KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Master in Architecture
Engagement Mediating Tactics, 2025 – 2026 Semester 1, Campus Brussels
Teacher Jasmien Wouters
Language English
Full Studio Description to be found here.
Results of the studio Serendipity 2023-2024: Collective Atlas & map.
Serendipity
A natural gift for making useful discoveries by accident.
“A gift is something pertaining to the subject, but, as the word says, ‘given’ to him/her/them: a talent, something that is not the result of personal merit, but nevertheless unique to that person, who can ‘make useful’ that gift even if it was discovered by accident. ‘Making’ implies a willful, purposeful action that, if used as a transitive verb, entails the new existence of an object. Used as a copula, it brings into existence a feature of the object; ‘useful’ is something that is good beyond the self; a communal usefulness perhaps; hence, a gift to the community. The gift as talent is ‘natural’. The discovery itself is accidental. This qualifies the power of the gifted subject. At the same time, it qualifies that person as open to noticing, seeing things, things that appear to him/her/them.” [1]
Ambition
The studio Serendipity explores temporality in architecture by examining water as a material. We will develop an architectural vocabulary encompassing elements such as light, shadow, texture, color, reflection, depth, and traces. The ever-changing states, positions, and appearances of water – liquid, solid, and gas – continually define and influence this vocabulary.
We will also explore how water and this vocabulary can become an invitation for encounters, asking what the presence, power, and meaning of water might be in Brussels today.
Site
Water (rivers, canal, swamps, lakes, ponds,…) in the Brussels-Capital Region.
Cover image: Le Querrec, G (1980). Bath in Budapest, Hungary in: Hodgson, F (2018). The Swimming Pool Photography, Hannibal Books, Veurne
Image 1: Eliasson, O (2016). Fog Assembly, Versailles
Image 2: Brandlhuber, A (2012). Archipel, Berlin
[1] Bal, M et al. (2011), Ann Veronica Janssens: Serendipity. Wiels, Brussels