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SHELL CHEMICAL RESEARCH CENTRE
/ LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE (WALLOON BRABANT PROVINCE)
/
1986
/ 1987–1988
/ EXTENSIONS 1990
/ 1991
, 1990
/ 1992
AND 2001
Starting in 1967, the Louvain-la-Neuve site was part
of an effort to bring together (mainly towards the
north-west), a series of university-affiliated laboratories
and research centres. The Shell buildings are located
on a sharply sloping site, of which they cleverly take
advantage via a solution partially suggested by Christian
Van Deuren. They are grouped asymmetrically around
a compositional axis, which almost automatically calls
for identical constructions on either side. They are also
strongly identifiable by what are often mistaken for
‘post-modern’ ventilation stacks, whose ‘Egyptian’ capi-
tals resulted from the need to vary the cross-sections of
the chimneys. The large arches, the most logical solu-
tion for creating broad masonry entrances, are irresist-
ibly reminiscent of the buildings designed by Louis Kahn
for Accra. There, as here, ‘old style’ brick and mortar
is used in a logical fashion, without resorting to heavy
lintels of reinforced concrete, which would almost inevi-
tably have cracked the supports. Thus, the apparent
ambiguity of the forms is accidental, and the result of
perfectly logical technical reasoning. As Philippe Samyn
explained in a letter to Bruno Zevi, the composition’s
monumentality and multiple references were baffling
to the proponents of ‘orthodox’ modernism. They were
forced to conclude, however, that the language adopted
by Philippe Samyn was not the basically picturesque
one of the university campus, in which a tempered
modernism is constantly confronted with the semi-tra-
ditional use of materials and techniques. Contradictions
no doubt remain between the composition’s ‘public’
appearance (towards the esplanade reception area) and
the more ‘technical’ appearance when seen from the
rear, where the architecture, less scholarly and monu-
mental, is more functional. This kind of contradiction will
gradually vanish from the ‘Samyn style’. Thirteen years
after construction of the centre, Philippe Samyn pro-
posed an extension slightly different from the original
project, to which it nevertheless adheres by maintain-
ing an urban skyline unity. The extensions are more
compact, but this compactness is offset by the lighter
appearance of the largely glazed facade.