Renaat Braemhuis

Here is the house of Renaat Braem. Architect Renaat Braem was born in Antwerp in 1910 and is considered one of the most important representatives of post-war architecture in Belgium. In the early 1930s, the young Braem was completely absorbed by the zeitgeist and cherished his own communist ideas. For him, architecture is "the art of organizing the human environment.

In 1999, at the age of eighty-nine, Renaat Braem, our Flemish Le Corbusier, decided to donate his house with all its furniture, numerous decorative objects, his sculptures and paintings and the remaining architectural archive to the Flemish Community in order to protect it from becoming dilapidated. It became the second house museum in Belgium, after the Horta Museum in Brussels, and the first example of post-war architecture. With the Renaat Braem House project, the Department of Monuments and Sites of the Ministry of the Flemish Community wanted to make maximum use of the many assets that the donation entails in order to achieve a high-quality redevelopment that ensures the future of the house and meets the wishes of Renaat Braem. The architecture of the house and the exceptional character of the interior, which reflects more than just its time, are central to this. In this way, the visitor is given a privileged glimpse into the world of one of the most important Belgian architects of the post-war generation, a look behind the scenes of architecture.

The greatest possible authenticity was sought in making the main lines of this architecture legible again and in valorizing the countless art objects and objects that each with their own story and anecdote make the Renaat Braem House what it is. "The whole house is a poetic piece of music in which different rhythms are intertwined. There are no dark corners, everything is flooded with light, one can follow the speed of the clouds and the sun all day long or the play of light of the moon on the clouds from the bed at night and feel at one with the course of the hours and the seasons."
That unity in nature is the true guideline in my life. My house is the embodiment of it, and I was not surprised when a Catholic patronage passed by on a walk and unanimously exclaimed, "What an ugly house!" The chic ladies who dribble by with their dog also disapprove of this house and the writer Godfried Bomans stated that it is an ill-mannered individual among a respectable company. All this makes me very satisfied," wrote Renaat Braem in his book 'The cleanest country in the world'.

In the early 1950s, Renaat Braem also built the Kiel, three high-rise residential blocks, connected to a series of six lower ones. All units are built according to the Corbusian concept, which emphasizes the open space and ideologically socializes the land: this means that no one inhabits the land.

The Antwerp police tower is another major project that he is realising. Today, the monumental building stands in a desolate city architecture, but Braem's original plan was much grander: two towers were planned, which would be connected by a lower building.

Brackie