ARCHITECTURAL WORLD

Expo 1958 opened as the first major international exhibition since the end of World War II. As a world’s fair, the exhibition in Brussels continued the century-old tradition of economic and technological competition among participating nations. Although technology and commerce were important aspects of the fair, its organizers cast the event as a cultural exchange, a celebration of the art and culture of the atomic age. To this end, the various pavilions (representing 43 nations and a variety of corporations) celebrated the broad spectrum of contemporary architecture, from the glass-and-steel modernism of Vjenceslaw Richter’s Yugoslavian Pavilion to the hyperbolic paraboloid of Guilliame Gillet’s French Pavilion. Amid the spectacular variety of architecture present at the fair loomed the specter of the Cold War (the American press referred to the event as a cultural Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 792 Cold War). The United States and the Soviet Union faced off, the Soviets di...

Brussels, the capital of Belgium, played a vital role in the history of modern architecture at the turn of the century. Since 1890 a group of young architects such as Victor Horta (1861–1947), Paul Hankar (1861–1901), O. van Rijselberghe (1855–1929), and Henri van de Velde (1863–1957), to name just a few, were essential in creating a new art: the Art Nouveau. Versatile in many disciplines, their buildings would be designed into the finest detail encompassing building facades, interior spaces, decorative structures, furniture, wallpaper designs, doorknobs, and sometimes even the dress for the hostess. This aesthetic quest in search for perfect harmony would dominate the avant-garde architecture until the eve of World War I. Encyclopedia of 20th-century architecture 328 During the Interbellum, movements with more vigor and amplitude promoted a rationalization of the building process. In order to solve the problems of Brussels’s overcrowded inner-city area, garden cities were developed in...