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Secularized engagement in architecture. Sieg Vlaeminck’s plea for woonecologie in 1970s Flanders

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

During the 1970s the intellectual and cultural climate in Flanders increasingly matured, also in the field of architecture. This fledgling cultural renaissance was fed to a remarkable extent by intellectuals with a religious background who chose to reorient their careers outside the Church. This article focuses on one of those clerics-turned-public intellectuals: sociologist and former Passionist Sieg Vlaeminck (1933-2011), who during the 1970s advocated a scientifically well-founded approach of the built environment, labelled woonecologie. His biography unites (1) a plea for sciences, embodying a trend towards scientification, (2) a public voice acknowledging architecture’s societal relevance and (3) a first-hand witness of and contributor to a growing secularization of religious culture. This paper will trace the transfiguration of Vlaeminck’s religious vocation into an architectural engagement, in order to offer one way of grasping how the architectural culture of the 1970s benefited from the secularization that affected the Catholic Church.
Journal: International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity
ISSN: 2213-0624
Volume: 6
Pages: 1 - 37
Publication year:2018