The Louvain-la-Neuve Cyclotron is a brutalist architectural complex of the University of Louvain built from 1970 to 1972 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Walloon Brabant, Belgium, notably holding UCLouvain's CYCLONE particle accelerators. It is the first building completed by the university when it moved following the Leuven crisis and was the largest cyclotron in Europe at the time of its construction. The Louvain Cyclotron can also refer to Belgium's first cyclotron built in Leuven in 1947, which was replaced by the Louvain-la-Neuve center. In addition to two particle accelerators of the Cyclotron Research Center, the complex holds the UCLouvain Schools of Mathematics and Physics and corresponding research institutes, the Centre for Applied Molecular Technologies, the UCLouvain radiation protection service, a business incubator and a shared workspace.
Location The Cyclotron is located at number 1, Chemin du Cyclotron, in the east of Louvain-la-Neuve, between Boulevard Baudouin Ier, Avenue Louis de Geer and the Chemin du Cyclotron, and North of the Louvain-la-Neuve Science Park.
History
First cyclotron in Heverlee After the Second World War, under the impetus of Professor Marc de Hemptinne, the Catholic University of Louvain began the construction of a cyclotron for the acceleration of deuterons in Heverlee, a suburb of the city of Leuven. The Heverlee cyclotron was built in 1947 and inaugurated in 1952. From 1952 to 1959, it was used to produce radioactive isotopes and fast neutrons. Later, the cyclotron was used for the study of nuclear reactions and for spectroscopy of very short-lived states.
It was replaced by the research center in Louvain-la-Neuve, where the core of this first Belgian cyclotron is still visible, installed as a monument in front of the new cyclotron. The 6m3 core has been painted red.
Construction of Louvain-la-Neuve Louvain-la-Neuve undoubtedly ranks as the most ambitious of the towns built from scratch in Belgium. Forced to leave the city of Leuven during the Leuven crisis, the French-speaking part of the Catholic University of Leuven decided to move to a new location in 1968 on an agricultural plateau located North-East of Ottignies in Brabant, on the other side of Belgium's official language border, and started the construction of a new university town.
Construction of the Louvain-la-Neuve Cyclotron As part of this move, the University of Louvain decided to build a new cyclotron, named CYCLONE (CYClotron de LOuvain-la-Neuve). In 1968, Roger Bastin, an architect inspired by the refined line of great names in modernism such as Le Corbusier in France and Alvar Aalto in Finland, provided the Université catholique de Louvain with a master plan for the new town. Bastin's master plan was not adopted, but in return, he was entrusted with the Cyclotron project, which he and his partners Guy Van Oost and Pierre Lamby would carry out. The Cyclotron is the very first construction site in Louvain-la-Neuve, and its development begun in 1970, while the foundation stone for the University's new main buildings was not laid until February 2, 1971. The Cyclotron also became the first completed building of Louvain-la-Neuve: its construction ended in 1971 and it was inaugurated in 1972, before the formal establishment of the town with its first inhabitants in October of the same year.
Cyclotron Research Center The Cyclotron Research Centre was equipped in the early 1970s with a first particle accelerator called CYCLONE110, built by Thomson-CSF in collaboration with the Ateliers de constructions électriques de Charleroi (ACEC) and used for nuclear physics, isotope production, medical and technological applications. A second accelerator, called CYCLONE30, was designed and built by the Cyclotron Research Centre team between 1984 and 1987: mainly designed for industrial and medical applications, it is mainly used for isotope production. Further models of CYCLONE30 were built by Ion Beam Applications.
Yves Jongen and Ion Beam Applications
The first director of the Cyclotron Research Centre was Yves Jongen, from Nivelles, who studied electronic engineering at the Catholic University of Louvain in the 1960s, extending his studies with a specialization in nuclear physics. In August 1970, Jongen moved to a house located near the future centre of the new town of Louvain-la-Neuve, which was still entirely under construction, which earned him the status of the first inhabitant of Louvain-la-Neuve. As the director of the Cyclotron Research Centre, Yves Jongen had the idea of reducing the size and cost of the particle accelerator, which led him to develop, in the mid-1970s, a cyclotron specially adapted for clinical use leading to the creation of Ion Beam Applications (IBA) in 1986, which settled in front of the Cyclotron's Eastern Tower. IBA became a university spin-off of UCLouvain.
Heritage status The Louvain-la-Neuve Cyclotron has received the status of Registered monument and is included in the Inventory of immovable cultural heritage of the Walloon region under reference 25121-INV-0070-01.
Architecture
Brutalism While the centre of Louvain-la-Neuve is built with only a nod to brutalist tendencies, the eastern part of the town, which was first in the town's chronological development, has clearly brutalist architecture. The Cyclotron's off-centre position allowed architect Roger Bastin "to escape the Louvain-la-Neuve style where Wanlin's Walloon brick, slate roofs, snuff boxes and wooden frames dominate".
The Cyclotron's buildings are very representative of the brutalist style, characterized by facades of uncoated raw concrete, whose surfaces often have a texture inherited from formwork wood, leading to raw formwork concrete, retaining the mark of the wooden boards used for molding, their grain and their joint lines. The pavement of the paths surrounding the Cyclotron is made of white concrete pavers known as "Blanc de Bierges", a type of paving stone found throughout Louvain-la-Neuve and that has marked its urban landscape.
Buildings
Structure of the complex The Cyclotron's architectural complex, which develops around a central garden, consists of three office and laboratory towers (one to the west, which was the first completed, one to the north and one to the east) each 24 meters wide, and several low-rise buildings, housing auditorii up to 110 seats, several classrooms and a medical unit.
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