In the history of building, Joseph Poelaert is one of the names that keeps returning.
The record lists Joseph Poelaert as architect (1817–1879).
Joseph Poelaert was born in 1817. His recorded nationality is Belgium.
Industrialisation gave architecture iron, glass and the lift, and with them the problems of the railway station, the factory and the tall city block.
An architect is judged by how a building is used a century after the drawings.
That the work was built in Belgium shaped it: climate, materials, planning law and who holds the budget all decide what can actually be built.
Joseph Poelaert died in 1879, aged 62. The buildings remain, still in use by people who never knew the name - which is the particular afterlife architecture offers.
