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Wat is mijn ‘beleefwereld’? Is het die van mij? Hoe kijken we naar de wereld en hoe wordt onze blik vorm gegeven door de – al dan niet – bebouwde ruimte waarin we ons bewegen? Gefascineerd door de errance van Depardon en de dérive van Debord, ben ik benieuwd hoe ik aangehaalde vragen kan onderzoeken door van plek naar plek te dwalen, in en rond België. Met een caravan als rij-, woon- en werktuig, tracht ik te vatten hoe die ‘beleefwereld’ stapsgewijs vorm krijgt en hoe nieuwe werkmethodieken kunnen worden uitgetest binnen mijn architectuur/artistieke praktijk. De caravan als plek waar het landschap in het vizier als maar verandert, binnen een schaal die de grenzen van het (on)vertrouwde aftast. “Persons on the dérive escaped the imaginary totalizations of the eye and instead chose a kind of blindness.” (McDonough, 1994) Internet, wegenkaarten en gpssystemen worden even aan de kant geschoven, zodat andere criteria kunnen gelden en een band met het landschap kan nagestreefd worden die het ‘dwalen’ ten volle omarmt.

België

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This thesis was born out of my personal need to escape and get away from the overwhelming society we live in. I’m always looking for places where I can get away from the hustle and bustle of the city. When I am in Ghent, I feel the urge to look for places where I can get away from the hustle and bustle of society. After exploring different places to unwind, I discovered the Groot Begijnhof in Ghent. This is a walled haven of relaxation in the midst of the hustle and bustle of city life. You could even call it a holy place because of its history. It’s where the beguines shielded themselves from the outside world. The beguinage is steeped in history and culture, which adds an element of fascination and interest. Even though I am not a religious person, I can appreciate the beauty and serenity of this contemplative space. You get a sense of global time and focus on what is really important for body and mind. All the streets/walls and houses in the Beguinage create a sense of serenity. The calm to the eye allows you to see through the built structure and notice the small differences and details around you. As you walk through the Béguinage, you will experience different phases of relaxation. The longer you walk around the Béguinage, the more isolated you feel from the outside world. Enclosed by the walls that spiral around you in different layers. As you walk around, you can only catch glimpses of the roofs and chimneys that are the sign of a refuge for those who live there. Could this courtyard, which for them is a transitional space between their home and the outside world, also represent a next phase of relaxation for the guest? A walled courtyard garden, protected from the outside world, could be the heart of the place. A retreat where you can sit, walk, observe... A place where there is only the luxury of time and space. Throughout the Béguinage I am designing a series of interventions that will reinforce the sense of unwinding in the place that is already there. The interventions will begin as you enter or leave the Béguinage, at the gates, through the Béguinage to the final stage of the enclosed garden. A similar line, inspired by the design of the Béguinage, runs through the interventions. These additions are consistent and make it easier to walk through the garden until you reach the final stage. They are designs that function like furniture, but in the form of architecture. They allow you to spend a moment in this space and to appropriate it. The interventions are constructed in materials found in the Beguinage, such as the double cross brick with alternating rows of heads and rows of lines. To contrast the new sections with the older buildings of the Béguinage, the bricks are coated in a light colour. Wood, a natural material used in the construction of the roofs and the tiles, is also used in the interventions.

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As I am living, I am moving, I am on my way. I don’t necessarily know where to go next, but it seems to be an inseparable part of me, this moving, this longing for new places. I never took time to look inwards at this feeling. So here I am, letting this feeling of unrootedness take up space. I’m intrigued by what could be. By places with potential and possibilities, full of desire for what’s next. These places are often temporary, transition places, that lead me to another place. There is something in my being, in my DNA that always wonders “What’s next?”. I want to give space to the feeling in me never that feels at rest or at home, the feeling in me that always wonders what else is there, something in me wants to keep moving and keep looking. It seems to be genetic (as far as a feeling like this can be genetic). While walking and moving, I reconnect with Andréa, my great-grandfather, a Sardinian man who moved to Belgium and gave me my last name as well as the part in my DNA that wants to move. Manca – ‘manquer?’ Do I miss parts of me? Do I miss rootedness? Do I miss belonging? How can a feeling of longing become a place? How does it take up space? How can space translate these feelings that are inside of me? How can I translate this double feeling of always wanting to go forward, while looking for a kind of belongingness and identity in the past? I project my research onto a landscape in Ronse where the language border defines two identities. And where two borders create different tension fields in the landscape. Through an architectural walk, with temporary shelters, I want to translate my ‘déplacements’. I want to translate how I am always halfway in a landscape, there is no physical terminal or ultimate destination. The ever re-occurring questions are: “What else is there? Is there another place I can go to from here? Could there be a place out there where I feel completely rooted and not divided? Is there a place where all the parts of my identity I feel I’ve lost through time come together?”

