Marcel Raymaekers was a household name in much of Belgium from the 1970s to the 90s. More than an architect – though technically he wasn’t qualified as one anyway – he concocted and sold dreams of nobility to Belgium’s growing middle class through his business empire Queen of the South, an implausible mix of antiques salvage yard and nightclub/restaurant/‘estaminet’/jazz venue. For nearly 50 years, Raymaekers bought and restored thousands of tons of antique building components and reused them in hundreds of buildings of his own design. These elements, without exception impressive in their craftsmanship and materiality, were – and still are – a testimony to past material cultures and the staggering amountof buildings demolished in Belgium since the end of the Second World War.
Raymaekers didn’t keep an archive, provided his design services “for free” when selling old materials, and most transactions happened under the radar. Nevertheless, the œuvre he was able to assemble, and the way he did it, reveals an alternative architectural history of postwar Belgium, and offers glimpses of how design, construction, and labor might have to change to become more circular in the future.
