Jo Van Den Berghe (b. 1961) teaches experimental architectural design at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Campus Sint-Lucas Brussels/Ghent, Belgium, in the experimental Studio Anatomy.
He is a researcher at KU Leuven Department of Architecture in the field of Techné and Poiesis in making architecture (the poetics of making). In his current research he is developing innovative versions of the architectural drawing as an indispensable locus between Techné and Poiesis. He is a visiting professor at Politecnico di Milano, Queen’s University Belfast, RMIT University Melbourne (campus Barcelona), and EPFL Lausanne.
Jo Van Den Berghe is a reflective practitioner-architect with a critical reflective practice in Belgium since 1986.
Thierry Lagrange graduated from University of Ghent, Master of Science in Civil Engineering Architecture (1993) and obtained a PhD, Look Here Now, Mapping Design Trajectories , in 2013 at the Faculty of Architecture KU Leuven. He is a practitioner-architect in Belgium since 1997, www.alt-architectuur.be and a photographer, www.thierrylagrange.com.
He is the coordinator of the Master Architecture of Faculty of Architecture KU Leuven, where he teaches architectural design in his master dissertation studio The Drawing and the Space (together with Prof. Johan Van Den Berghe) which is an incubator for doctoral research out of which a number of PhD’s have been initiated. Together with visual artist dr. Dimitri Vangrunderbeek he teaches architectural design in their experimental studio The Double Look – Abstraction .
He is Head of Research Art & Architecture at the Department of Architecture. He works as a researcher in the field of New Spatialities at KU Leuven Department of Architecture. In his current Design Driven Research he is developing new spatialities, so-called Analogous Spaces, wherein intangible and mental elements become explicit.
Recently he published two books; Look Space! A Story of Analogous Spaces (Gent: Grafische Cel, 2017) on new created spatialities in his research and The Matrix Project (Gent: AraMER & MER, 2018) on 25 years of his photography in relation to his research.
Eva Beke (b. 1993) graduated as a Master in Architecture in 2017 at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Ghent. Elaborating on her master’s thesis, she currently works as a PhD-researcher on ‘Perspicio: the perspective drawing as unlocker in the Renaissance art painting, a development of painted spatialities’, a project exploring new ways of generating a design via the projection method.
Louise De Brabander (b. 1994) graduated as a Master in Architecture in 2017 at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture in Ghent. She graduated with the project: The Remembered, The Experienced, The Imagined. Following her masters dissertation, she is currently working as a Phd-researcher on “Sacred Grounds: (drawing) methods to generate alternative typologies and added value for fragile topographies.”
Riet Eeckhout (M.Arch, MA, PhD) currently holds a research and teaching position at the faculty of architecture of the Catholic University Leuven (Belgium). As a post doc researcher she exhibits, publishes and writes about her drawings in an architecture practice at the fringe of the discipline. Her drawings have been exhibited internationally including at the Venice Biennale (IT), La Gallerie d’Architecture in Paris (FR), COAAC in Barcelona (SP) and in Darc Space Gallery in Dublin (IE) and Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin (Tchoban). In 2014, she concluded a PhD titled ‘Process Drawing’ under Dr. Martyn Hook within the invitational Practice based Research program at RMIT University (Melbourne), led by Leon van Schaik. She is a guest speaker and teacher at a number of international universities and conferences where she talks on her research in relation to practice.
Mira Sanders (b. 1973) studied Fine Arts at Sint-Lukas Brussels and is lector/researcher at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture Campus Sint-Lucas KU Brussels/Ghent. Her oeuvre consists of video works, drawings and installations, in which a constant quest emerges for the places, people and stories they contain. Mira Sanders’ current work focuses on the positioning of objects, people or events in physical spaces and on the actual terrain. Her visual language consists of meticulous lines, markings, borders, routes, maps, plans and drawings that describe and redefine spaces, and outline imaginary journeys, in an attempt to surpass the limits of language. In the grey zone between architecture and city planning she explores the notion of “public” space: its physical limits, narratives that contribute to its formation, or its configuration in time. Mira Sanders obtained her PhD in the arts Over de (on)mogelijkheid om een beeld te vormen van limieten (About the (Im) possibility to Form an Idea of Limits) in 2017.
KU Leuven Lirias
www.mirasanders.org
www.thementalmasonrylab.com
Robin’s (b. 1974) practice situates itself in-between designer (pro-actively searching for something to add value to a context or situation), researcher (looking for potential methods to inquire contexts or situations in order to steer or change things where necessary), draughtsman (looking for marks on paper to (re)imagine contexts and situations and/or to inform a process), and improviser (working with the materials and situations at hand to find something new). Learning is the excipient of all these activities, learning as a means and learning as a goal. Robin is lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Architecture KULeuven Ghent/ Brussels where he teaches and inquires architectural drawing and media. Currently Robin is investigating possible extensions of the geometric foundations of architectural drawing in design processes to include movement, time as well as sensory and subjective aspects of form and space. Next to that he is collaborating in preparing a design-driven project to inquire possible applications of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for designers.
designer – draughtsman – teacher – researcher – improviser – digital/analogue thinker(er)do’er
Dimitri Vangrunderbeek (b.1964) is a visual artist and teaches mixed-media and experimental architectural design at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Campus Sint-Lucas Brussels/Ghent, Belgium. He is a researcher at KU Leuven Department of Architecture where he investigates material and spatial qualities of artistic work processes. He holds a Ph.D. from RMIT University, Melbourne. His art practice originates in installation art issues with a specific interest in physical sculptural acts. In his Ph.D. project From Ordinary Object to Sculpture (2015) his artistic practice as a whole was subject to a process of reflection. These reflections are now the basis for his ongoing research on the spatial and material qualities of his generative drawing method.
