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 and author of Building for Belgium, explores how Belgian embassies project nationhood abroad. He discusses why countries build purpose-built embassies, the role of ambassadors and architects in design, permit and neighborhood challenges, symbolic Cold War modernism, economic uses of chancery spaces, and surprising archive gaps.

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INSIGHT

Embassies As National Projection

Bram de Maeyer frames embassies as deliberate tools to project national identity abroad through architecture and art.
He studies how the Belgian MFA invested in purpose-built embassies from 1945–2020 to trace that projection.

INSIGHT

Starting From A Blank Page Matters

Purpose-built embassies start from a blank page, requiring site selection, architect choice, and style cues.
These choices reveal how states intentionally design their diplomatic image in foreign capitals.

ADVICE

Plan Around Clear Triggers

Build decisions often respond to functional needs like housing or chancery space, or strategic motives such as signalling presence.
Consider triggers like staff growth, new capitals, or diplomatic power plays when planning embassy projects.

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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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