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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR HISTORY, CULTURE AND MODERNITY www.history-culture-modernity.org Published by: Uopen Journals Copyright: © The Author(s). Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence eISSN: 2213-0624 Secularized Engagement in Architecture: Sieg Vlaeminck’s Plea for Woonecologie in 1970s Flanders Sebastiaan Loosen and Hilde Heynen HCM 6: 1–37 DOI: 10.18352/hcm.516 Abstract During the 1970s the intellectual and cultural climate in Flanders increasingly matured, also in the field of architecture. This fledgling cultural renaissance was fed to a remarkable extent by intellectuals with a religious background who chose to reorient their careers outside the Church. This article focuses on one of those clerics-turned- public intellectuals: sociologist and former Passionist Sieg Vlaeminck (1933–2011), who during the 1970s advocated a scientifically grounded approach of the built environment, labelled woonecologie. His life trajectory unites (1) a plea for sciences, embodying a trend towards scientification, (2) a public voice acknowledging architecture’s societal relevance and (3) a first-hand witness of and contributor to a growing secularization of religious culture. This paper traces the transfiguration of Vlaeminck’s religious vocation into an architectural engagement, in order to offer one way of grasping how architectural culture of the 1970s benefited from the secularization that affected the Catholic Church. Keywords: architecture, Christian existentialism, environmentalism, Flanders, secularization, social sciences HCM 2018, VOL. 6 1 © SEBASTIAAN LOOSEN AND HILDE HEYNEN, 2018 | DOI: 10.18352/hcm.516Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 09:47:30PM This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. via free access LOOSEN AND HEYNEN Introduction The 1970s was a decade in which tendencies of secularization, counter- cultural societal critique and emancipation of individuals overlapped with one another.1 During this period the intellectual and cultural climate in Flanders became increasingly less provincial and more mature. This certainly was true for the field of architecture, where the previous decade had seen only a scarcity of significant built work and a rather small amount of relevant publications.2 The launch in 1973 of the peri- odical A+. Architektuur, Stedebouw, Design, the monthly journal of Belgium’s architects’ association, was symptomatic of this situation: after La Maison was discontinued in 1971, A+ signalled the return of architectural criticism and of a livelier architectural discourse in Dutch. Many different themes were picked up in these years, and many intellectual trajectories were explored. In hindsight, it seems that this fledgling cultural renaissance – which would lead to the emergence of an important generation of Flemish architects in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s – was fed to a remarkable extent by some intellectual figures who owed their erudi- tion and their interest in the built environment to their religious and pastoral background as priests or monks. Geert Bekaert (1928–2016), a former Jesuit, was definitely the most important of these, but Brother Alfons Hoppenbrouwers (1930–2001) also played a paternal role for many graduate students of the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture. Similarly, the priest Jacques Van der Biest (1929–2016) was crucial in taking up the urban struggle in Brussels, where he established the Atelier de Recherche et d’Action Urbaines (ARAU) together with architect Maurice Culot (born 1937) and sociologist René Schoonbrodt (born 1935).3 They were part of a generation of committed Belgian clerics who, in the aftermath of May ’68 and after decades of theological reflection on modernity, reshaped their religious vocation into political action, cultural critique and social engagement.4 This article focuses on a lesser-known figure among this generation of clerics-turned-public intellectuals: sociologist and former Passionist Sieg Vlaeminck (1933–2011), member of the first editorial board ofA+ and professor at the Provincial Higher Institute for Architecture in Hasselt since the early 1970s. Sieg Vlaeminck is mostly remembered today due to his active involvement in the fields of urbanism and heritage conser- vation.5 However, he was also an important advocate of a scientifically HCM 2018, VOL. 6 2 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 09:47:30PM via free access SECULARIZED ENGAGEMENT IN ARCHITECTURE well-founded approach to the built environment, which brought him into the orbit of Human-Environment Studies, inspired by the work of Amos Rapoport.6 He labelled this approach woonecologie – the ‘social ecol- ogy of dwelling’,7 and devoted much of his energy and writing to prop- agating the cause of this envisioned scientific discipline. Even though many of his contemporaries did not share his strong faith in a scientific approach, they did value his search for new foundations in architecture, as he was counted amongst only a handful of significant voices in the 1970s.8 Vlaeminck’s quest for a scientific