Belgian Architecture

Belgian architecture is the architecture of a small, dense country where Gothic town halls, Baroque guild houses and Art Nouveau town houses stand within walking distance of one another. It runs from the market squares of Brussels, Ghent and Bruges to Victor Horta's Art Nouveau, post-war modernism and a contemporary Flemish scene known for careful, often radical work with existing buildings.

What is Belgian architecture?

The term covers buildings, interiors and urban places made in Belgium, from Flanders on the North Sea coast to Brussels and the French-speaking south around Liège. It overlaps with the Low Countries tradition shared with the Netherlands, covered in our topic on Dutch architecture, but Belgium has its own story. Its cities grew rich on trade and crafts in the Middle Ages, it became an independent kingdom only in 1830, and its capital later became a seat of European institutions.

Three threads run through that story. The first is civic architecture: town halls, belfries and guild houses built by prosperous merchant cities to display their wealth. The second is the town house, the narrow brick or stone dwelling on a deep plot that shapes almost every Belgian street, from medieval canal fronts to Horta's houses in Brussels. The third is a long argument about the city itself, sharpened in Brussels after the Second World War, over what should be demolished, what should be kept, and how much of an old building has to survive for it to count as preserved.

For designers today, Belgium matters less for any single style than for its habit of building on what is already there. Brick, the party wall and the existing structure are where most Belgian projects start, which is why the country's recent work is studied by anyone interested in adaptive reuse.

A short history of Belgian architecture

The great monuments of the late Middle Ages are civic as much as religious. Brussels Town Hall was built between 1401 and 1455 in the Brabantine Gothic style, with a tall spire that still dominates the city centre. Around it grew the Grand-Place, which the French bombardment of 1695 largely destroyed. The guilds rebuilt their houses in the following years in a rich Baroque manner, and the square was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998.

In the 1890s Brussels became a birthplace of a new style. Victor Horta's Hôtel Tassel of 1893 is considered one of the first examples of Art Nouveau architecture, and four of his town houses, including his own house and studio, have been on the UNESCO list since 2000. Exposed iron, curving lines and open, top-lit stairs turned the ordinary narrow town house into a single flowing interior. Our Art Nouveau topic follows the movement beyond Belgium.

Henry van de Velde, born in Antwerp in 1863, is counted with Horta and Paul Hankar among the founders of Belgian Art Nouveau. He spent the most important part of his career in Germany, and his Belgian works include the Boekentoren, the book tower of Ghent University Library. After the Second World War, Belgian modernism found a leading voice in Renaat Braem, whose Kiel social housing estate in Antwerp became a landmark of the 1950s. Braem later attacked the country's post-war planning in a 1968 essay titled "The most ugly country in the world".

The 1958 World's Fair gave Brussels the Atomium, which, as the Atomium's own site explains, was the flagship construction of Expo 58 and was never meant to outlast it. It was renovated between 2004 and 2006 and remains a symbol of the city.

Key principles of Belgian architecture

Belgian buildings vary widely by region and period, but several principles hold across them. Each shows up in the projects and journals on uni.xyz.

The narrow plot and the party wall

Most Belgian towns are built from deep, narrow plots sharing party walls. That pattern fixes the width of a house and pushes invention into section, light and the rear garden. Horta used a central stair and skylight to open up the plot, and today's row-house conversions work with the same constraints.

Brick as the common language

Brick runs from Flemish farmhouses and industrial halls to new houses and breweries. It ties new buildings to old ones and gives contemporary projects a way to belong to a street without copying it. Our brick topic covers the material in depth.

The street as a shared room

Because facades are narrow and continuous, the Belgian street reads as a single wall of many owners. Shopfronts, murals and small changes of height and material make it lively, and the quality of the street depends on how each new facade joins its neighbours.

Civic pride in public buildings

From medieval town halls to new schools and youth centres, Belgian public buildings carry civic weight. In Flanders, the Flemish Government Architect, the Vlaams Bouwmeester, runs an Open Call procedure that helps public clients appoint design teams for their projects.

Keeping what exists

Whether in a convent, a brewery or a terrace house, recent Belgian work tends to keep the existing structure and add only what is needed. The skill lies in deciding which parts carry the building's character and which can change.

Belgian architecture on uni.xyz

The Belgian architecture topic on uni.xyz is built mainly from UNI Editorial journals on recent buildings across the country, together with member projects set in Brussels. The journals cover houses, schools, a brewery, apartments and public space.

Valine House in Ghent, designed by LDSRa and Olivier Goethals as their own home, takes a narrow, deep terrace house and reworks it in section. Floors are removed to make double-height voids, a spiral stair runs through an outdoor courtyard, and a real caravan hangs over the garden to hold a bathroom and storage.

"Row house conversions in Belgium tend to follow a predictable script: gut the ground floor, add a skylight, clad everything in white plaster, and call it contemporary."

