had just been abolished11 and 559 The Journal of Architecture Volume 15 Number 5 school funding caused a bitter controversy between ations (since they did not have to cultivate a liberals and Catholics—various liberal philanthropic garden or to bother about maintenance issues). In foundations began organising summer camps for the 1950s and early 1960s these ideological differ- children. Holiday domains were predominantly ences were still very dominant when it came to located near the sea or in the Ardennes (a hilly

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