Liselotte Vroman (b.1986) obtained her Masters in Architecture in 2010 at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture campus Brussels. After graduating she worked as an independent architect for a period of 5 years (2010 -2015). In 2016 she has started her PhD project Generating a better understanding of the effect of spatial qualities on the embodied experience in (semi-) public spaces: reconsidering the design process by examining human motion. Central to her research is the relationship between human and space, which she conceives as a key concept within the field of Architecture.
Professor of Mixed Media, performance and sound art Esther Venrooij considers her dual roles as artist and composer as occupying two different sensorial planes. She creates work in a variety of media, such as composed music, improvised combinations of electronica, video and site-specific installations. A keyword in her artistic research practice is “experience”. She wants to come to a different understanding of architecture, with the possibility of creating a relationship between the physical environment and the “immaterialities” of space, like sound and movement. Having collaborated live and in the studio with a variety of visual, sound and dance artists, Venrooij’s biography reads like a mixed media map of projects. She has performed and presented her works extensively for audiences in Europe, Asia and United States. In 2015, she completed her PhD studies in Art at KULeuven with an exhibition of a series of sound installations and a dissertation: ‘Audio Topography: The Interaction of Sound, Space and Medium’. In februari 2018 she was granted a ZAP-mandate at KULeuven, in the field “Spatial Experiences: Spatial Experiences: Visual, Auditory, Sensorimotor, Tactile and Conceptual” and is she supervising the doctoral research projects.
Eva Demuynck (b. 1993) obtained her master’s degree in Architecture in 2017 at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture in Ghent. She is fascinated by how our built environment relates to the intangible dimension of space, which is constructed by people’s imagination, memories, etc. After graduating, she worked at the architecture office of Thierry Lagrange (www.alt-architectuur.be), until she acquired a PhD Fellowship Fundamental Research by the FWO (The Research Foundation – Flanders) in 2020 for her current research project ‘The Embodiment of Consolation: unlocking the interaction between mourning, drawing and space’. As a PhD-researcher, she aims to develop a more empathic, human-centered approach to Architecture by revealing how (re)designing space through drawing can improve the mental wellbeing of someone in mourning, while building a bridge towards other closely related disciplines (e.g. Emotional Geography & Art Therapy).
Enrico Miglietta (b. 1988) graduated in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano in 2016, where he is a PhD researcher in the Architectural, Urban and Interior Design Programme (AUID, DAStU). He is developing his investigation around architectural research by design as part of a Joint Doctorate agreement, with KU Leuven as host university. His research focuses on the agency of the Joint as a primary particle for the construction of architectural corporeality, the mereological relationships between the fragment and the whole, on the role of drawing as a mediator.
Among his recent writings: Intùito (in ‘Vesper. Journal of Architecture, Arts & Theory’ n. 5, 2021); Sigurd Lewerentz: (The Discipline of) Architecture as Context (with G. Postiglione, in ‘Intertwining’ n. 3, 2021).
Doug Allard (b.1968) is a project leader at XDGA (Architects) in Brussels and co-director of XDGR (Research). He was a project manager at OMA in Rotterdam, and has previously worked at Maccreanor Lavington Architects (NL), Bennetts Associates (UK) and with Stephane Beel and TOP Office/Luc Deleu (BE).
Together with Professor Kathryn Findlay he directed FIELD/FIELDWORK, a research project which established a collaboration between a masters architecture program and Ushida Findlay Architects (London / Tokyo). He has been a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Design and taught at Antwerp University and as studio Director at Rice University (USA) Paris program.
He is a Visiting Professor at Sint-Lucas Campus Faculty of Architecture and runs the BUILTNOTHING masters studio / Academic Design Office.
His associated Doctorate Research Project is entitled ‘Present Absence’.
Dr. Ephraim Joris is a Design Director at Architecture Project and a faculty member at KU Leuven and Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. His research looks at the idea of an architectural phenomenology recasting history as the experiential content of speculative architecture. This research stands at the basis of his design work at Architecture Project as much as his design work stands at the basis of his research. He contributed as a researcher and teacher to various institutions such as RMIT, Syracuse University, Westminster University and Brighton University. He has been a program director at UCA in Canterbury and KU Leuven and is a current member of The Mediated City Research Team at University College London. He is the author of various international publications and academic papers.
Moragh Diels (b. 1994) obtained her master’s degree in Architecture in 2019 at the KU Leuven Faculty or Architecture in Ghent. After graduating, she started working as an architect in Basel, Switzerland at Herzog&deMeuron (www.herzogdemeuron.com) for one year, after which she completed her internship and continues to work today as an architect at Noémi Van Heuverswyn in Astene, Belgium, while maintaining her own projects as a freelancer. She graduated with her master’s thesis: The Last Weeks: an Emotional Reconstruction of the Mental Space. Whereupon she further explores how experiencing and drawing space affect mental space.
Marie Porrez (b. 1998) obtained her master’s degree in Architecture in 2021 at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture in Ghent. After graduating, she started working as an architect in the office of Thierry Lagrange (www.alt-architectuur.be). She graduated with her master’s thesis: Interiorities, Embeddedness and the Dwelling. Upon which she continues to explore the immanent properties of places in a landscape and the significance of immersive drawing techniques in exploring these.