Project

The legal track explores the intersections between law, expertise and the building site. The divisions between expertise and law in building were often blurred, and the various actors involved had to acquire insight into both the law and building practices. In the period between c. 1880 and c. 1970, the processes of juridification and professionalization of the building industry coincided. More rules were imposed on building professions (contractors, architects, engineers) and with regard to safety during the building process. However, for construction history the impact and implementation of the increasing legislation and the resolution of disputes have not often been studied. In the legal track, research focuses on normativity and informal rules, as well as rhetorical strategies, as they can be seen in the case of harm or construction faults. The liability of architects, contractors and even workers was tested against ‘rules of the trade’, which were rules of implicit, practical knowledge. The sources that can be used range from instructional literature to case law, in which the liability of constructors is explored. These sources shed light not only on the appraisal of ‘rules of trade’ but also on how legal practitioners categorize and understand ‘practical knowledge’ of builders. The building site is considered as a meeting point, where developments that are not specific to the building industry nonetheless determine behaviour. Juridification was not exclusively happening with regard to construction, but it did have a huge impact.  

The colonial track studies the role of building within the political project of Belgian colonialism. This Belgian colonial project, which started as a private initiative of king Léopold II with the Congo Free State (1885-1908) and transformed into an official colonial state with the establishment of the Belgian Congo (1908-1960), strongly depended on the construction of a physical framework through which the mise-en-valeur of the colony, could be operationalized. In other words: the (infra)structures of colonialism, and with that colonialism itself, depended on the successful implementation of a colonial construction industry.

Within the doctoral track, we investigate how house building was a tool of colonial dominance. In the earliest years of Belgian colonialism, for instance, prefabricated homes and their related construction technologies allowed for a quick occupation of the territory. In later years, similar prefab construction techniques had to provide a quick fix for a colonial construction industry that was struggling —even in the 1950s— to build in the ‘new’ context of the Belgian Congo. The maison modèle, a cognitive concept as much as a physical object, aimed at educating Congolese boys and girls in vocational schools. The first were trained in building such a model house, whereas the latter were thought how to run a ‘model’ household within these buildings. As such, the maison modèle —and its related self-building campaigns in the 1950s— was a social engineering project as much as it was yet another attempt at solving the housing crises in the rapidly growing African cities. The postdoctoral track further connects the extractive logics of Belgian colonialism —central in the aforementioned mise-en-valeur— to the construction industry. Through narratives of building material production and infrastructure building, it becomes clear how modern construction, both within the Belgian Congo and abroad, relied on the massive extraction of ‘cheap labour’ and ‘cheap nature’. 

Within the track the colonial geography, connecting Belgium to Congo, is broadened, including other unexpected transnational flows and connections: for instance in the massive supply of Limba wood to the American market, the labour migration within the African continent related to large infrastructural projects, or the introduction of prefabricated housing solutions from around the globe.

The planning track considers the city as a collective edifice in constant transformation. Cities depend for their development on the construction industries that can build them. As cities develop, they select what kind of construction processes can thrive and persist. The track studies the relation between urban development and construction through an urbanization perspective, studying the reciprocal relationship between dynamics of urbanization and the changing assemblage of landscapes of construction. This analysis looks, among other things, at the availability of resources, the enabling landscapes supporting their processing and distribution, the vocational training of construction labor, the circulation of ideas and imaginaries that co-define the ‘appropriate’ use of materials and technologies. In sum, the planning track portrays which urbanization policies were entangled with which construction landscapes in the Belgian context during the ‘trente glorieuses’ (1945-1975).  

The doctoral project studies concrete "samples" of the Belgian metropolis as ‘built’ rather than as ‘planned’ realities. It examines which urbanization policies and construction landscapes undergirded the juxtaposition of typical building programs such as supermarkets, suburbs, condo’s, gas stations, sports infrastructures, cultural centers, road hotels, tied together by metropolitan roadscapes, etc. The post-doctoral track examines the nexus between urbanization and different materials industries in the Belgian context. It exposes the dialectical relationships between different urbanization policies (ranging from massive suburbanization, over hard metropolization to soft revaluation) and professional intermediaries (such as the National Group of the Clay Industry, the Federation of the Belgian Cement Industry, and the Do-It-Yourself-industry). An urbanization perspective encourages to comprehend construction landscapes as part and parcel of a ‘politics of realization’, exposing the close interrelationships between aspects of material extraction, production, and distribution; policy-making; vocational education; territorial differentiation; (re)appropriation; etc.

The project’s interdisciplinarity is not limited to the historical confrontations within the three tracks. We also aim to look across the different subdisciplinary boundaries of legal, colonial and planning history. Crossroads is a collection of texts that literally sit on the crossroads between the different tracks. Such crossovers can be thematic—for instance when studying the legislative frameworks of labour recruitment in the Belgian Congo—or methodological—for instance when looking at planning history through building regulations. Besides, Crossroads texts can also look beyond the three disciplines defined in the project, and seek alliances with other disciplines, such as labour history or histories of ecology.

Building methodological and thematic bridges towards other (unexpected) disciplines, Crossroads texts are actively trying to expand the boundaries of what is considered construction history. Through explorations of themes, actors and methodologies that are now still beyond the field, these texts propel an extended understanding of what constitutes construction — and thereby its history.