Nineteenth-century speculative housing as an agent of modernity

‘The study of the individual dwelling offers one of the best means of studying the city.’

Mies van der Rohe, while growing up in Aachen, admired the traditional houses of his hometown. He was impressed by the strength of these structures, remarking that they were: ‘not with any special character but they were really built.’ Unburdened by stylistic flights of fancy and ‘honest’ in their use of materials, these functional buildings were an inspiration for pioneering modernists. Of all building types, the speculative house was often the most common form of utilitarian architecture. During the nineteenth century, large numbers were built around cities in Europe and North America, to cater for a growing industrial workforce. The majority of homes were built by speculators, who based their designs on previous prototypes. Behind these red-brick facades are boxes of rooms, simply arranged around lobbies and halls, using centuries old construction methods. This project will build on research in Britain and Ireland to examine the speculative house in three cities in Belgium: Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent. Focusing on the row house typology, it will examine a range of projects built between 1880 and 1920, a time of great changes in architectural design. While providing valuable insight in to a much ignored architectural legacy, it will explore the role played by speculative housing as an agent of modernity.