Between the wars, Belgian architects could and did sue each other for plagiarism. The distinguished British architectural critic Jonathan Meades has described the suburbs of Brussels as “some sort of masterpiece”. From the lavish townhouses of Elsene to the charming gardencity development of Watermaal- Bosvoorde in Brussels’ southeast, it’s hard to argue.

Just how, then, are today’s architects and designers contributing to a centuries-long tradition? Are there 21st-century analogues of Van de Velde, Horta and the like?

More than one distinguished commentator has advanced that view. But this must be weighed alongside a caution: compared to some European countries, including the Netherlands and Spain, Belgian planning regulations are relatively lax. This might enable architects to work within a less constrained milieu, but it is also as likely to give rise to undistinguished buildings as to good ones.

Certainly the star designers promoted by the Flemish Architecture Institute (VAI) seem to concentrate on renewing the old fabric of existing buildings, especially the interiors, with light the chief motivation – much as it was when Art Nouveau revolutionised the fenestration of Brussels’ townhouses around 1900.

A great deal of interesting work is also being undertaken in semi-urban locations, emphasising light and, where possible, the use of traditional materials for the interiors, mirroring the Flemish attachment to the countryside and the outdoors.

Nu-Architecture’s private home “Mathilde” in the Ghent suburb of Ledeberg, for instance, is all rectilinear steel and glass, yet includes homey, old fashioned touches inside – a cosy, rural homestead in an area largely overcome by urban blight.

What is perhaps also significant is that all this small-scale work more than stands comparison with other undemanding, modernist-lite structures in Belgium, like the new Liège- Guillemins train station by star Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava or the feted law courts in Antwerp by British architect Richard Rogers. Flemish architects boast at least as much facility with invention but shun the often showy scale of these global figures; the Flemish architectural eye seems sure, at least, even if the scales in which they work do not always allow us to see their full potential.

Ilse Dierickx of VAI says, for example, that the simple elegance of Rechnum’s bridge for cyclists and pedestrians in Ostend is just as important as its fitness for its purpose. In other words, form is as valuable as function.

Among the Flemish figures filling the urban gaps at present – in Belgium and beyond – are the Ghent firm Robbrecht and Daem and the Antwerp-based Vincent Van Duysen. The Lokeren-born Van Duysen has become as famous for his furniture and chic interiors –such as the women’s wear department of Selfridges in London – as for his full-scale buildings, located in cities from Beirut to Tokyo.

Van Duysen is the only Flemish architect I know who has a promo video on YouTube. He specialises in minimalism of the most agreeable kind, even to those who abhor the geometries of the International Style. Its calculated purity of line is the polar opposite of the extreme ornamentation that characterised Art Nouveau, but Van Duysen’s avowed belief is that objects should be as comfortable to look at as to sit in.

Not all of Flanders’ most visually pleasing developments are necessarily modern, or even modernist; witness the renovated Patershol quarter of old Ghent – old artisan dwellings, inns and coach houses redone as adult-scale models of textbook Flemish traditionalism. But they are nonetheless easy on the eye for this essential retrogressive tendency, which also finds a home in Dutch urban centres.

It’s probably pointless to hope for another transformation of Belgium’s inner cities as radical as that occasioned by Art Nouveau – social, material and artistic conditions have changed too much. But buildings like Robbrecht and Daem’s Concertgebouw in Bruges, for all its angular modernism that could be “anywhere”, have a cool authority and elegance which, while not catapulting Flanders or Belgium into the most visually singular of locations, lend a cultural relevance and respect for buildings as urban artworks.

All who remember the merciless obliteration of the shops and bars on the Fonsnylaan side of Brussels’ South Station will hope that the more humane vision of the likes of Van Duysen and Co is given free rein in shaping the cityscape of Belgium’s capital. Neo-expressionism of the Le Corbusier stamp – deprecated as Brutalism by some – has not really asserted itself with any overweening presence or majesty as seen in London or Frankfurt.

Flemish architects as a whole seem more than capable of restoring Brussels’ cutting-edge status without ruining the vistas that made it the exemplar of another century’s bright new dawn. It is to be hoped that what novelty they summon can aspire to the originality of its illustrious predecessors and use modernism in a manner that renders it fit for purpose and visually memorable.

One need look only at Van Geystelen-Thys’ Regenboog primary school in Grimbergen and, on a much grander and more prestigious scale, Robbrecht and Daem’s splendid extension to the Whitechapel Gallery in London’s East End – a gem of the Arts and Crafts movement whose Flemish addons were unanimously praised by critics – for proof of the general health of architecture in a corner of Europe that has so much to live up to in terms of the past.