The campus was never designed. It accumulated, building by building, inside a city block — until the buildings stopped being safe and somebody had to decide what to keep.
At a glance
The Brussels campus of Sint-Lucas occupies a block in Schaarbeek, where neo-Gothic convent buildings, a modernist pavilion, terraced houses and town houses had been taken over one at a time across decades. By 2013 the fabric no longer met basic safety standards. POLO Architects, with Greisch and Coppée, won the competition to renew it: several of the most valuable buildings and courtyards were kept, others demolished, and new building added on Paleizenstraat and Groenstraat.
Key facts
- The school: founded in 1862 in Ghent and in 1887 in Brussels — the oldest free architecture institute in Belgium
- 1995: the department became part of the School of Science & Arts
- 2013: the architecture department left LUCA School of Arts and joined KU Leuven as its Faculty of Architecture, with campuses in Brussels and Ghent
- The campus: a block in Schaarbeek built up by phases — neo-Gothic convent buildings, a modernist pavilion, terraced and town houses
- The problem: by the time of the renewal the buildings no longer met basic safety standards
- Renewal: POLO Architects with Greisch and Coppée, winners of the design competition
- What was done: the most valuable buildings and courtyards kept, others demolished, new building on Paleizenstraat and Groenstraat
- Address: Paleizenstraat 65, 1030 Brussels
- GPS: 50.8622, 4.3675 · Open in Google Maps
History
Sint-Lucas began in Ghent in 1862 and in Brussels in 1887, as a Catholic alternative to the state academies, and it is the oldest free architecture institute in Belgium. The Brussels school settled in Schaarbeek, in a block that already had a convent in it, and then did what growing institutions do: it took the next building, and the next.
The result, after a century, was a campus nobody had planned — neo-Gothic convent ranges, a modernist pavilion, and ordinary Brussels houses, joined by whatever connections had seemed possible at the time. It worked until it did not. By the 2010s the buildings failed basic safety standards and could not simply be patched.
In 2013 the architecture department also changed hands, leaving LUCA School of Arts to become the Faculty of Architecture of KU Leuven. The renewal competition went to POLO Architects, with the engineers Greisch and Coppée. Their answer was selective: keep the buildings and courtyards worth keeping, demolish the rest, and add new work along Paleizenstraat and Groenstraat.
The choice that had to be made
An accumulated campus poses the question heritage practice argues about: what is worth keeping when the whole is not, and who decides. Here the decision was taken by architects for a school of architecture, which makes the campus a worked example of its own subject — the students walk through an argument about selective demolition on the way to the lecture about it.
What you see
A Brussels block with a convent inside it: brick, pointed windows, courtyards, and new building where the demolitions were. The front on Paleizenstraat is the newest part, because that is where the new building went.
This page has no photograph yet
We publish only images we are allowed to publish, and we have found no freely licensed photograph of this campus. The page is written but not finished: it carries no image at all. Send us one we may publish — of the convent ranges, the courtyards or the new front — and it becomes the opening image, with any others in a gallery below, credited exactly as you ask.
Sources & resources
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