Housing developers in the metropolitan nexus: Etrimo and Amelinckx (1918-1985)

François Amelinckx (Amelinckx n.v.) and Jean Florian Collin (Etrimo) were two Belgian pioneering developers who started their activities in the interbellum period and in the decades following WWII were able to briefly dominate the residential real estate market. Together they produced more than 70.000 apartment units, housing the population of an entire ‘invisible city’.

Through the detailed analysis of a selection of their projects, it is possible to build a profound understanding of the role developers played in shaping the urbanization of the metropolitan area in the middle of the twentieth century. The project seeks to substantiate and test the hypothesis that the metropolitan ambitions of these real estate pioneers have been stalled in the post-war period and that this had lasting consequences for the way in which urban project development could develop in Belgium.

Project Info

Research group: Urban Planning
Project start date: 2018
Researchers: Laurence Heindryckx and Michiel Dehaene