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Abstract
_room within this article is approached through projective architectural interpretations of the room type studiolo. The notion of the projective here refers to a projecting activity – of latent possibilities, of possible futures—through projects, regardless their scope and scale. The article builds on two architectural artifacts of our office STUDIOLO architectuurFootnote1 that substantiated in an interweavement with a doctoral research-through-practiceFootnote2. Almost every project worked on in the office, operating in the city on the scale of the dwelling through acupuncture-like interventions, contains such a studiolo. In turn, and in line with this room type’s historical signification as a place of study – a retreat from and yet a probing lens which, fascinated, draws in the world – each of these studiolos contains or emanates what could be characterized as its specific object(s) of study. A mutual inscription of interior and polis is explored in this article as one of the main objects of study stored on each of these studiolos’ shelves. The two specific studiolos figuring in this article will be approached by foregrounding how thinking and designing from within them about the contraction of interior and polis substantiated architectural artifacts with a certain political and ethical agency. The two projects subsequently serve to briefly propose and discuss the idea of an agonistic staging as a potential for (interior-)architecture, if it wants to pick up its capacities of acting politically and ethically in the world.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
2 The full title of this PhD research is Architecture's Poetic Instrumentality: Developing the Critical, Political, and Ethical Capacities of Architectural Artifacts. It can be retrieved at https://research.chalmers.se/publication/515037/file/515037_Fulltext.pdf.
3 The Walled House results from a collaboration between STUDIOLO architectuur and Koen Matthys. It was the laureate of an architectural competition organized by Sogent. A 1:15 scaled model of the house as it was designed is displayed in the 2021 Biennale di Venezia, as part of a larger urban assemblage Composite Presence curated by the architecture office Bovenbouw.
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Notes on contributors
Jo Liekens
Jo Liekens (1973) holds a master degree in architecture. His activities oscillate between a professional, an educational and a research practice. He is partner at STUDIOLO architectuur. Recent projects advance an interest in architecture’s agency. Work has been disseminated in publications such as the Flanders Architectural Review. The Walled House project, embedded in this article, has been adopted in the Belgian Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale of Architecture, as part of a critical landscape curated by Bovenbouw Architectuur. Liekens is engaged in education and academic research in architecture. He has been head of the Master of Interior Architecture program at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture. Currently, he coordinates the Research-by-Design studios and teaches master-level design studios in (interior)architecture with a focus on performative aspects of architecture. His doctoral dissertation Architecture’s Poetic Instrumentality (2020), in a collaboration between Chalmers University of Technology’s ACE department (SE) and KU Leuven’s Faculty of Architecture (BE), focuses on the critical, political, and ethical capacities of architectural artifacts. Currently, he holds a post-doctoral position on poetics and politics of architecture. Liekens has recurrently engaged with architecture as a making activity through associations with craftsmanship-oriented collectives. E-mail: [email protected]