In application of the
Bologna Process harmonising the
European Higher Education Area, the faculty brings together the former ''Institut supérieur d'architecture Saint-Luc de Bruxelles
and Institut supérieur d'architecture Saint-Luc de Wallonie
in Tournai, and the architecture and urban planning units of the École polytechnique de Louvain'' (then called Faculty of Applied Sciences). The LOCI faculty thus occupies the campuses of Louvain-la-Neuve, UCLouvain Bruxelles Saint-Gilles and UCLouvain Tournai. When it was founded in 2010, the faculty was for a short period called the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Town and Territorial Planning (AIAU).
Brussels Saint-Gilles The
Institut Saint-Luc de Bruxelles was founded under the name
Institut Jean Béthune by the members of the
Institut des Frères des écoles chrétiennes (the De La Salle Brothers), first in the Brussels municipality of
Molenbeek-Saint-Jean in 1882, then in 1887 on rue des Palais in
Schaerbeek. The ''École Saint-Luc Institut Supérieur d'Architecture'' was founded there in 1938 as a
non-profit association. The
Dutch-speaking equivalent of LOCI, the
KU Leuven's Faculty of Architecture, is still located there, on its
Sint-Lucas Brussel campus. Like the one in
Tournai, the institute was then part of the series of Saint-Luc art schools established in the majority of major Belgian cities. In the meantime, a Saint-Luc centre was created in the municipality of
Saint-Gilles in 1904. The Institute of Architecture establishes its headquarters at 70 rue Defacqz, near
avenue Louise, in a simple house. In reality, it is a vast settlement abandoned by the Meurice Institute of Chemistry (nowadays part of the
Haute école libre Lucia de Brouckère and located on the CERIA campus in
Anderlecht), hidden behind residential buildings and straddling
Ixelles and
Saint-Gilles. Lectures are also given in the building on rue d'Irlande, the headquarters of the Saint-Luc institutes in Brussels. The folkloric student association
Cercle des étudiants architectes de Saint-Luc was formed in 1973 followed by the association of former students of the ISA Saint-Luc in 1981, called Architecture Recherche Communication (dissolved in 2009). Yet a Catholic institution, the students of Saint-Luc are wearing the penne instead of the
calotte. In 1986, the school's organizing power was again centralized and transferred to the "organizing committee of the Saint-Luc Institutes in Saint-Gilles". In 1965, a vast
international-style building was built on the
Chaussée de Charleroi, n° 132 in Saint-Gilles, by architect Émile Verhaegen, also founder and president of the
UCL-Saint-Luc research centre in
Louvain-la-Neuve. The building which hosted offices, was taken over by the Institut Saint-Luc, of which Émile Verhaegen was a member, during the 1990s, and was from then on used by the ISA Saint-Luc. This remained the architecture school's main location until the merger with
UCLouvain. The
Wallonia-Brussels Federation decree of 13 December 2007 grants universities the right to organise studies in the field of architecture, only if they incorporate one or more architecture schools (ISA, ''Instituts supérieurs d'architecture
, which were a separate type of institutions of higher education, next to universities, colleges and schools of arts). In 2010, ISA Saint-Luc left the Saint-Luc Institutes of Brussels to merge by absorption within the University of Louvain. As soon as the merger was completed, a brand new campus was opened, still in Saint-Gilles and the neighbourhood of the Instituts Saint-Luc
, called UCLouvain Bruxelles Saint-Gilles'', located at rue Wafelaerts, next to the
Saint-Gilles prison. The UCLouvain Brussels Saint-Gilles campus has its own administration including a vice-dean and library (BAIU-Brussels).
Tournai The
Institut Saint-Luc de Tournai was founded in 1878 in front of the
Notre-Dame Cathedral of Tournai (in what is now the Brothers of Tournai school) as a drawing school, together with the Saint-Grégoire music school, intended for the teaching of
church organ. In what was at the time the independent commune of
Ramegnies-Chin, the
Passy-Froyennes Institute was founded in 1904, with a vast new
neo-Gothic building that still houses Saint-Luc Tournai today. In fact, it was the transfer to Belgium, but very near the French border, of a boarding school founded in 1839 by the
Brothers of the Christian Schools in
Passy (now in
Paris), By 1936, the school, mainly an
architecture school, had 500 students. The French
De La Salle brothers lived at the institute, almost in exile, until 1959, when they returned to France to found the La Salle Passy Buzenval collège, one of Paris' most prestigious secondary schools. The institute's management was then taken back by the brotherhood of Saint-Luc. Over time, the
Institut des hautes études des communications sociales communication school (IHECS, now in the
city of Brussels) and the bases of the
Institut des Arts de Diffusion cinema school (IAD, now in
Louvain-la-Neuve) were both founded at Saint-Luc Tournai. From 1979 onwards, architecture has been taught within the ''Institut supérieur d'Architecture Saint-Luc de Tournai (Ramegnies-Chin)'', holding the statute of an independent school of architecture. In 1982, a research institute called ''Études et Recherches architecturales de l'ISA'' (abbreviated ERA) was set up, which carried out research in architecture and urban planning in Tournai until it became integrated UCLouvain. Since 1987, the ''Institut supérieur d'architecture Saint-Luc de Liège
and Institut supérieur d'architecture Saint-Luc de Tournai'' had been grouped together within one same legal entity, the Saint-Luc de Wallonie Higher Institute of Architecture, a non-profit
ASBL with notably
Melchior Wathelet on its board of directors. The
Wallonia-Brussels Federation decree of 13 December 2007 grants universities the right to organise studies in the field of architecture, only if they incorporate one or more architecture schools. In 2009, the association I.S.A. St-Luc Wallonie was dissolved, transferring the ISA Saint-Luc de Liège to the
University of Liège, and the ISA Saint-Luc de Tournai to the
Université catholique de Louvain. The Faculty of Architecture of UCLouvain was thus created and continued to teach architecture within the complex of the Chaussée de Tournai in Ramegnies-Chin. However, like in Brussels, the university started establishing plans for an independent and proper architecture campus in the Tournai city-center. In 2012, the UCLouvain took over the Hôtel des Anciens Prêtres building (now the
Hôtel des Architectes, which currently houses the administrative services), bought from the
city of Tournai, as well as a former building of the
State Archives in Tournai (
Archives), which itself had moved to the former site of the
Casterman printing house in 2010. UCLouvain also decided buy the adjacent site belonging to
Cofidis (currently the
Manufacture and
Filature Buildings). Portuguese architectural firm Aires Mateus was appointed to design the new site, including the construction of a
deconstructivist connecting building. In 2017, the Tournai campus of the
University of Louvain was inaugurated, with its main entrance located rue du Glategnies. As in Brussels, the UCLouvain Tournai campus has its own administration including a vice-dean and library (BAIU-Tournai).
Louvain-la-Neuve Beginnings in Louvain The
Catholic University of Louvain has been offering
engineering degrees in
Louvain (
Leuven) since 1964, within the so-called
Écoles speciales or Special Schools, part of the Faculty of Sciences. The School of Urban and Regional Planning (URBA), whose structure within the faculty has remained intact since then, was founded in 1961. The same year, the
Écoles spéciales merged into the
Faculty of Applied Sciences (
Faculté des sciences appliquées, FSA), as an entity which for the first time was independent from the Faculty of Science. With the creation of the new Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning in 2009, the Department of architectural civil engineering was transferred from the
Louvain School of Engineering to the new LOCI faculty. The
deanship and the central administrative headquarters of LOCI are located in Louvain-la-Neuve, in buildings still shared with the School of Engineering. == See also ==