Charles Vandenhove
In 1945, Charles Vandenhove began his studies at the École des Arts Saint-Luc in Liège, where he met Lucien Kroll. He went on to study with Lucien Kroll at the École nationale supérieure d’Architecture et des Arts visuels de La Cambre, where he chose to join Victor Bourgeois’s studio, which was to have a significant influence on his work. In 1951, he completed his studies and formed a partnership with Lucien Kroll. They visited the great masters of the time: Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier and Ponti. They were determined to break out of the bubble in which they had lived at La Cambre and confront the complex and multifaceted reality of architecture. In 1967, Charles Vandenhove rose to prominence: he published, exhibited, taught and built structures that were featured in the specialist press. However, this success brought with it financial, administrative and even political difficulties (an association dedicated to heritage conservation, ‘Le Vieux-Liège’, took legal action against him).
Family background
Born in Teuven on the Hof De Draeck estate on 3 July 1927, Charles Vandenhove came from a family of farmers. In 1933, the family moved to Thier Nagant farm (Julémont), a beautiful 18th-century farmhouse perched on a hill in the Pays de Herve. The second of four brothers and five sisters, he grew up in a Catholic and rather conservative family. Nothing in the family suggested that the young Charles was destined for a career in architecture. With the exception of his paternal grandfather, who developed a taste for music – he was the organist at the village church – most of the family, and in particular the girls, spent their days working on the farm. Charles Vandenhove would be the only one to pursue artistic studies. He began his schooling in Julémont at the village school, then continued his studies at the Saint-Joseph Institute in Dolhain-Limbourg, where he boarded. The young Charles obtained his secondary school leaving certificate whilst the country was under occupation. The dark years of the Second World War were a turning point for the young man as he pondered the direction his life would take. Vandenhove dreamt of the visual arts, but his father dissuaded him. It would be architecture…
Training
In the aftermath of the war, Charles Vandenhove began his training as an architect. He could have enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, but it was probably philosophical considerations that led him to opt for a Catholic education at Saint-Luc. Enrolled from 1945, Charles Vandenhove became friends with Lucien Kroll. The two men discovered a curriculum whose heritage, rooted in the exploration of Christian and ‘national’ art, remained very much alive, as evidenced by the design for a church in the ‘Meuse Romanesque’ style in Sint-Truiden (St Peter’s Church), which Vandenhove produced in 1945, and the study of a hunting lodge in Grivegnée by Lucien Kroll in 1946. His four years at Saint-Luc were probably not solely shaped by the discovery of ancient styles; ‘modernist’ architectural forms also formed part of the curriculum at Saint-Luc. But this was not enough for Vandenhove. So, in 1948, Vandenhove and Kroll set off for Brussels and enrolled at La Cambre, where they met Jacques-Grégoire Watelet, with whom they would collaborate a few years later. Vandenhove chose Victor Bourgeois’s studio, where, in addition to discovering new aesthetic references, he came to understand the social purpose of architecture; he worked in particular on a church project and then on a museum project, which marked the end of his training in 1951.
Jeanne Belvaux-Vandenhove
Born in Ensival in January 1916 and died in 2007, Jeanne Belvaux grew up in a family from the Verviers middle class; her father was a tailor by trade. Having lost her father at a very young age, the young girl was enrolled at the local school in Ensival, before continuing her education at the State Secondary School for Girls in the centre of Verviers. She completed her secondary education with distinction, sitting the central examination at the age of 16. She held various administrative posts, first as a secretary at the Provincial School of Social Work, from which she resigned in 1946, and then as an executive secretary at the Liège International Fair. It was in this role that she met Charles Vandenhove when, in 1956, the young architect was commissioned, alongside Lucien Kroll, to design the Industrial Aesthetics Exhibition. The following year, on 21 February 1957, the couple married in Liège and then pledged their fidelity before God in Paris in the presence of Father Chenu. A highly cultured woman with a passion for philosophy and religion, she was also a music lover and enjoyed a very close friendship with Pierre Froidebise and Hubert Schoonbroodt. Jeanne Vandenhove was also a woman who channelled her ambition into supporting her husband, and her network of contacts proved instrumental in helping to fill Charles Vandenhove’s order book. She stood by her husband throughout his career, handling the agency’s administrative affairs but, above all, enriching him with the cultural knowledge she had acquired through her extensive reading and the people she met.
The architecture studio
After working alongside Lucien Kroll for several years, Charles Vandenhove set up his own architectural practice, which he based first in his home on Rue Bois l’Évêque in Liège and then, in 1963, in his house on Rue Chauve-Souris. The early years were difficult, and it was not until 1958 that the architect was entrusted with major projects, mainly in Liège. The design of the mortuary clinic in the Bavière district marked the start of a long series of projects, most of which were commissioned by the University of Liège. The Liège-based Alma mater, led by Marcel Dubuisson, commissioned Vandenhove to design a number of iconic buildings for the institution, which helped the architect forge a national and international reputation. From the bookshop to the University Hospital, the buildings designed by the Liège-born architect received widespread coverage in the national and international press. The recognition Vandenhove gained led to the recruitment of several architects and draughtsmen. Thus, from the 1950s to the 1980s, several leading figures in Belgian architecture frequented Charles Vandenhove’s studio, including Bruno Albert, Pierre Arnould, John Berhaut, Jean-Marie Dethier, Alain Dirix, Michel Lemmens and Jacques Sequaris… forging what some architectural critics have termed ‘the Liège School’.
An international agency
In 1987, Charles Vandenhove’s practice had become so successful that it adopted the new name ‘Charles Vandenhove & Associates, Architects’, reflecting the reality that, under Vandenhove’s guiding influence, the partners were playing an increasingly significant role in the design of projects. However, the late 1980s were also a period of contrasts, during which Vandenhove had to contend with the difficulties plaguing the University Hospital project, which ultimately led to the split between the university and the architectural practice. The completion of the Hors-Château project, however, enabled the architect to bounce back. Widely covered in the international press, the Hors-Château project took Vandenhove in new directions, primarily in France and the Netherlands. Charles Vandenhove now enjoyed a solid reputation that enabled him to secure prestigious commissions. The Parisian projects in the Abbesses area, but above all the large-scale projects in the Netherlands, placed Vandenhove at the helm of one of the few Belgian firms expanding its activities abroad. Thus, from 1987 to 2008, the firm Charles Vandenhove & Associés, which had been based in the Hôtel Torrentius since 1981, underwent a profound transformation with the arrival of new staff members such as Frank Braakhuis, Ludovic Long-Wei Chen, Bénédicte Grosjean, John Flippo, Gérald Ledent, Olivier Mathieu, Stéphane Meyrant, Alain Sabbe, Renaud Van Kerckhove and Mireille Weerts…
In recent years
The firm’s international venture, which had lasted for over twenty years, came to an abrupt end with the financial crisis of 2008. Charles Vandenhove gradually withdrew from the Netherlands to return to Belgium with projects that remained ambitious but reflected a new approach. The architect continued to make his mark, particularly in the social and cultural spheres. In 2004, together with his wife, he established the ‘Jeanne & Charles Vandenhove’ charitable foundation, whose initial aim was to preserve and promote the exceptional collection of artworks that the couple had amassed throughout their lives. In Ghent, he designed a venue showcasing nearly 180 works of contemporary art for students and researchers. In Liège, Vandenhove worked with several clients active in the socio-cultural field. The construction of a building for the homeless, followed by that of the Créahm day centre—Vandenhove’s final project—marked the end of an adventure. Awarded the title of Chevalier in 2003 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège in 2016, Charles Vandenhove passed away on 22 January 2019.
