page_title: Raymond M. Lemaire
section_title: Activities in Belgium
hierarchical_section_title: Raymond M. Lemaire / Activities in Belgium
caption_attribution_description: Hoekje in het Begijnhof van Leuven.
context_page_description: Raymond Martin Marie Ghislain, Baron Lemaire was an art historian and an architectural historian, a leading expert in conservation and professor at the Catholic University of Leuven and later at the KU Leuven and the Université catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve.
context_section_description: Lemaire became assistant (1947), lecturer (1949) and professor (1953) at the Catholic University of Louvain. He lectured art history, history of architecture, both in Dutch and in French, and continued to do so after the university had been split in two, along language lines. He retired in 1986.
  His main activities were devoted towards architecture, restoration and urban planning.
  He became renowned for the restoration of the Grand Béguinage in Leuven, where he put into practice the Venice Charter, of which he was the main editor. He was also one of the main designers of the new town Louvain-la-Neuve. The concept was based on the structure of a historic traditional town.
  These were not his only realizations. With regard to restorations, have to be mentioned:
  some thirty churches and chapels,
  a number of houses and country houses.
  From 1972 until 1977, he was counsel to the town of Bruges, more specifically for the historic town. Thanks to him, Bruges became one of the Belgian pilot-projects for the European Year of the architectural heritage (1975).
  He took also part in other urban projects:
  Rue des Brasseurs in Namur,
  Quartier des Arts in Brussels,
  projects in Courtrai, Mouscron, Villeneuve d'Ascq and Bergen-op-Zoom.
  He took also part in projects for new buildings, as designer or counsel, often in collaboration with the architects Robert Vandendael, Daniël Depoorter, Simon Brigode, Marc Dessauvage,
  Auditorium prof. Peeters at the University of Leuven in Heverlee,
  the church of Herne,
  the metro station in Kraainem,
  the church of Brasschaat,
  his own house in Loonbeek.
  He was also the initiator of the extensive series of books with the inventory of the Belgian architectural inheritance, along a methodology which he developed.
caption: The Grand Béguinage in Leuven
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