The book launch of It’s About Time. The Architecture of Climate Change, is the opportunity to meet the authors Véronique Patteeuw, Léa-Catherine Szacka and guests Alice Babini (Babini Geysen Architects), Benoit Lanon (51N4E), Els Van Meerbeek (Carton123), and Joachim Declerck (Architecture Workroom Brussels).
The history of climate change and the history of architecture are connected in many ways: while architects contributed to building the fossil-fuel-driven world that has led to the current ecological collapse, they also explored and developed various alternatives to mitigate the effects of global warming. It’s About Time. The Architecture of Climate Change presents historical and contemporary projects along with over 45 key moments in the history of environmental awareness. It conceptualizes the present as the moment in which awareness, urgency, and opportunity converge to point toward radically sustainable futures. Urgent in its message, the book asserts that the momentum to realize change has arrived, and that the field of architecture plays an important role in the systemic transitions we are moving toward.
Over de last decades, Brussels has become a laboratory for practices of change and a city where architecture is part of both an ecological and social transition. How can design practice help mitigating the effects of global warming? Should we implement more circular or carbon-free ways of building? And what is the role of policy makers and public clients? Through recent projects such as La Ferme du Chaudron (51N4E and Plant and Houtgoed), Stadsatelier De Ville (Babibi Geysen/Schenk Hattori) and Fabiola, Standaertsite (Carton123) we will discuss concrete design strategies for an architecture of change.
Alice Babini is founder of Babini Geysen, architecture practice based in Brussels. Together with Schenk Hattori, they are currently developing the logistics program for the Circular Hub and production site for Democo and BC materials at the TACT site in Brussels. The proposed hybrid building system explores the possibilities of reuse and low-tech within this design task. She has previously worked at 51N4E and more recently, co-designed the scenography for the exhibition It's About Time (2022) with Richard and Leander Venlet.
Joachim Declerck is director of Architecture Workroom Brussels (AWB) and guest professor at Ghent University. AWB is an independent innovation house for the transformation of our living environment. Its mission is to help develop a ‘transformation practice’ that can bridge the ‘implementation gap’ between our ambitious societal targets and the systemic transformation in our streets, neighborhoods and landscapes. It does so through cultural prefiguration of possible futures and through the montage of breakthrough projects, always in coalition with scientists, citizen initiatives, entrepreneurs, policymakers, cultural institutes and design practices. AWB works on longer, design-driven, trajectories on visionary housing, the productive city, resilient water landscapes, energy districts and community engines.
Benoit Lanon is a project architect at 51N4E. Within that role he explores a range of projects using architecture as a tool, almost as a pretext to help improve social interactions, urban reuse and circular economies. He was project leader of La Ferme du Chaudron (Neerpede) and Recypark (Anderlecht): projects that testify to his interest in increasing the place of ecosystems in our everyday environments.
Els Van Meerbeek is an engineer architect, researcher and guest professor at KU Leuven Campus Arenberg. After collaborations with Flores Prats and De Smet Vermeulen, she founded in 2008 and together with Joost Raes, the practice Carton123. Projects by Carton123 testify of the social potential of architectural interventions. They challenge the the character of a project’s surroundings and place users in a central position. Els van Meerbeek combines architecture in practice with research. She currently develops PhD research on the power of architectural drawing in practice and education.
Véronique Patteeuw is Associate Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et du Paysage in Lille, where she combines research and teaching. In addition to her academic position in France, she is a visiting professor at the KULeuven and EPFL Lausanne. Her research focuses on the relevance of postwar architecture history and theory from an environmental perspective. Since 2008, she has been the academic editor of the international peer-reviewed journal OASE, Journal for Architecture. She is the co-editor of The Architect as Public Intellectual (2023), Authorship (2022), and Modernities (2021). In 2024, she co-authored It’s About Time. The Architecture of Climate Change.
Léa-Catherine Szacka is Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at University of Manchester and Director of the Manchester Architecture Research Group (MARG). Her work focuses on the history of architecture exhibitions, the history and theory of postmodern architecture, and, more broadly, the relationship between architecture, media, environment and politics since the 1970s. She is the author of Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (2016), and of Biennials/Triennials: Conversations on the Geography of Itinerant Display (2019). In 2024, she co-authored It’s About Time. The Architecture of Climate Change.
