The Minett: Dirty or Beautiful? Clashing Discourses on Environmental Pollution and Natural Beauty, 1920s–1960s

Scientific Conference (2022, June 10)

Air pollution visualised

Computer development (2022)

Minettsmap 1980s

Computer development (2022)

In the 1980s, two photographers were exploring the industrial region of Luxembourg by camera. Jos Rinaldi, a mechanical engineer/technician at ARBED, and Fred Bisenius, a social and cultural activist ... [more ▼]

In the 1980s, two photographers were exploring the industrial region of Luxembourg by camera. Jos Rinaldi, a mechanical engineer/technician at ARBED, and Fred Bisenius, a social and cultural activist, were documenting the life, work, leisure and landscapes of the Minett. The Minettsmap offers us a glimpse of the past through the lens of their outstanding collection. [less ▲]

‘As Efficient as a Factory’: Architectural and Managerial Discourses on Government Office Buildings in Belgium, 1919-39

in Architectural History (2022), 65

This article investigates the impact of managerial ideologies on projects for new governmental office buildings in Belgium in the 1920s and 1930s. Following the prewar publication of F. W. Taylor’s ... [more ▼]

This article investigates the impact of managerial ideologies on projects for new governmental office buildings in Belgium in the 1920s and 1930s. Following the prewar publication of F. W. Taylor’s ‘scientific management’ theories, the scientisation of office activities was propagated by efficiency experts throughout the western world. In Belgium, as in France, the work of the mining engineer Henri Fayol was particularly influential. According to Fayol, private and public bureaucracies had to follow identical managerial principles, notably that all employees were to observe one another as much as possible. These ideas of visibility overlapped with the emphasis on transparency and open planning coming from quite a different quarter, namely Le Corbusier, Hannes Meyer and other modernist architects in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet how Fayol’s ideal was to be realised without compromising the traditional need for privacy for high-ranking office workers remained unresolved. The article explores the ideas of two crucial expert groups — architects and managerial experts — over these issues as they developed in Belgium in the inter-war years. In the 1920s, the mining engineer Max-Léo Gérard called for ministerial buildings that facilitated ‘collaborative work’ and the information scientist Paul Otlet advocated an ideal type of government offices based on an architectural diagram that facilitated mutual observation. In the 1930s, the architect Stanislas Jasinski proposed remodelling the centre of Brussels as a series of office blocks, in a design copied from Le Corbusier’s cruciform skyscrapers in the Plan Voisin. Such ideas received official endorsement with the Royal Commissariat for Administrative Reform under Louis Camu, which proposed to strengthen the societal role of governmental bureaucracy by rehousing the civil service in an enormous office complex close to the parliament. Contrasting with the idealism of these unrealised plans was one of the few government projects actually built, the Ministry of Science and Arts headquarters designed in 1929 by the in-house architect Georges Hano. [less ▲]

Dr Mousel looks at dusty skies

Computer development (2022)

Exploring the Past in Public: Recent Public History Exchanges in Southern Luxembourg

Scientific Conference (2021, October 07)

The Twentieth-Century Ministerial Office Building as a Laboratory of Government

in Moderne Stadtgeschichte (2021), (2), 147-166

Within the historiographical field of “political architecture”, ministerial office buildings have always been a somewhat marginal subject, undeservedly deemed of secondary importance in relation to more ... [more ▼]

Within the historiographical field of “political architecture”, ministerial office buildings have always been a somewhat marginal subject, undeservedly deemed of secondary importance in relation to more “representative” types of political buildings. Dwelling on the insights of the nineteenth-century essayist Bagehot and the office historians Duffy and Gardey, my contribution postulates that from the early twentieth century onward, ministerial office architecture has become an essential functional component of any political configuration, as well as a phenomenon defined by a complex interrelationship between physical realities and managerial norms. Even though various historiographical contributions from the last two decades have successfully scrutinised the reciprocal conceptual relations between politics and architecture in relation to ministerial offices, the huge influence of internationally circulating managerial norms such as Taylorism has strangely remained under the radar. Using the example of Belgium during the interwar period, I seek to demonstrate how such norms were strongly mobilised when new ministerial office buildings were planned, and how their propagators even considered “modern” and “efficient” office architecture to be an agent of broad social reform. With this case study, I would like to call attention to the need for a transnational comparative perspective covering the intermingled domains of politics, architecture, and management. [less ▲]

Review of: Tommaso Milani, 'Hendrik de Man and social democracy: The idea of planning in Western Europe, 1914-1940'

in Journal of Belgian History (2021), (1-2), 183-185

Architectures of bureaucracy: An architectural and political history of ministerial offices in Belgium, 1915-1940

Doctoral thesis (2019)

Gläserne Zwischenwände für effektive Kontrollen: Das belgische Regierungsbüro in der Zwischenkriegszeit

in Bernasconi, Gianenrico; Nellen, Stefan (Eds.) Das Büro: Zur Rationalisierung des Interieurs, 1880-1960 (2019)