foundation for architecture was not unique. Architectural schools in many countries sought a firmer base for their teachings by offering courses in sociology and psychology, even inviting sociologists or psychologists to become members of their faculty.9 Equally widespread was a rising environmental mindset, which can arguably be seen as a pervasive epistemological transformation ulti- mately framing Vlaeminck’s scientific endeavours. His interest in ecol- ogy was shared by many architectural educators who were influenced by publications such as the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth or Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.10 The American counterculture that engaged with these ecological ideas was influential in Europe, too, and although Vlaeminck was far too conventional a person to be identified with under- ground or hippie subcultures, they indirectly impacted his work.11 Vlaeminck’s life trajectory played against a background of social structural change, and in that capacity can potentially point to wider shifting paradigms and lasting ideas in society.12 More specifically, his biography unites (1) a plea for sciences embodying a trend towards scientification, in particular felt in architecture, (2) a voice from outside architecture acknowledging its societal relevance and turning it into the object of a broad, public discourse and (3) a first-hand witness of and contributor to a growing secularization of religious culture. Thus, his plea for woonecologie can be approached as an expression of the entan- glement of different forms of knowledges, mindsets and professions, and in this manner offers one particular entry in an often overlooked dimension: how the architectural culture of the 1970s benefited from the laicization that affected the Catholic Church.13 This paper will trace the transfiguration of Vlaeminck’s religious vocation into an architectural engagement starting with the challenges he identified during his Passionist years in the 1960s and the philosophical training he received in the 1950s. After situating his ideas within the rising interest in the philosophy of dwelling, his project of a woonecological HCM 2018, VOL. 6 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/20213 09:47:30PM via free access LOOSEN AND HEYNEN science is further interpreted by pointing out how it challenged the architectural profession, resonated with a rising environmental mindset and connected to an evolution internal to the architectural scene. Passionist Times Vlaeminck was a member of the Passionist order and was ordained as a priest in 1959, after which he attended the Catholic University of Leuven, where he combined studies of Political and Social Sciences with the newly established programme of Urbanism and Spatial Planning (Fig. 1). Figure 1 Sieg Vlaeminck as pictured on the back cover of Het Teken (January-February 1967). Photographer unknown. HCM 2018, VOL. 6 4 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 09:47:30PM via free access SECULARIZED ENGAGEMENT IN ARCHITECTURE The Passionist order was mostly based in Italy, but had some monasteries in Belgium, and in Flanders it had grown since the 1920s. The Passionists’ main goal was to teach people how to pray, and so focused on contem- plative life and missionary work.14 It was in this context that Vlaeminck received his training in philosophy and theology. His writing abilities were deemed important by his superiors, becoming part of the editorial committee of the Passionist journal Kruis en Liefde (‘Cross and Love’) in 1963. He played an active role in the modernization of the journal, implemented by changing its name (it became Het Teken – ‘The Sign’), involving laymen and discarding the ecclesiastic imprimatur (Fig. 2).15 His contributions to this journal reflect a time when he still had a firm belief in priesthood and was not yet engaged with architecture.16 However, over the years his work developed a sense of history that would form the basis of his firm belief in the project of a new social science. He considered technological progress and urbanization inevitable processes and thought that the religious world should accommodate Figure 2 The transformation of the pious Kruis en liefde (October 1958) to Het Teken (June 1965), embracing the modern world. The apartment block was seen by Vlaeminck as emblematic of that modern world. Illustrators unknown. HCM 2018, VOL. 6 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/20215 09:47:30PM via free access LOOSEN AND HEYNEN these ‘actual evolutions’, rather than condemn them.17 In this period, he saw architecture and urbanization as emblematic for the challenges that modernity posed to the religious world.18 City life, and in particular life in apartment blocks, was prefiguring tomorrow’s society, a real- ity which religion would have to deal with sooner or later. This view explains why his sense of history – ‘actual evolutions’ affecting people – found a spatial counterpart in the sociological notion of milieu (environment). This was seen by him as a fundamental part of human exist- ence, in the city as well as in the countryside.

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