Expressing Local Specificity: The Flemish Renaissance Revival in Belgium and the Antwerp City Architect Pieter Jan Auguste Dens

Abstract

While globalizing trends stimulate the creation of entirely new regions, established regional and local identities remain. Architectural historians, among others, explore the ways in which regionalism has been — and continues to be — defined and redefined. Current issues in this debate include what regional architectural traditions might be; whether regions can be defined by architecture; and how regional traditions of architecture have been defined and interpreted by artists, authors and scholars. Nineteenth-century Belgian architecture is particularly relevant in this context. The formation of Belgian Art Nouveau’s style and identity have both been the object of numerous studies, but while Art Nouveau is probably the best-known creation of Belgian nineteenth-century architecture, it is hardly the only one, nor indeed the only interesting one. One of the sources identified for Belgian Art Nouveau has been the milieu of the so-called Flemish Renaissance Revival, which produced such architectural gems as Emile Janlet’s (1839–1919) Belgian pavilion at the World Exhibition in Paris (1878) and Jean Winders’ (1849–1936) own house and studio (1882–83) in Antwerp (Fig. 1).