This chapter analyses the history of the development of the Belgian construction company Blaton, from its foundation in 1865 until 1954. Throughout this period, the company was managed by family members and remained under family control. This analysis is based on an examination of company archives that became available for research in 2013 for the period up to about 1954. From trading in building materials - and in particular artificial cement - in 1865, the company began to build reinforced concrete constructions in 1897. As of the beginning of the 20th century, Blaton became one of the most important Belgian contractors for public, industrial and private construction works.

ABSTRACTArchitecture and bureaucracy: indissociable and irreconcilable? The two spheres are often seen in opposition — the latter curtailing the former’s creative power — yet might they not also overlap, partake and occasionally coincide in their processes? Dismissing the role of bureaucracy in architecture as extraneous or detrimental seems to hinder our capacity, as thinkers and producers of architecture, to work through this relationship and explore ways of dealing with a pervasive tool of contemporary societal organisation; whereas understanding the fraught relationship might help us bridge the gap that, in many contexts, separates architecture and the communities it exists to serve. This special collection explores how architecture and bureaucracy have negotiated their stances in the twentieth century. In particular, it aims to shed light on instances where knowledge of architecture was an element in, and a product of, the machinery of bureaucracy. Beyond the notion of bureaucracy in architecture as a site of imposition and control — and the vivid sentiments of frustration and deception it prompts — lies a terrain where less contrasted, more fine-grained actions and exchanges occur. The ways in which these two spheres relate are diverse and merit scholarly attention, as the articles that follow demonstrate.

The Booktower complex, the central library of Ghent University (1933-1947), is a celebrated masterpiece of modernist architect Henry van de Velde. In addition, the tower also counts as one of the first European towers in reinforced concrete, next to several other noteworthy structural and technical achievements. This paper revisits the process of designing and building the Booktower, evaluating the architect's collaborations with engineers including Gustave Magnel and Jean-Norbert Cloquet but also the contributions of skilled contractors like Gillion and Van Pottelbergh, specialists in the use of reinforced concrete. This paper scrutinizes the collaborations in the design team by assessing contracts, plans, correspondence and other archival materials. The research develops a rich perspective on the respective roles of architects, engineers and contractors, demonstrating how their collaboration was largely conditioned by the university and how each came up with state-of-the art methods to meet the challenges of the project.

This article evaluates the complementary and overlapping professional roles of architects and engineers during the interwar period in Belgium. The porosity of these two professions remains largely under-researched in contemporary historiography of modern building, as historians tend to ascribe authorship to the architect without acknowledging the traces of intense collaboration between engineers and architects. Focusing on the practice of the consulting engineer Eugène François (1870–1957) and his collaboration with the architect Alexis Dumont (1877–1962), this article studies two public buildings designed by this duo to examine the day-to-day responsibilities of engineers and architects during the interwar period. It demonstrates how, prior to the legal establishment of both professions, the tasks and duties that are now attributed to architects were often covered by engineers. The intervention of architects, on the other hand, was regarded as necessary to preserve the aesthetic qualities of appropriate façades in the public domain. As the Belgian law of 1939 that attributed and protected the title of architects attempted to clarify their roles and responsibilities, these findings shed a new light on the practices of designing and building, and the attribution of authorship among professional ‘builders’ in Belgium during the interwar period.

Although the amount of building projects reduced strongly in Belgium during the Second World War, the Brussels-based contractor Blaton was able to continue some of its activities and this with more projects than was previously assumed. As such, the Blaton archive offers a rare opportunity to investigate the legal, economic and practical conditions of building in occupied Belgium. This contribution examines a selection of wartime projects undertaken by Blaton: the Karlec factory in St.-Niklaas, the Ghent St. Nicolas Church and the Ghent harbor quays. All three cases were examples of the early application of pre-stressed concrete, a technology for which Blaton, in collaboration with G. Magnel, was an international pioneer. More than focusing on the technological challenges, the paper evaluates the ordinances of the German occupying forces and their effects on building activities, influencing the management of laborers, the availability of construction materials and imposing even a prohibition on construction activities.

Eternit, an important manufacturer of building products in asbestos cement and other materials, was one of the major players in Belgium's post-war building industry.As a way of product placement, seeking to associate itself with "good" and "modern" architecture, Eternit Belgium commissioned renowned architects to design the Eternit office buildings, exhibition stands and pavilions, and 1:1 model buildings.The paper reveals the strategies and project details behind this particular collaboration between the building industry and the architects: who took the initiative, what were the motivations of the partners involved, how do the built projects relate to printed promotional material, and how did the result contribute to the corporate identity of Eternit Belgium.Although the archive of Eternit Belgium is not accessible, the archives of the architects and the administrative building files, as well as contemporary publications allow the authors to asses these questions and to evaluate these buildings as full-scale business cards.

This paper summarizes the differences in the design approaches for tensile surface structures between the earliest structures in the 1950s and today’s practice. Current software tools allow more refined and advanced calculations. Nevertheless, a basic hand calculation can clarify the process in a few pages and provide the appropriate key data. A transparent setup allows the form‐finding and structural analysis to be redone. The calculation of the cable net for the bandstand by André Paduart (1958) is analysed in this paper as a case study. Both the hand calculation (19 pages) and the numerical simulation are summarized and the design context of the initial and current calculations are described. The approximations made by Paduart resulted in a remarkably intelligible and coherent evaluation of the cable net structure. The historical approach can still be applied for a first verification of a pretensioned cable net or for a membrane structure as the simplified calculation method is similar.