ONLINE BRUSSELS HERITAGE - ONE-DAY SEMINAR - 11/12/2014

have been trying to determine just exactly what the cement is that makes a cohesive whole. The usual way of obtaining large wholes is “bottom up”. This means that construction is executed from one level to the next using standard details (doors, windows, roof shapes, etc.). These are then brought together in larger scale design decisions, such as façades, houses, etc. These are grouped together in combinations of houses or groups of houses. The effect of pure bottom-up grouping is that many houses are identical and there is a lack of diversity and recognisability.

In the case of Le Logis - Floréal, various pioneering ideas have resulted in:

• diversity which is neither arbitrary nor chaotic;

• unity without similarity or boredom.

Coherence comes from complexity, which essentially boils down to “making connections”. The garden city features not only connections between successive scale levels (detail → elements → type of house → group of houses → neighbourhood level] but also between non-successive scale levels (for example: elements → groups of houses, or type of house → neighbourhood level (fig. 3)). Since the designers did not simply link elements to types of houses, the management plan provides a distinction in the description of the composition logic between: 1) elements inherent to the type of house; and 2) elements which are not inherent to the type of house. All of this is explained in one of the volumes of the management plan, namely “T04. Unity in diversity”. The fact that some elements could not simply (1/1) be linked to a type of house is the reason why the tables of houses (T01), the thematic maps (P03), and the global construction plans (P11, P12, P13and P21) have been included in the management plan. These documents localise elements not inherent to the type of house.

The tight, complex coherence leads to the feeling that the garden city is the result of one large, unique design, notwithstanding the building of 1,000 houses over a period of 15 years. Standardisation in the production and design process was absolutely essential. Only a limited number of basic elements were used to create one large, coherent, organic whole while avoiding repetition, boredom and a lack of

Fig . 3

The composition of a large whole (© ARSIS).

38 | The listed houses of the Le Logis and Floréal garden cities