The Imaginary Clients, the act beyond a mandate.
Bart Decroos
Lauren Dierickx
Olivier Goethals
Laura Muyldermans
Most of my creative and reflective work departs from the casual conversations with peers, dwellers or incidental encounters. Each exchange of ideas expands the perspective, which leads to unexpected projects and possibilities. As a result, my practice consists of diverse spatial interventions or constructions that question the expected and conventional experience of the existing context. With expositions, lectures, workshops and talks such as Venice (Biennale), Bruges (Triënnale), Ghent (Pecha Kucha), Brussels (BOZAR), Liège (Across) and Oslo (Architecture Triennale), I to contribute to the architectural culture of Brussels and beyond.
Since 2018, I teach design studio at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. In 2022, I received the Belgium Building Awards "Rookie of the Year", an award for practices that manage to combine innovative architecture with good management.
In 2023, I received the Brussels Architecture Prize for Promising Young Architect because of my versatile, socially committed work – from art installations to conversion architecture – and my fresh take on the urgent issues of contemporary architecture.
My mirror practice questions the way we exercise our profession: what if we act beyond the mandate or if we question the mandate ? What if the architect develops from a different or additional need and perspective ?
This free, critical and creative thinking and acting in an additional practice is open and inspirational but it also adds value to the construction practice as it nourishes the quality and depth of the interactions with my clients.
My practice is based on a ‘working apart together’ concept which means diverse collaborations beyond specific projects and without fixed structure in order to remain sharp and flexible in the thinking and creative development phase.
My architectural attitude needed also a dynamic and inspiring working place which I chose to be part of Level Five, a co working space for artists in Brussels.
Acting beyond a formal mandate comes from my conviction that a designer has a societal accountability. Therefore I have chosen the company of an imaginary commissioner which helps me developing this attitude. Imagine that you are always accompanied by a an Imaginary Commissioner. A figure which always enters the process, uninvited, looking beyond the classic mandate and wishes to open doors for socially relevant experiments.
The guest around the design table can be seen as a personification of everything related to architecture, but beyond the service demand. Inspired by that which an artist considers a mandate, they look for opportunities to design from a different necessity. A soulmate who wishes to safeguard the free, critical thinking in relation to what is requested. The odd figure points a way from a different need and thus helps define the broader framework for the further construction process. Illustrated through a selection of 4projects:
6 utopic 'Building Applications’ have been submitted for approval to the respective authorities. The proposals dare to speak out loud what is whispered. Reacts on the urge to deal radically differently with qualitative open space today. The attitude is the starting point, the power of a practice the means. It’s an unsolicited action, an invitation, an interlocutor and actually a gift.
'The Registry of Building Biographical Portraits’, transforms a building from an object into u subject by collects biographical accounts.
‘Playbook For Hospitality’ is an attempt to give voice to the hidden voice of public space during the design process. It explores new forms of accommodation situated at the transition between public and private space.
‘Play with me’ is a sharing place that takes the form of a set of devices activated by the users' swaying, walking or bouncing. Each of them produces a different rhythm, melodic or harmony, parts of a musical composition that can be modulated through movement with other participants.