Cité-Jardin Bon Air: rural living re-imagined

The entrance to the Cité Bon Air directly from the main road is dominated by these blocks in striking architecture. The bright buildings refer to German examples, which is clear in the roof treatment and the use of concrete moulded stone on the facade aimed at resembling natural stone.

This kind of architecture is typical for the period around 1930. It is unclear when this part of the Cité was built, but judging by the style of architecture it is the last part to have been completed, possibly as early as the latter part of the 1920s. The architecture is in a distinct modernist style best described as decorative functionalism. The door is typically emphasised by a Dutch awning (left). Most of these blocks consist of 4 dwellings, some have 3 and a few have 2. Individual expression in painting the window frames (seen on the right) rarely improves these buildings.

On streets where two building phases meet the contrast is evident. On the left hand side we see the simple vernacular architecture of the second phase with the contrasting modernist buildings on the right hand side. The street with front gardens and small cherry trees is typical of garden city movement principles.

The architecture of the first building phase is very similar to that of the Cité de la Roue. To emphasise the rural location great care has been taken to create long vistas out into the landscape from specific point in the garden village. Here a view down the Rue de Bonheur towards the forest at the edge of the Broekbeek valley. The brook itself is only visible from its banks, never from a distance.

The Rue the Bonheur is typical of Unwinesque urban design with a curving street picked up in the placement of the buildings on a greater curve  creating room for a broad green verge with trees between the road and the front gardens on one side making for a rural idyll.

A comparison between the architecture of the first phase (left) on the Rue de l'Enthousiasme with that of the second phase (right) on the Place Séverine shows similar architecture with simpler handling of the building mass and fully rendered facades instead of a play with combinations of brick and render. This is comparable to Cité de la Roue.

These buildings on the Rue Jean Lagey show the simplified architecture of the second phase clearly. The first block still has the characteristics of the first phase with the use of both brick and rendered sections. As this road is part of the main structure of the street layout it is not unthinkable that the long terrace was constructed in the first phase before the rest of the housing in this part of the Cité.

The Place Séverine differs in layout with the rest of the street plan. The stark orthogonal structure is emphasised in the placement of the housing at right angles. The southside has an equally orthogonal setup with a primary school and a kindergarten on the axis of the Avenue Auguste Bourgeois.

The placement of a semidetached pair of houses in the corner of a T-junction at an angle is a typical Unwinesque design device. So, although the architecture of the second phase is altogether less attractive some effort has been made to perpetuate the underlying ideal of creating a rural idyll on the edge of the metropolis.