UNI Editorial, on Valine House by LDSRa and Olivier Goethals (uni.xyz journal)

Brick appears in several journals. A2D Architects' satellite brewery for Lindemans in Ruisbroek, southwest of Brussels, completed in 2022, folds red-brown brick into concave vertical curves that echo the cylindrical vessels inside. VILLAMA by maa_architecture studio, in Ohain in the municipality of Lasne, had to meet local rules requiring pitched roofs, brick facades and simple volumes, and treats them as a starting point rather than a limit. At the small end, Tweestroom Architecten's Herfst House renovates a 61 m² home at the end of a row, keeping the original brick detailing around the front door to hold the street together.

Other journals show reuse at a civic scale. In Hasselt, a2o architecten's renovation of the Ursuline Convent restores an eighteenth-century mansion, used by the Ursuline Sisters from 1879, as part of a wider urban renewal. In Liège, Olivier Fourneau Architects' Cockerill Apartments, completed in 2023, sit on a square framed by a modernist university building and the neo-Gothic Grand Poste of 1901. Smaller pieces include Atelier Janda Vanderghote's pool pavilion in Geluveld, built from steel columns, timber rafters and translucent panels, and Architectenbureau Quisquater's A.TGG House in Dendermonde, which places a new home inside the cast-iron structure of a former townhouse, theatre and shop.

Member work adds proposals for Brussels. Unify by Nadia Cheng, Hannah Zhang and Gwen Del Rosario, an entry to the Youth House competition, is a youth house that unites varying personalities and environmental conditions and offers social and environmental flexibility. A city at eye level, made for the Picturing: Streets competition, presents a Brussels street as a shelter and a place for sensory perception that can build better communities.

Challenges and future directions

Brussels gave its name to a planning failure. Brusselization describes the unregulated redevelopment of the city from the 1950s to the 1980s, when speculation, road building and new office space for international institutions replaced whole blocks. The demolition of Horta's Maison du Peuple in 1965 became a focus of protest. Heritage laws in the early 1990s slowed demolition, but they also encouraged façadism: gutting a historic building and keeping only its street front, with a new structure behind. Deciding how much of a building must survive to count as preserved is still an open question.

The current answer in Flanders leans towards reuse. The Vlaams Bouwmeester's Open Call 52 frames all six of its projects around existing buildings.

"The assignments are diverse, but all share a clear commitment to repurposing: instead of razing and replacing, they work with the spatial, social and material value of what already exists."

Véronique Claessens, Flemish Government Architect, introducing Open Call 52 (2026)

The Egied Van Broeckhoven School by B2Ai shows what that looks like in practice. A former bottling plant of the Vandenheuvel brewery in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek now houses 860 secondary students; its Art Deco street facades were cleaned and insulated, and the sports hall opens to local clubs after hours.

Contemporary practices are also testing new forms on difficult sites. OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen's atelier for the artist Rinus Van de Velde in Leuven sits in a flood-prone area, so the lower facade of its concrete box is pierced with round openings that let a crawl space flood in a controlled way. Climate, flooding and the coast, seen in the journal on Silt Middelkerke's reworked seafront, will shape much of the next generation of Belgian work.

Belgian architecture for students and designers

Belgium is an ideal subject for thesis work about building on the existing city. A narrow terrace house, a disused brewery or convent, a post-war office block in Brussels or a stretch of the Flemish coast each poses a real design question. Useful angles include row-house conversions worked out in section, brick additions to industrial sites, youth and community buildings on infill plots, and the honest alternative to façadism. Start by drawing the existing building as carefully as the new one: plots, party walls and brick bonds are the raw material of most Belgian projects, and a strong thesis shows exactly what it keeps, what it removes and why.

The uni.xyz design competitions are a good place to test those ideas. For related reading, see our topics on industrial heritage and urban infill.

Frequently asked questions

What is the architectural style of Belgium?

Belgium has no single style. Its best-known periods are Brabantine and Flemish Gothic, the Baroque guild houses of the Grand-Place, the Art Nouveau of Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde, post-war modernism, and a contemporary Flemish scene focused on reuse.

Why is Brussels important for Art Nouveau?

Horta's Hôtel Tassel of 1893 is considered one of the first Art Nouveau buildings, and Brussels kept many town houses from the period. Four of Horta's houses are on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

What is Brusselization?

Brusselization is the term for unregulated redevelopment that ignores a city's heritage, named after what happened to Brussels from the 1950s to the 1980s. Its later form, façadism, keeps a historic front and replaces everything behind it.

Who designed the Atomium?

The Atomium was built for Expo 58 and designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn with the architects André and Jean Polak, according to its Wikipedia entry. It was intended as a temporary structure but was kept and renovated between 2004 and 2006.

Who are notable Belgian architects?

Historic names include Victor Horta, Paul Hankar, Henry van de Velde and Renaat Braem. Contemporary practices include OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, as well as the firms featured in our journals, such as B2Ai, A2D Architects and a2o architecten.

References and further reading

• Grand-Place, Wikipedia
• Brussels Town Hall, Wikipedia
• Major Town Houses of the Architect Victor Horta, Wikipedia
• Renaat Braem, Wikipedia
• Brusselization, Wikipedia
• Henry van de Velde, Wikipedia
• Atomium, Wikipedia
• The Atomium, Atomium
• Open Call, Team Vlaams Bouwmeester
• OFFICE 349, Atelier Van de Velde, Leuven, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen