Architecture without Address - Luc Deleu and the Lessons in Scale and Perspective

In the fall of 1980 Antwerp-based architect Luc Deleu started an extenstive body of sculptural installations with ready-made objects and fully-fledged architectural projects that he has consistently labeled as ‘lessons in scale and perspective’. In an interview in 1987, Deleu stated that this decision was fuelled by his desire to work with ‘two typical (…) and rather formal notions in architecture’. This turn to formalism was made consciously, he argued, since his work prior to 1980 was always termed ‘political.’

In his early career the architect Deleu gained the fame as the enfant terrible, the mandatory paper architect of the Belgian architectural community, as he took up position against the self-indulgent and hypocritical nature of the disciplines of architecture and urban planning in general, and against the institutionalization and bureaucratic nature of the architectural profession in particular.

In this lecture Davidts will argue that the lessons in scale and perspective can be put on a direct par with the ‘pamphletary’ works of the previous decade as they shift the overt dissidence of the architect’s activist work towards a critical revision of the scope and modes of address of architectural design.

Wouter Davidts lives and works in Antwerp. From 2009 until 2012 he was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at VU University in Amsterdam. Between 2003 and 2008 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University. In the fall of 2006 he was a British Academy research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of "Bouwen voor de kunst?" (A&S/books, 2006) and has published on the museum, contemporary art and architecture in journals such as Afterall, Archis, De Witte Raaf, Footprint, Kritische Berichten, Metropolis M, OASE and Parachute, and in books and exhibition catalogues. He edited "The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work" (Valiz, 2009; with Kim Paice), "CRACK: Koen van den Broek" (Valiz, 2010), and most recently, "Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space" (Valiz, 2012; with Guy Châtel and Stefaan Vervoort).
The exhibition "Orban Space: Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office" opens at Stroom Den Haag in January 2013 and will later be presented at Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerpen. The exhibition is curated by Wouter Davidts and Stefaan Vervoort, in dialogue with T.O.P. office.

http://www.wouterdavidts.wordpress.com