When Wivina Demeester, Flemish Minister of Finance, Budget and Health Policy, took the initiative to appoint the first Flemish Government Architect at the end of the last century, her primary aim was to create the conditions for improving the architectural quality of government buildings. More than twenty years have passed since then, and thanks to this initiative, a policy has been developed that goes far beyond the remit of the government alone. Nevertheless, government buildings in Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia remain a showcase for competitive culture, in which the government, as an exemplary client, has the opportunity to immediately translate its vision of the built environment into reality and set a good example.

Whether this always succeeds is questionable, and is also the subject of the debate between Géry Leloutre and Luc Symoens in their respective opinion pieces on Brucity, the new offices of the City of Brussels. How the government wants and is able to house its staff, or ‘those who serve society’, as the English term ‘civil servant’ so aptly puts it, is also the externalisation of internal policy.