Whatever Happened to Supranational Architecture?

Abstract

The process of European integration is often described in architectural terms, starting with the metaphor of a common European house. This paper weights the ubiquitous rhetoric of a supranational architecture against the largely unexplored reality of the actual architecture that has been built to house the European institutions. The focus is on the place and time that have experienced the largest production of architectural hardware: Brussels between 1958 and 1992. Most of the Quartier Europeen was built in this window, while the institutions did not have a permanent status and therefore struggled to gain agency over the transformations of the city. On the one hand, the goal is to question how operating for a new and unique structure of power influenced the production of architecture. On the other hand, this is an opportunity to start discussing how architecture contributed to shaping the European Union.