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The interaction between building professions in 19th- and 20th-century Belgium has mainly been sketched by focusing on the collaborations between the different professionals in day-to-day construction practice or on their professional associations. As a result, a specific form of interaction has not yet received attention: their moments of conflict. Studying legal conflicts and their resolutions offers insights into the ways different professions fought over what should be considered as their competences. Since the 20th century was key to the development of judicial construction expertise by multiple Belgian building actors, this paper analyzes the nature and scope of construction conflicts and their resolution by judicial experts to gain insights into the mutual demarcation of professional competences among architects, engineers and contractors. In order to do so, 48 expert reports on construction conflicts (1957–59) were analyzed, which are preserved in the archive of the Brussels Court of Commerce (State Archives Brussels (SAB)).

Between 1925-1929, the IJzertoren [Yser tower] memorial was built on the banks of the Yser river in the Belgian town of Dixmude. Both war memorial and monument to Flanders’ struggle for political emancipation, the tower became an increasingly charged and divisive symbol in interwar Belgium, and its construction was highly ideologized. This situation, exacerbated by the tower’s associations with collaboration in the next war, would ultimately lead to its deliberate destruction in 1946 under still unclear circumstances. The subsequent question if, how and by whom the tower should be reconstructed refueled these debates. Despite ambitious reconstruction plans, the memorial was eventually rebuilt between 1952-1965 as a slightly modified and upscaled replica of the old tower, an approach that deliberately declined modern design references or construction methods. The lengthy construction process itself was operationalized in propaganda and iconography of the annual Flemish nationalist rallies that were staged on the building site.

The imposing appearance of the Basilica of St Anthony in Padua (Italy) results from several major transformations carried out after an initial construction phase between the 1230s and 1260s. Due to the lack of medieval building archives, the successive forms of the pilgrimage landmark remain uncertain. Based on a recent survey of the church and a detailed analysis of its original brickwork, this contribution provides a fresh set of evidence casting light on the early appearance of the Basilica as intended by its 13th-century builders. The results pave the way for an unequivocal dating of the building, together with a finer understanding of medieval building techniques in Northern Italy., History of Construction Cultures, ISBN:978-1-03-200203-3, ISBN:978-1-032-00269-9, ISBN:978-1-003-17343-4

This paper studies the demolition and salvage process of construction materials in Brussels in the early twentieth century (1900-1925), a period that is generally considered as a turning point in the reuse practice of construction materials but has not been researched into depth. The paper is based on an analysis of the pho-tographic collection of the Comité d’Etudes du Vieux Bruxelles, the building specifications of public sales of buildings to be demolished and the municipal council reports. This gives insights into the process of demolish-ing buildings and the profile of the contractors involved, and offers a first glimpse of the selling and reusing of these building materials. With this case of the City of Brussels and via the study of these specific sources we aim to enlarge the knowledge of historic salvage of construction materials.

In 1875 Gustave Royers, became appointed as Antwerp city engineer (1875-1907) and as such he was in charge of all major infrastructure works for the Antwerp harbour as well as urban public works. Besides his career at the public works department (1875-1907), he developed a political career as well and used his technical expertise to participate in political discussions related to economy and public works (including discussions on public tenders, building specifications,…) as well as legislation and public health. As liberal he was successively elected as provincial councillor (1889-1903), as a member of the Belgian Chamber of representatives (1910-21), as Antwerp city councillor (1912-21) and as Belgian senator (1921-23). Henceforth, this paper aims to broaden the traditional biographical perspective on engineers and integrates architectural, as well as cultural and political elements in order to colour the biography of Gustave Royers.

This paper examines the wide variety of warehouses belonging to the textile industry in Ghent, an important historical harbour city in Belgium, once called the “Manchester of the mainland”. Different types of warehouses were built depending on the characteristics of the materials stored, the location of the warehouse and whether the goods stored would be used in manufacturing or were finished products. The specific architecture, construction and organisation of these warehouses are analysed, with special attention to the reasons for the prevalence of one construction material or another

In the past years, the emergence and development of the profession of Belgian general contractors has been researched increasingly. Although international research already indicated the relevance of additional case studies, this could hardly be realized for Belgian general contracting companies due to the limited availability of archival material. This was recently countered by the discovery of several (partly preserved) contractors’ archives in Flanders and the Brussels-Capital-Region. This paper therefore analyzes the Brussels-based general contracting company Entreprises Générales Henri Ruttiens et fils (1878–2000) from a broad business-historical perspective. By embedding this case in existing literature on the longitudinal professionalization of Belgian general contractors, the paper not only gives insight into the history of this specific company but also in general trends in the Belgian general contractors’ profession.

The publication accompanies the Sixth International Congress on Construction History 6ICCH, held at the Palace of Academies in Brussels (Belgium) from July 9 to July 13 2018.

The development of architectural concrete in Belgium was instigated by the office buildings Foncolin (arch. Jacqmain, 1955-58) and BBL (arch. Bunshaft, 1959-65) in Brussels, both constructed with precast elements in Schokbeton. Inspired by their success, the Belgian prefabrication company CBR-Ergon set up a production line for architectural concrete. They called on architect Brodzki for the design of the new CBR office (1967-70), which became an exemplary illustration of the versatility of concrete, demonstrating the technical knowhow de-veloped over recent years by CBR-Ergon. The CBR-building can be considered as the definitive breakthrough of a new trend in Belgian architecture: the so-called CBR-style, as the repetition of load-bearing, prefabricated facade elements in visible concrete, was applied in numerous office buildings. Yet after a short, intensive period of application, the formula reached its own limits. It was not until the 1980s, when the interdisciplinary research on architecture and technology was resumed, that architectural concrete could revive.