Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)

Jan 28, 2026

Bram de Maeyer, historian of diplomatic architecture, explores Belgium’s purpose-built embassies from 1945–2020. He traces why and how embassies were built, the push-and-pull with host authorities, design shifts toward generic styles, and embassies’ roles as national billboards, income sources, and contested interiors. The conversation surveys case studies and archival challenges.

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INSIGHT

Embassies As Political Representation

Embassy buildings act as tangible tools of political representation and national image abroad.
Bram de Maeyer asks how architecture, interiors, and art project Belgian identity between 1945 and 2020.

INSIGHT

Why Purpose-Built Embassies Matter

Purpose-built embassies start from a blank page, requiring site selection and architect choice.
That beginning makes them uniquely revealing about what a state wants to project abroad.

INSIGHT

Triggers That Lead Countries To Build

Embassy projects are driven by housing needs, chancery capacity, diplomatic signaling, or new capitals.
Belgium usually buys or leases but builds when staff growth or geopolitical factors demand new premises.

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Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conception of purpose-built embassies to flex their diplomatic muscle and project nationhood on foreign soil. While scholars have primarily focused on purpose-built embassies of (former) world powers, Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020) (Leuven UP, 2025) by Dr. Bram de Maeyer shifts the perspective by scrutinising the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ embassy-building programme from 1945 to 2020.

Rather than a conventional political assessment of diplomatic relations, the book foregrounds the often-overlooked architectural lives of embassies and their social, economic, and political entanglements. By examining Belgian embassy projects across all continents, it reveals how the Belgian diplomatic corps has navigated diverse political regimes, geopolitical contexts, cultures, and building codes. More than the outcome of a deliberate policy, the embassy-building programme has been shaped by incidental decisions, private ambitions and personal tastes of Belgian diplomats, ministry officials and politicians.

Building for Belgium not only sheds light on diplomatic architecture but also connects domestic conversations about architecture in Belgium with global state-building projects. Offering fresh insights into the politics of space, it will be of value to scholars and practitioners in architecture, urban studies, international relations, cultural heritage, and Belgian and European studies.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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