Ce qui a été construit et ce qui a été documenté : angles morts dans l’archive architecturale

This lecture was presented at the study day “Saisir la réalité matérielle de l’architecture et de ses éléments de construction” at ENSA Paris-Belleville, as part of the ABER research programme on reuse and building resources in the second half of the twentieth century.

Drawing on research into Belgian building materials and construction practices from 1945 to 2000, the talk explored the structural gap between what is built, what is transformed over time, and what ends up being documented. Using the case of Willy Van Der Meeren’s student housing at the VUB, it showed how architectural archives primarily reflect a logic of conception—capturing intentions, designs and regulatory exchanges—while the material reality of construction and subsequent adaptations often remains invisible.

The lecture highlighted how deconstruction can serve as a form of knowledge, revealing construction logics, material substitutions and hybrid, semi-industrialised components that cannot be traced through drawings alone. Concepts such as “noisy silences” and the contra-archive were referred to as evocative ways of acknowledging the many undocumented layers of post-war construction.

In its final part, the talk addressed the underrepresentation of industrial and prefabricated building elements in heritage and archival practice, and pointed to the emerging role of reuse actors—whose documentation of dismantled components effectively generates a new, field-based archive of post-war construction culture.