In the home of Renaat Braem and the Arena district

The controversial architect Renaat Braem has always been close to our hearts. The spiritual father of the Oudaan and the residential blocks on the Kiel built his own house and studio in Deurne in the fifties. That house is a museum and forms a beautiful synthesis of his ideas. In this program, we link a visit to the house to an architecture walk in the Arena district, one of his high-profile and internationally acclaimed achievements in the field of social housing. In 1960, Renaat Braem was commissioned for a new residential area in the area of 'het Fortje' in Deurne. Braem thought big. Central to his studies were the old army fort, which he had already transformed into a culture and sports center in 1958, and the adjacent square. Those two elements formed the core of an extensive residential area where residential towers and low-rise buildings would alternate. Only a few elements of this plan were realized. The designs for the low-rise buildings were translated in 1966-71 into the residential blocks in the green zone behind the Arenahal. De Arenawijk is, all in all, a complex story. A story in which artistic satisfaction and ambitious high-rise plans are crossed by bureaucratic forces and a changing zeitgeist. The result is an idiosyncratic world where many people still feel at home, despite the technical flaws.