#418 Erkenningsnummer P708816
february 24, 2016 \ newsweekly - € 0,75 \ read more at www.flanderstoday.eu current affairs \ p2
politics \ p4
Maverick Mechelen
The little city halfway between Brussels and Antwerp has got its international due as the Financial Times puts it on the Cities of the Future top 10 list \6
BUSiNESS \ p6
innovation \ p7
You read my mind
UGent students have invented headphones that check your brain waves and select music based on your mood \9
education \ p9
art & living \ p10
Flanders’ new phenom
Twenty-something author Lize Spit is wowing critics and readers with her debut Het smelt, set in her small Kempen town \ 14
The essence of architecture Pioneering Flemish architect Christian Kieckens on building a culture Clodagh Kinsella More articles by Clodagh \ flanderstoday.eu
From the 1970s, Christian Kieckens has helped pave the way for the breakthrough of Flemish architecture. As the Flanders Architecture Institute honours him with a retrospective in Antwerp, he reveals his philosophical take on the trade.
W
hen Christian Kieckens was growing up in Aalst, his parents ran a record shop. He loved the ingenious sleeve designs of labels like Verve in the 1960s and ECM in the 1970s. Yet rather than aspiring to be a graphic designer or a musician – he envied Eric Clapton’s riffs – he fixed on the relatively sober profession of architect. His parents weren’t convinced. “My mother feared I was getting old too soon,” says Kieckens. His open-mindedness stood him in good stead when he graduated from the Sint-Lucas school of arts in Ghent in 1974. The economy was still reeling after the oil crisis the previous year, and architectural commissions were scarce. Kieckens’ class faced a bleak horizon. “We were hungry because we had no money, but we were also hungry to understand what architecture really was,” he says. “That helped us through all kinds of pain, because it wasn’t until the late ’80s that the commissions started coming again.” Kieckens decided to set his own brief, embarking on a two-decade research phase spanning Francesco Borromini’s Baroque churches, the Egyptian pyramids and modernist Adolf Loos’ texts, as well as the Japanese post-Metabolists. “I worked mostly on my own in a very analogue way,” he recalls, “by making analytical drawings. It was about searching for mentors.” In-between entering competitions, including one to redesign the Waterloo battle site south of Brussels, he stayed afloat by teaching. There were also sporadic study trips – including one funded with the proceeds from winning the Godecharle Prize for Architecture in 1981. In 1983, Kieckens founded the architectural association S/AM with Marc Dubois. “Nothing was happening, so we thought we’d try and start by creating a culture of architecture,” he explains. S/AM lasted a decade, resulting in talks, excursions and exhibitions, in addition to a professional journal, and the exhibition design for the first Belgian entry at the Venice Architecture Biennale, which showcased the built work of young Flemish architects. It also sparked off several key developments: the publication of the inaugural Flanders Architectural Yearbook in 1994, the opening of the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi), and the appointment of Kieckens’ former colleague bOb Van Reeth as the first Flemish Government Architect in 1999. Two years later, the Open Call scheme was introduced, allowing designers to submit proposals for government jobs in architecture and public space. “Win or not, young
© Reiner Lautwein
Christian Kieckens’ Caractère office building in Erpe-Mere, East Flanders continued on page 5