Un/Adapted Conjunctions
Studio Title: Oblique Negotiations
Master Studio 2025–26, sem 2, Brussels
architect Lennart Vandewaetere & dr. visual artist Mira Sanders
Un/Adapted Conjunctions is a continuing design studio series that explores architecture as a situated, un/adaptive, and transgressive practice. Each edition introduces a distinct conceptual lens through which acts of (re)(f)usus and constructive disobedience[1] are investigated. Together, these recurring themes question normative systems of design and building, while fostering architectural knowledge through ambiguity, tension, and mediation.
The 2025–26 edition, Oblique Negotiations, frames architecture as a process of positioning — negotiating between competing forces, layered perceptions, and material conditions. Conjunctions are used not simply as connectors, but as conceptual and spatial tools for engaging with complexity. The studio operates within urban contexts, where spatial, social, and political tensions are tangible and continually shifting.
This year’s studio draws inspiration from across disciplines — including architecture, art, and film. Among its references is Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, a work that stages space through concealment, viewpoint, and constructed meaning. Such influences frame design not as problem-solving but as an explorative and choreographed act.
Design research unfolds through experimental media and material constructs — including 1:1 artefacts, performative models, drawing, sound, and film. These outcomes serve not only as forms of imagination, but as sites of spatial inquiry and negotiation. The studio encourages critical engagement with typology, standardization, and the usage of space, cultivating an architecture that is (dis)assembled, questioned, and revealed rather than resolved.
More detailed information about the studio’s program and working environment will be made available during the first semester of 2026, and presented at the Assemblea during the Supersalon in Ghent.
Image: selection of student’s work UN/ADAPTED CONJUNCTIONS edition 24-25
[1] Inspired by the 2022 conference and 2025 book Constructive Disobedience: An Experimental Methodology in Architecture (Blocksdorf et al.) .
Learn more on the 2024-25 studio.