Ensemble de trois maisons Art déco, Beschavingstraat 8-12 — Anvers

Group of three terraced houses in a sober, functional ("zakelijk") Art Deco style, built to a 1932 design by the architectural firm of Vincent Cols and Jules De Roeck on plots bought from the City of Antwerp. No. 8 was built on the architects' own account, no. 10 for Frans Van de Velde and no. 12 for C. Claessens-Van den Bosch; in 1931 the firm had already built a group of six houses with a very similar plan and façade in the Korte Lozanastraat. The three houses, of three storeys under flat roofs, have cornice façades on a bluestone plinth, in dark red Dutch brick with recessed joints for the outer houses and in lighter brick for the slightly lower central house. The building permit required white stone instead of the planned imitation-stone render, and the architects reworked the façades in early 1933: a three-sided bay window at no. 10, a projection carried over two storeys at no. 12, horizontal stone bands of varying heights and the omission of the window surrounds, making the whole more sober and strict. The original garage doors have gone and the old joinery survives only in part; the group is recorded in the Flemish architectural heritage inventory.

Translated from the French original.