Time, Matter & Encounter
“As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella.”
Instructor(s):
Fabien Van Tomme
Engagement:
Craftsmanship
Location:
Brussels
Language / Taal:
Nederlands, English
Semester:
Semester 3, autumn 2025
Description:
This studio explores architecture as a time-based artistic practice where encounter is central. It moves beyond utilitarian or pseudo-ecological frameworks towards an ethical and poetic space in which time and matter become building materials. Students engage with slowness, decay, repair, and transformation, approaching architecture as a living practice that choreographs relations between people, generations, and materials. References include Bauman, Dewey, Prigogine, and Tarkovsky.
Line of Inquiry:
Practice as Study
Topic / Thematic Focus / Thema:
Time, temporality, encounter, patina, material ethics, intergenerational meaning, poetic resistance, multisensory design, situated practice, critical making, philosophy, theoretical anchoring…
Key Questions or Provocation:
• How can architecture resist speed and utility through slowness and presence?
• What is the ethical role of making in a time of ecological collapse and cultural fatigue?
• How can materials carry memory, identity, and transformation?
• Can architecture express wonder, absurdity, or silence without falling into spectacle?
• What kind of future(s) can we build through care, rhythm, and cultural imagination?
Methodologies or Formats / Methodologie:
Time as material — rhythms, aging, and maintenance as design tools.
Matter as witness — existing materials as carriers of memory; repair and transformation as design acts.
Encounter as practice — architecture as an ethical space for reciprocity, intimacy, or confrontation.
Design / Expected Outcome(s):
• Spatial intervention, temporary installation or poetic structure
• Public or semi-public articulation of architectural resistance
• Hybrid formats combining physical work with narrative, theoretical or performative layers
• Deepened understanding of time and material as active agents in design “Build a space of resistance and wonder. Not for use, but for meaning.”
Deliverables:
A crafted proposition (model, drawing, text) that makes tangible an architecture of time, matter, and encounter. Students show how their work moves beyond utility or sustainability-speak, and propose a space of human and material reciprocity.