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Project

Redeveloping the City. Cartography of the Afterlife of Monasteries in the Belgian Towns of Brussels, Antwerp and Bruges (1773/1796-1860)

In the late 18th century Enlightenment gave rise to the modern states and a dissolution of religious structures and landscapes. Although the dissolution of the monasteries is considered a major catalyst for urban change in the first half of the 19th-century Belgian cities, until now a synthesis was lacking. The doctoral dissertation ‘Redeveloping the City. Cartography of the ‘Second-life’ of the Monasteries in the Belgian towns of Brussels, Antwerp and Bruges (1773/1796-1860)’ fills this vacuum. By using a historical geographic information system, this dissertation explores the transformation of the monasteries in three Belgian cities in a comparative way, through both space and time. The results are presented in two connected parts: 1) this analysis and 2) an extensive catalogue reveiling the evolution of 91 monasteries in high-scale reconstruction maps and iconography.

To describe and explain the impact of the supression of the monasteries on the urban landscapes I set out four chapters. (1) The first chapter explores the predominantly cartographical sources that formed the basis for the spatial-temporal analysis. Both the design and the processing of a historical GIS. Land registry maps from around 1830 serve as a historical cartographic basis for a high-scale comparative analysis through time. The reconstruction maps of the monasteries are based on both a retrogressive analysis of persistent patterns on the cadastral maps and a complementive use of catographical sources. (2) The second chapter visualises and analyses, as a first result of the mapping, the material presence of the monasteries in Brussels, Antwerp and Bruges before the suppression. This chapter serves as stepping stone to the analyses of the ‘second-life’ of the monasteries from the third chapter on. (3) This chapter identifies nine often occurring development directions (‘scenario’s’) in their spatial and temporal context of the Southern Netherlands (currentday Belgium) in the first half of the 19th century. The largest part of this chapter is comprised by four case studies, illustrating both the validity of the scenarios and the inevitable particularity of individual developmentpaths. (4) The fourth chapter, finally, comprises a synthesis that aims to explain the ‘second-life’ of the monasteries on the basis of the three entangled explanations which involve actors, time and space (‘mechanisms’).

Date:1 Oct 2014 →  9 Jul 2020
Keywords:GIS, urban development, architectural history, monastic architecture, urban morphology, urban history, historical GIS, nineteenth century, Antwerp, Antwerpen, Brussels, Brussel, Brugge, Bruges, urban space, heritage
Disciplines:Architectural engineering, Architecture, Architectural design, Art studies and sciences, Regional and urban history, Heritage and cultural conservation
Project type:PhD project