Benoît Vandenbulcke, Harold Fallon & Benoît Burquel
Buero Kofink Schels in Practice
Re-Creation
In 2019, the inter-university research group In Practicei1 is created at the initiative of KU Leuven and ULiège in Belgium. Its participants combine a recognized professional activity, academic research and teaching. The objective is to create a link between academic research and professional practice through a place of exchange, sharing and publication, accessible to architects-practitioners, researchers and teachers.
As part of its activities, the research group publishes books in which an architect is invited to reveal the process of a built project through the creation of a possible narrative of the project. The book is written by the architects themselves and a writer invited by them. A balance is created between graphic and textual narrative. The central essay is accompanied by peripheral texts that shed further light on the central essay and contribute to the creation of a body of research.
In the book to be published in October 2021, the architects of Buero Kofink Schels are invited to share the details of the project process that personally involved the architects in the act of building a house. The narrative documents the exchanges between the architects and their client, the construction, and the many changes to the project as the work progressed and materials were acquired on the local second-hand market.
The in-depth and rigorous investigation of the project process, the perspective from within the practice combined with an external actor, as well as the integration of complementary observations, form a multi-layered framework that relates to the modes of academic research involved in creative practice. The practice of this office is active here as a theme, modality and motivation of the research project.
There is a double improvisation here. On the one hand, that which is proper to this process of project and construction. On the other hand, the specifics of the collective composition of a book that is nourished by the research modalities and those of an architectural practice that is intimately involved in the act of building. The contribution to the colloquium proposes to take into account this double “improvised” character of the interactions between the actors of a project and of a collective reflection.
1 https://architectureinpractice.eu/
BIOGRAPHIES
BENOIT VANDERBULCKE
Benoît Vandenbulcke graduated in civil engineering and architecture at UCLouvain in 2001. Between 2001 and 2006, he worked for several agencies in Belgium and Austria. In 2006, he co-founded AgwA architects in Brussels, which works mainly on public projects for the community. He was a lecturer and researcher at LOCI (UCLouvain), where he completed his thesis in 2015 entitled “Abstraction, concreteness: reading and production of the architectural project by immersion”. He is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Architecture at ULiège and co-founder of the inter-university research group In Practice. He is co-editor of the In Practice books.
HAROLD FALLON
Harold Fallon graduated as an architectural civil engineer from UCLouvain in 2001. In 2006 he co-founded AgwA architects in Brussels, which works mainly on public projects for the community. He has been a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Architecture at KU Leuven since 2007. His PhD in architecture at RMIT (au) “Metarbitrariness? : AgwA, an architecture of practice” investigates design strategies rooted in practice and the relationship to the literary practice of poet Francis Ponge as an inspiring force. Since 2018, he has been supervising and supporting practicing architects by linking their practice towards doctoral research. He is co-founder of the inter-university research group In Práctice. He is co-editor of the books In Practice.
BENOîT BURQUEL
Benoît Burquel is a civil engineer and architect graduated from ULiège in 2005. He obtained a Master’s degree in Human Settlements at KU Leuven in 2007. After teaching and researching at ULiège from 2014 to 2017, he is currently a lecturer at ULB. He co-organized the summer schools “Real Estate Architecture” from 2016 to 2018. He has been associated with AgwA architects since 2017. He is co-editor of the books In Practice.