Throughout the 20th century, domestic space has been progressively exhibited in public and commercial venues. In these exhibitions, a frequently used tool was the realization of 1:1 scale house and domestic models, where customers were offered a realistic experience of their future homes. Thanks to their fictional qualities, architectural mock-ups were not only perceived as
Due to a lack of affordable housing, Europe faces a crisis. The financialisation of housing, combined with an ageing demographic and changing living habits, makes access to housing in cities particularly difficult. Housing provision is often addressed through small-to-medium-sized infill strategies that ‘massage’ the numbers without disruption to existing settlements nor living types. One major
“Architecture” as a modern discipline was established in China in the early twentieth century. Afterwards, for almost the whole century, Chinese architects had been facing the conundrum: “In what style should we build?”, an issue which had been encountered by many European countries in the past. Moreover, in China, this question occupied the core of
This doctoral research focuses on the formation and nature of spatial domains actually existing in contexts of conflict and displacement in the Middle East. Taking the case of Ramallah, Palestine, the study examines the relation between spatial layouts, social identity and the production of patterns of rights in diverse urban settings. The research concerns two
Pierre-Louis Flouquet (1900-1967) is mainly known for his abstract paintings and poetry. But, between 1922 and 1967, he was a key figure of the architectural debate in Belgium especially because he was the country’s most prolific writer and editor on design, architecture and urbanism. He wrote several thousand articles published in magazines and newspapers, several
Exploring the possibility of a negotiated place in-between the dialectics of accumulation and dispossession Case of Gurugram (Gurgaon) City, India The city of Gurugram in India, stands as a frontier to India’s new neoliberal urban spatiality. In just two decades, it had transformed from a mere agricultural suburb to India’s new ‘globurb’. While much of
The Research Council of the KU Leuven has allocated financial support for the project ‘Designing Embassies for Middle Powers: The Architecture of Belgian and Dutch Diplomacy in a Globalizing World’ in the category fundamental research (C1). The project, led by Prof. dr. Fredie Floré and Prof. dr. Anne-Françoise Morel, aims at the study of embassy
Architectural theory – the collection of theoretical approaches by which aesthetic, technological and societal challenges of architecture are defined and challenged – has only recently come to define itself as a field that is to play a major role in the education of future architects. The project aims to study this process of formation as