Architecture Misfit #39: Juliaan Lampens

Since April 2017 there had been a draft post on Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens and, as I don’t follow online architectural media, only found out a week ago that he died last year – though knowing that at the time wouldn’t have changed anything. This post began as a career case study but it soon became clear Lampens was Architecture Misfit #39.

Lampens’ built work is accomplished and frequently inspired and unique but what makes him special is his relationship with his career. Very early on he discovered what made sense to him and never deviated from the pursuit of that. There’s no journey of artistic progression to see, report, theorize or otherwise consume. The house he designed for himself in 1960 and lived in for the next sixty years is not that different from the last house he designed in 2002. His projects have no social agenda other than not spoiling the landscape in which they are placed. He felt no need to devise and espouse a theory. He did not travel to seek commissions beyond the town of Ghent where he was born, lived, worked and died. He avoided all publicity so he wouldn’t be compared to others and he avoided having his projects published in magazines so they wouldn’t be compared to each other. His only marketing was the buildings themselves and client’ word-of-mouth. He gave two interviews. In 2011 when he was 85 he was interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist for a monograph. The other was in 2014 for Japanese magazine a+u. Lampens was content to live in the one place and design buildings for the people that asked him to. It’s probably not possible to be this kind of architect anymore. I hope I’m wrong.

Obituaries all told much the same story and, though I’m not disputing the facts, I’m uneasy about their lack of variation.

1. Lampens was a Brutalist architect, little known outside Belgium.
2. Lampens’ first buildings were traditional in style but in 1958 he visited the Brussels Expo and decided he was some sort of Modernist.
3. Lampens developed his own personal style of raw concrete and monolithic buildings resembling fortresses or bunkers that blend in their context and natural landscape.

This narrative is usually illustrated with the following buildings.

1960: Own House, Eke, Belgium

Like many architects, Lampens designed his own house as a statement of what he believed in architecturally and so function as a word-of-mouth marketing tool for further business. It worked. It was open plan, as Lampens’ later houses tended to be, and its concrete roof was supported by brick walls. He believed buildings should be sculpture that should enhance their surroundings. This is all the theory we get.

In the photo at left, below, note the irregular ceiling arrangement of what look like bricks but are probably light fittings.

The plan already shows many features Lampens would re-use. Most noticeable is a simple shape for the enclosure and a minimum of internal planning within that, along with a lack of emphasis on furniture placement. Both suggest an interest in designing structures that can be arbitrarily inhabited – at least conceptually.

1966: The chapel of Our Blessed Lady of Kerselare Edelare, Belgium

Here we get to see more concrete in a manner we associate with Kenzo Tange and a purpose we associate with Le Corbusier. The planning is not that different from the 1960 house.. This links to a heritage management plan containing much information [in Dutch] about this building.

1967: Vandenhaute-Kiebooms House Zingem, Belgium

An article in Wallpaper* said “Through his architecture Lampens championed a family-focused and egalitarian way of living that went against the grain of his contemporaries’ bourgeois emphasis on individuality and hierarchy”. This is a reference to the Vandenhaute-Kiebooms House in which a family of six lived in a 14m x 14m space without conventional markers of visual or aural privacy.

The only fixed elements are three half-closed concrete cylinders that rise from the floor to house the bath, toilet and the staircase to the cellar. The kitchen is semi-enclosed by a square of walls hanging from the ceiling. Everything else in the house can be reorganized around these elements. The free-standing timber units are bedroom furniture with beds attached. It’s been only eight years since Lampens started his practice and already he’s making some very strong decisions.

This plan shows how the house is organized. It’s not large. The roof drains into the circular pond via a device we’ve just seen in the chapel. Note the boundary between the hard and soft landscaping.

1968: House Diane Lampens Gavere, Belgium

The brick walls, tile floor, metal fireplace, timber ceiling and timber room divider/furniture partitions show Lampens sense for all materials, not just concrete. He seems to have intuitively understood that a variety of different materials in close proximity always suggests abundance even when none of them are premium materials. We would call it a Scandinavian use of materials if the internal walls were painted white. (You won’t see paint in any of the buildings here.)

