The Belgian architect Simone Guillissen-Hoa (1916–1996) is unknown to many. Yet she was a pioneer of modernist architecture and one of the first women in Belgium to set up her own architectural firm. The donation of her personal archive to the CIVA in Brussels provided an opportunity to rescue her life and work from oblivion and to give her the recognition she deserves.

Simone Guillissen-Hoa was born in Beijing in 1916. Her father was a Chinese engineer and her mother a Polish-Jewish writer. At the age of twelve, she emigrated to Paris with her mother and older brother, who would later also become an architect. In the 1930s, she moved to Belgium on her own and began studying architecture at La Cambre in Brussels. She graduated in 1938, becoming only the fourth woman in Belgian history to successfully complete the course at La Cambre.