Open Lecture in Architecture: Caroline Voet

In search for an architectural ontology: Open Lecture by Caroline Voet

The next lecturer of the Open Lecture Series this autumn will beCaroline Voet – Belgian architect and professor at the KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture. Voet will be stepping on the stage of the main auditorium of the new EKA building on the 15th of November at 6 pm to talk about the work of Dom Hans van der Laan and the search for an architectural ontology.

Voet is the co-founder of the award-winning architectural practice Voet en De Brabandere in Antwerp, Belgium. Her research and teaching have always been combined with an architectural practice. After working for Zaha Hadid Architects in London and Christian Kieckens Architects in Brussels, she founded her own office in Antwerp, working on a range of award-winning projects from furniture and museum interiors to housing and schools. She focuses on reconversions and the design of cultural buildings, public interiors, scenography and furniture. Voet is professor at the KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture, Campus St-Lucas Ghent and Brussels, where she received her Ph.D. in 2013 on the work of Dom Hans van der Laan. She holds degrees in architecture from the Architectural Association in London and the Henry van de Velde Institute in Antwerp. She has been published in for example ARQ and Interiors Routledge. She wrote for the Architectural Yearbook Flanders and in 2016 she was co-editor of the book Autonomous Architecture in Flanders. She recently published “Dom Hans van der Laan. Tomelilla (Architectura and Natura)” and “Dom Hans van der Laan. A House for the Mind” (VAi).

In 1977, the Dutch Benedictine monk and architect Dom Hans van der Laan (1904-1991) published his treatise Architectonic Space, fifteen lessons on the disposition of the human habitat. At the same time, he built four convents and a house, a typical elementary and austere architecture that strongly communicates through tactility, colour and light. Through philosophical concepts like mass / space, inside / outside, the book tried to define a deep-level structure that would explain how we perceive space and how we build. Is it possible to grasp experience and tactility within a philosophical and rational framework? Voet’s lecture unravels the interwoven genealogy of theory, design practice and building. It links Dom van der Laan’s philosophical concepts of dwelling with the concrete experience of his architecture. What is the connection between theory and practice, if any?

Caroline Voet’s open lecture takes place in co-operation with EKKM, where on 16 November at 6 pm, Ingel Vaikla exhibition You Have Become the Space opens (curated by Laura Toots). More info on the exhibition: https://www.facebook.com/events/2229621923950764/

The architecture and urban design department of the Estonian Academy of Arts has been curating the Open Lectures on Architecture series since 2012 – each year, a dozen architects, urbanists, both practicing as well as academics, introduce their work and field of research to the audience in Tallinn. All lectures are in English, free and open to all interested.

The series is funded by the Estonian Cultural Endowment.

Curators: Sille Pihlak, Johan Tali, for this lecture: Siim Tuksam.

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More info:
Pille Epner
E-post: arhitektuur@artun.ee