"The Urban Catalyst", a graduation project at La Cambre: Student protest and pedagogical renewal in the Jean-Pierre Hardenne and France Vanlaethem collection

Abstract

In April 2013, professors Jean-Pierre Hardenne and France Vanlaethem donated to the ULB Archives and Library of Architecture an archive concerning their years of study at La Cambre during the years 1965-1970.

This collection, which includes almost all of their studio projects as well as their syllabuses and lecture notes, is a rich and precious testimony to this pivotal period of student protest.

Their final project, entitled "The Urban Catalyst" and produced in collaboration with Agnès Emery and Henry Goldman, claims a sociological and political reading of urban space and constitutes a synthesis of their approach. Nourished at the theoretical level, among other things by the seminars of Françoise Choay, the project proposes an urban intervention on the fabric of the city of Brussels, in the form of a link that should strengthen the relations between the upper and lower parts of the city. Under the impetus of their studio manager Peter Callebaut, they discovered alternative projects, critical of functionalism, and the work of the architects of the Archigram group, during a study trip to London. Their fascination with contemporary art, including pop art, led to the aesthetic and graphic instrumentalisation of their project, materialised by the assembly of shimmering golden stickers revived by brightly coloured inserts.

As such, the project heralds the major ideological shift that would occur in the fields of architecture and urban planning a few years later in Belgium, first within La Cambre, before largely dominating urban policies from the end of the 1980s.