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Far out to sea, the isolated rock lighthouse crosses my gaze at the end of the horizon. Lost in thought, at the mercy of the sound of the waves, these buildings always caught my attention. It stands in a place where you wouldn’t expect a building to be while shining its light for the many seafarers to guide them home safely across the ocean that shows where the reefs are lurking. Thanks to their strong foundations they stand tall in a great storm while being tormented again and again by the enormous waves. They carry an immense symbolic charge around them, which captivated me a lot lately. It seems as if this building wants to tell me something. With this research, I want to clarify why buildings might speak to us and how this happens by guiding me by the allegory of the lighthouse. Architecture, for me, always tells many different stories. It speaks, sings, or is even silent. These stories are about how we frame and understand our existence. How architecture demonstrates how the world affects us, which enables us to position ourselves in the world. It says something about ourselves, where architecture can be seen as an extra skin of ourselves, adding a layer to our personality. How do we feel, position or project ourselves onto architecture? To gain insights into the relationship between the allegory of the lighthouse and, in general, the architectural metaphors intertwined with human existence, I reflect this on the human mind and body towards architecture. The case study of the Eddystone Lighthouse in Plymouth on the other hand offers knowledge about the history of the very first rock lighthouse, which is still visible today through the ruin of the Smeaton’s lighthouse right next to the current lighthouse. It presents a duality of rising and falling, which is explored through the annotated drawing and working on a large scale. This method helped me to become aware and more in touch with my emotions, postures and how I position myself towards the lighthouse. It forces me to shine a light on my feelings by reflecting upon myself as a lighthouse, while it made me aware of a lot of facets that have to do with seeing and being seen in our environment. How do we see and feel ourselves and how is this reflected in architecture? After completely embodying the allegory of the lighthouse and the history of the Eddystone Lighthouse, I searched for a new site that breathes out this allegory on its own, which was found within Lihou Island, a tidal Island on the west coast of Guernsey. It captures your gaze at the end of the horizon, creating a desire since is not always reachable but yet quite visible. The accessibility is determined by nature and is known for its violent currents. It adds new layers to the story of the rise and fall of an allegorical lighthouse. A refuge that founds its shelter and foundation in the granite rocks to stay safe and enlightened until the tides change, while another lighthouse dives into the deep rocks and crumbles down into the sea. It shows how the lighthouse can be standing tall and seen again.

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This thesis tries to shed light on the possible emotional potentials contained in the atmosphere of a cemetery by testing it in a new intervention in the historical cemetery of Campo Santo in Ghent. At the same time, it tends to explore a new form of intervention for additional graves, precisely in an old and already filled cemetery, using the underground, not only as a pragmatic move in the search for more physical space but also philosophical, managing to dig and explore underground, a layer that feels like it belongs to the dead in a cemetery. However, the truth is that it concerns everyone; it is just a matter of time. Initially, this paper aims to critically analyze the different uses of public spaces, studying the effects that influence the paths people choose to use as hodological spaces. The cemeteries that have been studied are that of Tufine in Tirana, Albania, the municipal cemetery of Brussels in Schaerbeek, to stop and focus on that of Campo Santo in Ghent, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Belgium. The intervention was influenced by a bunker located there, and a personal history with that bunker and the architecture of fortifications in general, which is very prominent in the country with a communist past where I come from Albania. Studying together the notion of death and life and that of sacrifice as a meaningful form of death, the intervention on the hill of Campo Santo comes as an explosion aftermath, splitting the hill in half and passing through several passages influenced by trenches of war. In addition to being a place to place the ashes of the people who will rest there, just like the war trenches, these passages will serve as places of contemplation to hide when the conditions of life above them become too challenging to cope with.