LucAs-Architecturebook#5 de kleine grote selectie

"This is the fifth edition of the LucAs Architecture Book. This series of bilingual books (nl/en) celebrates architecture design as a work in progress and as an open artistic discipline, more than as fixed and immutable artefacts. The books contain a selection of beautiful, intriguing, challenging and interesting work by architecture students from last year’s architecture studios at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Campuses Sint − Lucas Ghent and Brussels. The students’ work resonates with documents from their teachers’ practices. It is a subjective portrait of the intricate relationships that make up a school.

This series of books was launched in 2018 in homage to Eugeen Liebaut, a pillar of the Faculty for many years, whose refined and energetic drawings inspired the idea to insist on the beauty of singular documents rather than on the exhaustive dissection of architectural designs. Eugeen supported the first four issues by helping with reviewing and selecting the work to be published, and by awarding two prizes: the Big Small Prize for an outstanding student work, and the Small Big Prize for an inspiring pedagogic project.

This year, we move forward and celebrate Dirk Jaspaert, another pillar of the faculty, whose creative practice as a structural engineer has transfigured the architectural practice of many architects in Belgium.

It is no coincidence that Eugeen and Dirk collaborated on many projects.

This book is thus celebrating architecture and its structure as a mental, artistic and built construction. Next to the students’ and teachers’ work, the book contains a section about the studio run by Bart Hollanders, Benjamin Eggermont, Marc Macken and Fabien Van Tomme, which explores and documents the oeuvre of Dirk Jaspaert in his many collaborations with a variety of architects. In another section, Dirk reacts to five interviews conducted by students at Ghent University, in which the architects Marie José Van Hee, 360 architects, 51N4E, AWG, and of course Eugeen Liebaut reflect on these collaborations. Last but not least, Steven Schenk (Schenk Hattori), Gosia Olchowska, Floris Debruyn (GAFPA), Laura Muyldermans, Frederik Ghyssaert (Tractebel) and Wes Degreef (BC Architects), all teaching at the Faculty, propose six reflections on structure and construction in architecture.

A very motivated committee gathered on several occasions to review the students’ work and had to make some difficult choices. We want to thank the increasing number of participants who submitted their work. This year, the committee decided that the two prizes are student prizes. The GROTE KLEINE LucAs Prize addresses a comprehensive architectural design. The KLEINE GROTE LucAs prize focuses on a more artistic approach and a sensible personality. Maybe these two prizes differ by their scale, or approach, or subject.

The GROTE KLEINE LucAs Prize goes to Antonia Haffner, Jonathan Roelandts, Marcos Suelves en Melanie Tschirren.They revisit an existing and ongoing project aiming at replacing a set of postmodern office buildings by a new composition. Their project skilfully maintains both the existing constructions and the design intentions of the ongoing project, in a complex and layered architectural ensemble.

The KLEINE GROTE LucAs Prize goes to Stien Kestens, for her sensible installation playing in scale 1:1 with spatiality, atmosphere and some sense of mystery, while making use of pragmatic elements and a good dose of realism.

This book is their prize.

For the teachers, although we would like to give a special nomination to the entire team of the Bachelor’s thesis Ghent. Compared to other years, we received a large number of interesting submissions for this assignment. The submissions show a pleasure of designing in context. Beautiful inspiring drawings and collages were submitted. These are no doubt the result of intense and fruitful cooperation of the entire team."