The maison modèle

The post-war demographic expansion in the cities of the Belgian Congo posed a challenge for the colonial authorities, which had no single answer to the housing crisis. Along with implementing the Plan Décennal du Congo Belge (1949-1959), all sorts of housing experiments emerged, from self-build to mass-produced, constructing multiple material and imaginary visions of maison modèle. Only a small part of the Congolese petite bourgeoisie, so-called évolués, could afford the modernist houses designed by the Office des Cités Africaines (1952-1960). Other representatives of this colonial society group were encouraged to use a site-and-services scheme, like the Système Grévisse (1949), and apply for a mortgage loan provided by the government's Fonds d'avance. The colonial administration published A Chacun sa Maison (1953), a comprehensive self-building manual with simplified architectural drawings of houses considered by the state as appropriate.

Meanwhile, a mail-order collection of manuals published by Jesuit missionaries, the Bibliothèque de l'Étoile (1943-1966), promoted ways for Congolese to train themselves in constructing their proper maison modèle. While male readers learned how to build a durable brick house and make modern furniture, female subscribers read booklets on how to run a European-style home and prepare it for inspection by the colonial social workers from the Foyer Social. Those who did not read were instructed through propaganda photographs and films like Femmes de demain(1957). Missionary-run schools complemented these self-training drills: Congolese boys in écoles professionnelle practised building an ideal house on the school campus, whereas girls in écoles de ménages studied how to run a perfect household within its walls.

The maison modèle, a term often used by secular and Catholic sources, refers to both the built reality of an appropriate house for a Congolese nuclear family as well as the imaginary vision of an ideal way of homemaking. This ideological construct contains different building typologies, but moreover, testifies to how state and church housing solutions were in the overlapping spheres of construction, education, and social engineering. This paper investigates the duality and ambiguity of the maison modèle to prove that stimulating the self-build and self-sufficiency of the nuclear family by fashioning a particular image of the ideal household outsourced the housing crisis to its victims.

Special attention is given to the crucial role of women, such as femmes d'évolués, who, overseeing construction progress and domestic and financial order, became guardians of the success of late colonial housing campaigns.