// KU Leuven is present at 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia – ‘The laboratory of the Future’ – as an important contributor to the bigger team of BDR bureau and Carton123. Curator Lesley Lokko explores how architecture can respond to the social and climatic challenges of today and tomorrow. At the heart of all presented projects is the power of one tool : imagination, the ability of architecture to change the way we see the world.

Carton123 and BDR bureau are invited to participate in ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, the part of the Biennale unfolding in the Arsenale complex, where all practitioners work in hybrid ways, “across disciplinary boundaries, across geographies, and across new forms of partnership and collaboration with different ways of seeing and being in the world.” One project is being presented : Kappaert is a school campus that includes a varietyof activities: a school for children with special needs, art spaces, and summer recreational activities. The architectural project is defined by an ambiguity between dissolving boundaries and creating boundaries, in order to define protected spaces for children living with forms of autism.

The drawings are part of els’ Phd research. Rather than present all the fragments as static representations of architectural intent, visitors are invited to imagine how the spaces can be appropriated, how the children will feel at home.  Hand drawings play an important role in this process. Drawings as visual anchoring points (the curtains guide the visitors, as the buildings will guide the children at the future campus). The drawings equally capture users who experience the world in a different way.

Collaborative process.

Curator Lokko stated:

“We have deliberately chosen to frame participants as ‘practitioners’ and not as  ‘architects’, ‘urbanists’, ‘engineers’ or ‘academics’ because it is our contention that the rich, complex conditions of a rapidly hybridising world call for a different and broader understanding of the term ‘architect’.“

For Kappaert, Research[x]Design’s expertise on inclusive design was crucial, already in the early competition stage (Open Call procedure). This interdisciplinary collaboration has proven to be a big opportunity.

collaboration LAPresearch (A&D) (Els Van Meerbeek, PhD researcher and principal architect Carton123)
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Research group Research[x]Design (A&D) (Ann Heylighen, Natalia Pérez Liebergesell, Phuong Lan Nguyen, Piet Tutenel)
picture Biennale (c)Stijn Bollaert
°2023, summer / Arsenale, Venezia