&bogdan & BC architects
Globe Aroma

In September, we focus on inclusion, hospitality and diversity in the city. We look at a plan for a centre for drug users and an artistic workplace for artists from the margins. Not because spaces for drug users or artists with a migration story are comparable one-to-one, but because there is an ambition from both projects to create a safe environment that can offer perspective to people in precarious situations and, from that environment, have an impact on the hospitality of the city as a whole.

Bureau Bas Smets
Stefano Mancuso (IT) – (TBC)

Humans are sensitive, but so are plants. To learn more (and feel more), we will travel to Kortrijk in October. Humans have five senses, so does a plant, as well as at least 15 others. Plants warn each other with scents about hostile herbivores, form huge networks with their roots and communicate with birds, insects and each other about their environment. Not for nothing do leading scientists now put plants on the same evolutionary step as animals.

The lecture, which could not take place on 16.11.2023 due to urgent personal circumstances, will be scheduled in autumn 2024.

Duplex Architekten shows how innovative housing can function in Switzerland and what contribution it can make to urban development. We place this lecture in a broader study of new financing models for the housing market and alternative forms of housing within which housing can remain affordable.

Bento architecture
Elise Vanden Elsacker

Fungi play an important role in the networks between plants. In November, we zoom in on the potential of these materials in construction. A scientific and a design perspective show the mesmerising, radical implications of mycelium materials on how we can look at building processes in the future. Building maintenance, for example, suddenly takes on a different meaning and becomes rather caring, keeping alive. What are the possibilities of these new living materials? In what ways does it challenge our building logic and subsequently our behaviour?

Geert Peymen en Pleuntje Jellema (NL)
New South (FR/B)

As the final lecture of working year 2024, we look at the hospitality of public space. We pay attention to the individual experience of space and the need for stillness of its users. This evening, we show practices that incorporate this into the design process, making radically different choices and challenging the architectural discourse.