Gideon Boie, Lieven De Cauter, Ymay Patuelli, Amber Vermaete
Space-Time Constellations of Architectural Activism in Brussels
To contribute to the genealogy of architectural activism in Brussels Gideon Boie and Lieven De Cauter will, with Amber Vermaete and Ymay Patuelli Hodde, try and evoke three spatio-temporal constellations. The first is about activism in the North quarter that spans from the protests in the late 1960s against the urbicidal tabula rasa to the recent attempts to revive this dead administrative zone. The second is the struggle for the right to centrality around the Stock Exchange, from the occupation of Hotel Central, via Picnic the Streets to the ongoing Free54 actions. The third is a swarm of temporary interventions around the Tour and Taxi’s site, that span from the late eighties to the present. The underlying question is whether urban activism only makes use of architecture or whether we can talk about activist architecture as a basic tendency within the discipline, as Charles Jencks suggested in “The Evolutionary Tree to the Year 2000” (1969).
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Gideon Boie is an architect and philosopher, cofounder of the BAVO collective and visiting professor at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. His research focusses on the political dimension of art, architecture and urban planning. Most recent publication: Discursive Architecture: Tactics for Critical Intervention in the Work of BAVO (2024).
Lieven De Cauter is a philosopher, writer and activist. He has been teaching in several institutions, mainly at the KU Leuven Department of Architecture and the art school RITCS. He published some 20 books, most recently (in English): Ending the Anthropocene. Essays on Activism in the Age of Collapse (2021).
Ymay Patuelli Hodde is an architect with an interest in the impact of architecture toward social and spatial justice. She recently graduated at KU Leuven Faculty of architecture with a thesis that explored the relationship between collective memory and design of memorials.
Amber Vermaete is an architect and founder of Achterland Collectief (Hinterland Collective). She is fascinated by the friction between the Flemish architectural and rural landscape. She is also part of research practice erts*, which seeks insights into our spatial obesity. She has worked for PLUSOFFICE and urbain architectencollectief.
