This project stems from an interest in institutions and the materialisation of politics within them, implicit and explicit. Art and architecture both have the capacity to be a scaffolding upon which protest and proposition of alternative relations can be built and communicated. While museum and art has always been implicated in commercial and political reality of power and authority, with the retreat of public funding and an increase in private, there is a gap which museums try to fill by adopting business strategies of shopping malls to cover the huge costs of heating, cooling and dehumidifying their expansive interiors in addition to competing with the private art market. At the same time, they strive to maintain their authority through institutional responsibility towards the society.

The aim of my project is to question the role and impact of architecture in the politics of a museum, with an understanding of the complex reality of museum-making. The interrogation of the original competition brief for the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp (M HKA) with regards to the budget, the spatial ambitions or demands, and the fundamental sustainability of resources, led me to propose why an alternative proposal for the M HKA could and should be put forward. The economic and spatial arguments, together with my position towards the climate crisis and research on the history of the institution, have resulted in a proposition radically different from the original brief, but still very much connected to it and resulting from it.

Adapting the existing courthouse building on site for a public archive of contemporary art not only allows a more intelligent budget distribution, but forces different power relations with regards to public funding, its responsibilities and sense of permanence. Densifying and reducing the amount of space required for art encourages more targeted architectural decisions, other types of spaces, actually fitting more appropriately into the existing courthouse building.

This project inscribes itself in a trend of public archives, while at the same time taking a critical position of an outsider-insider. The adaptation of the courthouse for the new MHKA allows a unique focus on the processes before and during the construction, acting as an event in the city, making transparent the process of change and adaptation.

The architecture of the new museum will be an expression of its positioning towards art, the public and the city. As my graduation project, it also expresses my position towards an uncritical building culture of competitions, ethical and professional sensitivity to the larger social and environmental context. By preserving the court building, I argue that embodied carbon is as valid an argument against demolition as heritage value and by interrogating and negotiating the demands of the competition brief against its budget, type of institution and the current economic, political and ecological reality, I question the role and responsibility of the architect in the face of multiplicity of crises.

During the worldwide pandemic between 2020 and 2022, lockdowns were instigated. Working from home became the norm for almost two years. This has caused the needs and preferences of employees and employers regarding work and the workplace to change for good.

As a result, the common preference for implementing more remote work in the post-pandemic era grew. This combination of remote work and in-office work is named a hybrid strategy. Many services and public sector managers plan to create a hybrid workplace to support these preferences. However, the research toward this post-pandemic office is in its starting blocks. Furthermore, creating a workplace is complex, and no one-size-fits-all solution exists. Managers must find a future workplace that aligns with their organisational beliefs, values, strategy, and assets. How these characteristics are used to transition toward a hybrid workplace remains unclear.

This research aims to understand how organisational characteristics are used to transition to a hybrid workplace. This knowledge can serve as a map for managers planning to initiate a similar transition and as a backbone for further research towards future workplaces.

A literature study first identifies the organisational characteristics by introducing a corporate real estate asset management model. Then, case studies are performed on implemented hybrid workplaces to collect data on how characteristics are used in a transition. Cases are collected from the client pool of the graduation organisation Dev_ real estate, a real estate advisor with experience with hybrid workplaces. Three cases are selected based on various selection criteria. The workplace can be seen as a complex issue. Therefore, a qualitative approach is used to analyse the various perspectives and data sources in-depth. Data is collected from semistructured interviews, exploring the views and experiences of the participants open-endedly. The
participants are the architect, the project manager, the organisational manager, and the employee. Other sources are internal reports and floor plans. The data is collected, reduced, and coded based on the model introduced in the literature. A within-case and cross-case analysis are performed to identify the similarities and differences between the cases and literature.

The analysis identifies a common sequencing of organisation characteristics used in all cases. The research also concludes that the neglect or ignorance of certain characteristics causes the hybrid workplace to remain unaligned with organisational values after completion. Furthermore, the management model used during this research is critically and improved for future post-Covid research.

The Graduation Studio of Interiors Buildings Cities (2021-2022) investigates the possible future of the National Bank of Belgium, located in the city of Brussels. The bank as a collective system has been recently scrutinized due to persistent climate change. As Brussels is working towards a Doughnut Economy Model, the National Bank of Belgium investing in climate destructing companies is contradictory. This Graduation Project re-grounds the institution of The National Bank of Belgium to represent the environmental responsibilities that the bank caries towards society today. The co-existence of species, human and non-human, within the social and physical context of the Future Bank is investigated in this Graduation Project.

The graduation studio of Interiors Buildings Cities 2021/2022 revolves around the transformation of the National Bank of Belgium, a 90.000 m2 triangular building block which contains the offices of a public institution that controls and regulates a capitalist economy, independent from the government, between the lower and higher part of the central city. The transformation of the city block offers an opportunity to rethink the National Bank as the Future Bank. A transformation which critiques the existing building, whilst reconfiguring the bank into a more permeable place in both physical and organisational form. The project aims to rethink the relation of the bank’s employees to each other and to the building they physically inhabit whilst rethinking the buildings relation to the city. As the bank is a place of intelligence work, with a public responsibility that regulates, directs, monitors and guides the local and global economies, the project Future Bank recreates the role of the Bank in society as an agent for change. Putting the building central, it is used as physical tool to be able to transform as an organisation. The design proposal for this transformation is based around the adaptive re-use of the vast existing complex.