(b Brussels, 17 Dec 1890; d Brussels, 24 June 1985). Belgian architect, urban planner, writer and teacher. He studied at the Acad?mie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and then built several houses (1912-13) in the Rue Marcel Li?tard, Brussels, including his own, that were inspired by English domestic architecture. During World War I he was a prisoner in Germany, where he built a commemorative monument in the prison camp at Munsterlager and wrote a book on the formation and reconstruction of Ypres (1918). De Ligne became an important architect of the modern movement in Belgium and was one of the few Modernists to write on the history of towns and study their development. From 1919 to 1921 he built the garden city of Zaventem and several private houses, as well as garden city suburbs at Auderghem and Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Brussels. Other major works included a prize-winning entry (1927; with J. Hendricks) to the international competition for the Palace of the League of Nations, Geneva; a dispensary (1933) for the Ligue Belge contre la Tuberculose in the Marolles district of Brussels, for which he designed the first curtain-wall structure in Belgium; and a factory (1930) at Wygmael for Usines R?my, for whom he also designed a pavilion at the Exposition Universelle et Internationale in Brussels (1935) that had a remarkable glass-walled rotunda. From 1939 to 1968 De Ligne taught architecture and urban history at the Institut Sup?rieur des Arts D?coratifs in Brussels; he also published other books on urban planning, including one on the reconstruction of Tournai, in which he participated. He became Director of Fine Art at the Acad?mie Royale de Belgique.
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