I tend to consider adaptive reuse – the practice of repurposing a building while respecting its historical function – to be a generally positive operation. Allowing new life into structures that have outlived their original purpose makes them worthy of preserving as a useful piece of infrastructure instead of an empty relic, as well as allowing close interaction with a broad public. It also tends to reduce the amount of materials and energy that would be required to demolish and build anew, lowering the carbon footprint. But of course, every transformation is a careful exercise in compromises and can ignite debates about authenticity, conservation and the balance between preservation and practicality.
One such example is the Tweenbronnen Library in Leuven. Its first life was as a technical school constructed between 1936 and 1942, the last design completed in Belgium by modern architecture pioneer Henry van de Velde.

Replacing a former convent, the school is tucked within the dense urban fabric of the Leuven old town. Resolutely modern and prefiguring the industrial settings of the students’ future workplaces, the project employs a strict orthogonal grid with wide corridors flanked by classrooms and workshops lit by large rectangular windows. A courtyard and two rectangular patios bring light into the heart of the building. The industrial look of the inner facing facades is softened on the street side, where small openings on street level and a recessed section above meet the scale of the neighbouring buildings. The large red-orange terracotta tiles and bluish stone used for the street-facing facades also contribute to their visual integration. Visually matching, these materials also represent the marriage of traditional local materials with modern innovations: Van de Velde also used such tiles, made by the Comptoir Tuilier de Courtrai, in his projects in Paris and New York.


When the technical school vacated the premises in 1984, the building faced potential demolition. A campaign led by KU Leuven civil engineering and architectural history professor Luc Verpoest successfully argued for its preservation. The city of Leuven acquired the building, recognized as a historic monument since 1990, and architect Georges Baines was tasked with converting it into a public library and municipal archives.

The conversion was not without challenges. The building’s original concrete skeleton was found to be too degraded to support the heavy loads of books and documents. This necessitated a complete reconstruction of the structure using higher-quality concrete. Additionally, the spatial layout of the building—designed for educational purposes—required significant alterations to accommodate its new functions.



These changes sparked lively debates between conservation purists and Baines’ pragmatic approach. Citing the 1964 Venice Charter, which emphasizes the need to clearly distinguish original elements from new materials, critics considered the reconstruction of the concrete skeleton as “falsification” of Van de Velde’s oeuvre. However, Verpoest defended Baines’ approach, arguing that such a rational solution to a technical problem was well in line with the original architect’s modernist ethos. Thus, the project team priroritized functionality and structural integrity while respecting the buildings’s original spirit. New elements, when necessary, were clearly delineated using different materials in alignment with the Venice Charter.

The final result is a bright, functional library in a building that still perfectly evokes 1930s industrial functionalism. Verpoest observed that the restoration thus gave the building “more space to be itself” and that in effect, “Georges Baines and his colleagues have built a building by Henry van de Velde.”
My images date from a short visit in September 2023.
This post is part of a series on adaptive reuse in libraries. See the list of such projects I am maintaining or view other posts in this series.