Soft Layers
Instructor(s):
Aga Batkiewicz
Engagement:
Craftsmanship
Location:
Gent
Language/Taal:
English
Semester:
Semester 2, Spring 2026
- View the presentation (pdf)
Title: Soft Layers
Instructor(s): Aga Batkiewicz
Location: Gent
Language/Taal: English
Semester: Second Phase / Spring 2026
Description/Inhoud: The design studio approaches the city as a layered ground where matter, memory, and use accumulate rather than disappear. Set on a former industrial warehouse in Molenbeek, Brussels, temporarily inhabited by Decoratelier, the studio treats polluted soil not as a problem to erase, but as a spatial and cultural condition to engage. Through fieldwork, scenographic experiments, and speculative design, students uncover buried narratives of production, contamination, and transformation. Working across research, making, and performance, the studio explores how gentle, reversible architectural acts can reveal hidden layers and propose alternative futures rooted in repair and shared use.
Line of inquiry/Onderzoekslijn: Material Reality / Working With
Topic, Thematic Focus/Thema: Soil, Material storytelling, Hidden narratives, Fieldwork, Scenography
Key Questions or Provocation/ Centrale vragen en provocaties:
• How can architecture expose and give form to buried or overlooked narratives?
• How to design with the ground as collaborator, not only a surface?
• How do we document a territory in motion – one that resists fixation or final form?
Methodologies or Formats / Methodologie: Material research, prototyping, fieldwork, site-based testing, iterative modeling, documentation of process and outcome
Design / Expected Outcome(s) / Ontwerp / Verwachte Resultaten: Development of architectural strategies and spatial interventions that use the act of digging – both literal and metaphorical – as a tool to uncover, engage with, and reimagine the layered conditions of contested ground.
Deliverables / In te dienen documenten: Analytical drawings, models, on-site interventions or scaled mock-ups, visual documentation, project booklet
Cover image + description: Jonathan Ortegat, under Creative Commons licence