Lucien Kroll was born on March 13, 1927, in Brussels where he studied at the Higher National Institute and School of the Chamber and at the Higher Institute of Urbanism, from which he graduated in 1951. Between 1951-1957 he shared an architecture studio with Charles Vandenhove in Brussels. He met Simone Pelosse in Lyon in 1956, a well-known local figure. Having become a potter after time at the Arts et Métiers school in Paris, she was politically active in preserving her neighbourhood and was the facilitator of Lyon's intellectual network. Gaston Bachelard, Célestin Freinet, Bocuse and even Le Corbusier, whom he sat at her table with her neighbours, were in contact with her.
She creates her own Lucien Kroll urban planning, architecture and computing studio with his wife Simone (1928). The Kroll studio was very active between 1970 and 1990. During this time when architecture was questioned, the designated enemy was modernity and its functionalist deviations: Architecture cannot be rational!
She creates her own Lucien Kroll urban planning, architecture and computing studio with his wife Simone (1928). The Kroll studio was very active between 1970 and 1990. During this time when architecture was questioned, the designated enemy was modernity and its functionalist deviations: Architecture cannot be rational!
Lucien Kroll designed not so much "for" as "with" people.
Kroll defended in his projects the creative participation of the inhabitants of the buildings. This is how he conceived the works of Mémé in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert (Belgium) that remain his most famous (recognized) work of his. The faculty's student residence, built between 1970 and 1976 as an extension to the campus of the Université Catholique de Leuven (UCL), was created in strict collaboration with the students. In the city, he made different spaces: gardens, paths and walkways, as well as the buildings of the Maison Médicale (la Mémé), the town hall, the Chapelle-aux-champs school, the university restaurant and the ecumenical building. From 1979 to 1982, the Kroll workshop also created the Alma metro station and its surroundings, the Alma promenade, the patio and the small restaurant.
Lucien Kroll, Cohabita, av. de la Renaissance, rues Murillo, Hobbema, Leys, Bruxelles, Belgique, 1976.
In Perseigne, Alengon, Normandy, Kroll renovated a residential complex in 1978 with the help of the neighbours. The upper floors were partly dismantled and rebuilt with pointed roofs, and re-clad. Some had one more floor added. In this way, diversity was gained, which should help the neighbours to identify with their place of residence, thus improving the general atmosphere.
In the residential neighbourhood Les Chénes d’Emerainville in Marne-la-Vallée, France (1980-1982), he carried out the planning of a pilot project with houses for several families. The buildings were irregularly distributed along the streets and around several squares so that the neighbourhood acquired the structure of a town. The constructions were made of precast concrete elements but with custom cladding.
“La Mémé”, medical house, the house of medical students, Woluwé-Saint-Lambert, Belgium, 1970.
The Zilvervloot residential neighbourhood in Dordrecht, the Netherlands (1998-2005), was built in the 1960s and had a crumbling and dilapidated appearance. Kroll conceived of a remediation plan that sought not only to resurface the existing blocks but also to break pre-established structures. Kroll's participatory processes often resulted in an aesthetic of randomly scattered pieces.
During his career, and with his wife Simone, he completed more than 100 projects, numerous schools, homes and care buildings in France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.
With his departure, the world of architecture loses a figure who has definitively marked the Belgian and Brussels landscape, and whose work leaves no one indifferent.
