André Waterkeyn (23 August 1917 – 4 October 2005) was a Belgian engineer, born in

Wimbledon, London Wimbledon () is a suburb of southwest London, England, southwest of Charing Cross; it is the main commercial centre of the London Borough of Merton. Wimbledon had a population of 68,189 in 2011 which includes the electoral wards of Abbey, Wimb ...

, best known for creating the

Atomium The Atomium ( , , ) is a landmark modernist building in Brussels, Belgium, originally constructed as the centrepiece of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo 58). Designed by the engineer André Waterkeyn and the architects André and Jean Pol ...

. Waterkeyn was the economic director of Fabrimetal (now

Agoria Agoria, previously known as Fabrimetal, is a Belgian employers' organization and member of the Federation of Belgian Enterprises. Description Agoria connects over 1900 technologically inspired companies active in Belgium (2019) that striv ...

), a federation of metallurgical companies when in 1954 he was asked to design a building for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (

Expo 58 Expo 58, also known as the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (; ), was a world's fair held on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Brussels, Belgium, from 17 April to 19 October 1958. It was the first major world's fair registered under the Bureau Internati ...

) that would symbolise Belgian engineering skills. Waterkeyn owned the

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

s of all reproductions of the Atomium until he passed it over to the organisation owning the original building around the year 2000. He was chairman of the board of the Atomium until 2002, when his son took over. He died in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

in 2005. After his death, the top sphere was named after him.van Capelleveen, R., 2011. André Waterkeyn (1917-2005) Belgische ingenieur. nlineAbsolutefacts.nl. Available at: ccessed 25 May 2022 Waterkeyn was also a

field hockey Field hockey (or simply referred to as hockey in some countries where ice hockey is not popular) is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with 11 players in total, made up of 10 field players and a goalk ...

player. At the 1948 London Olympics he participated with the Belgian team in the 1948 hockey tournament, playing the position of forward.

References

1917 births 2005 deaths Belgian architects Structural engineers Belgian male field hockey players Olympic field hockey players for Belgium Field hockey players at the 1948 Summer Olympics 20th-century Belgian sportsmen {{Belgium-architect-stub