This interest in materials extended to steel, stainless steel, ceramic tile, timber and plastic laminate, all of which you can see in this kitchen. Again, the house has its living functions conceptually separate yet internal to the enclosure.

1970: Eke Public Library Eke, Belgium

The library interior features Lampens’ characteristic timber ceilings with circular roof lights, an irregular pattern of ceiling light fixtures and some magnificent timber shelves.

1973: House Derwael–Thienpont Gavere, Belgium

Here, again, we have a house with a concrete roof of which little is seen, as well as a timber ceiling, tile floor and timber fittings. Lampens’ preference was to use timber for ceilings and the parts of the building people came into contact with. A entrance door would never be metal.

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Lampens believed every drawing should be beautiful.

In these next two images we again see that irregular arrangement of ceiling lights. [I like this idea. All too many rooms nowadays have recessed downlights placed in thoughtless grids across entire ceilings, providing uniform illumination as if living rooms were offices with no such thing as a dark corner.]

1974: Van Wassenhove House Laethem-Saint-Martin (near Ghent), Belgium

This house is said to be Lampens’ masterpiece. From the street approach it does the bunker thing, and this time we see nothing but concrete and a timber door.

1988: House De La Ruelle–Van Moffaert Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium

This house has several features we now associate with Lampens – the circular roof light, the use of timber in the interior, the irregular arrangement of ceiling lights, the open plan, the concern for rainwater. What’s different is the use of long pieces of precast concrete stacked like logs.

This house is a concrete block addition to an existing prefabricated timber structure and perhaps because of that, plans are hard to come by.

1990: House Lampens–Dieter Gavere, Belgium

This house was for one of Lampens’ sons. Again, plans are difficult to find.

2002: House Velghe–Verlinden Deinze, Belguim

This was Lampens’ last house and it’s remarkable for how much it has in common with his first house from 1960. There is still a blank wall on the public side of the house while the other sides are as open as possible. In the case of this house, the blank wall is perhaps most justifiable but no conclusion can be made without seeing the site boundaries and access road.

It’s also the only house I’ve seen where there is an internal 45° corner, turned rather effortlessly by the kitchen and table.

This time there’s not one but two exaggerated rainwater spouts. The arrangement of light fittings on the ceiling was always one of those inexplicable design decisions that can be neither justified nor criticized – it just is. This enclosed yard outside the bathroom is another.

Here’s what we have.

1950-1960: unrecorded early houses
1960: Own House, Eke, Belgium
1966: The chapel of Our Blessed Lady of Kerselare Edelare, Belgium
1967: Vandenhaute-Kiebooms House Zingem, Belgium
1968: House Diane Lampens Gavere, Belgium
1970: Eke Public Library Eke, Belgium
1973: House Derwael–Thienpont Gavere, Belgium
1974: Van Wassenhove House Laethem-Saint-Martin (near Ghent), Belgium
1988: House De La Ruelle–Van Moffaert Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium
1990: House Dieter Lampens Gavere, Belgium
2002: House Velghe–Verlinden Deinze, Belguim

The absence of information on the early houses we can perhaps excuse, although they’re probably nothing to be ashamed of. However, if Lampens’ own house was finished in 1960, then it was six years before his next known building, the chapel was finished. After that, there was one commission every year or two until Van Wassenhove House was completed In 1974. This suggests a sole practitioner or a very small office. The gap between 1974 and 1988 corresponds to Lampens beginning teaching in 1974 at his former school, the Institut Saint-Luc in Ghent. He designed three more houses over the period 1985-2002. Now, there’s nothing compelling architects to be compulsively prolific but Lampens’ reputation seems to rest on one chapel, one public library, and eight houses of which one was for himself and two others for relatives. On the basis of cashflow alone, this simply isn’t possible and can’t be anywhere near the full story. Next week’s post will hopefully redress the balance and give a fuller picture of Lampens’ career so we can better learn from it.

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Juliaan Lampens
1 Jan. 1926 – 6 Nov. 2019

for keeping it simple

misfits salutes you!

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