Language Crisis
Louvain-la-Neuve was born as a result of the Leuven Crisis.
Following the elections prompted by this affair, the expansion of the French-speaking part of the University was voted upon and approved on 18 June 1968. A few weeks later, the separation of the Catholic University of Leuven was made official. It resulted in the creation of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), the Dutch-speaking one, that would stay in Leuven, and the Université Catholique de Louvain, which had to move to the future site of Louvain-la-Neuve, except for the French-speaking medical faculty, which moved to Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, in the suburbs of Brussels.
The first blueprints of Louvain-la-Neuve were made in a hurry and under dramatic times. Put under the direction of Raymond Lemaire, Jean-Pierre Blondel and Pierre Laconte, this urbanistic project saw the first students arrive in 1972.
Read more about this topic: Louvain-la-Neuve
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or crisis:
“A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“We can’t afford the wrath of Heaven. We survived a deluge by the skin of our teeth, but an economic crisis would be disastrous.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)