The Impact of Bureaucratic Procedures on Architectural Planning in the Late Middle Ages in the Low Countries

Although, the growing impact of bureaucratic procedures on architectural planning may strike us as typical modern, its origins go back to the Late Middle Ages. To control the ever-increasing cost of building, the French and English courts introduced a centralised governance in the late fourteenth century. Other princes, among whom the Dukes of Burgundy, soon followed suit; the dukes introduced a centralised administration to effectively organise and control the many construction sites in their domains in the Low Countries. I will argue in this paper that this was not only a financial reform, however; it also represented an important step towards a more rationalised architectural planning. The rediscovery of a vast part of the early sixteenth-century building administration of the Duchy of Brabant allows to understand how meticulously well planned and monitored construction for the court was in the Low Countries.