Dear visitor,friend,lover,
💞 Architectural Appetite is the collaborative architectural-artistic practice of Justin Dirkx & Thomas Rasker.
We create spaces+objects ~ make installations, organize events, design our lives, dream of a better world, …
We engage in a cool-critical way with the designed environment as a conglomerate of personal, cultural, social, ecological, political and economic components. We think architecture should formulate both questions and answers. We are here to love and we are friends.
xoxo,
AA
Appetite is an architectural-artistic practice+platform based in Brussels.
We continuously question and subvert both the contemporary designed environment as well as the architecture discipline itself. We believe space is a conglomerate of personal, cultural, social, ecological and economic components. We think architecture should formulate both questions and answers. We believe architecture is about experiment. We design+make. We are friends.
Love,
AA
Justin Dirkx
Roeland Dubbel
2020, currently in progress
ceramics atelier & sauna,
reused materials
Antwerp
powered by: Karin Schrauwen
in collaboration with:
Thomas Rasker, Vincent Vergote
BACKYARD B-2140
In an Antwerp backyard in the district of Borgerhout we architect and (slow)build a small ceramics atelier and sauna. A 1:1 model in near-total reused and second-hand materials. Exploring the grey zone of what we can(not) (il)legally do as non-official-architects-in-building-practice.
Through the act of building with a very limited budget, but without a timeframe; we aim to (re)define what ‘proper building’ means. We claim the act of building as a non-dogmatic practice, as we operate without external agenda’s, clients, stakeholders, or whatsoever. The building process is a dance between theoretical design ambitions and on-site adhocism. We (re)discover all the paradigms linked to designing and building with reclaimed materials. Additionally, it is a hands-on exercise in ecology and circularity; using biobased materials (if available and self-evident) and exclusively dry construction methods and demountable joints.
Updates soon!
Thomas Rasker
2020, currently in progress
1/33 scale model, cardboard, plaster, plastic, synthetic grass, dried flowers, 40 x 45 x 14,5 cm
CAD drawing
NEW ROLL
New Roll is a design project that acts as a paradigm for re-use in architecture, a model that embodies the contradictions within a circular building practice.
An old toilet roll-shaped building, housing toilet facilities, is saved from demolition. A proposition is made to its owner, Design Museum Gent, to dismantle it and rebuild it on another site, at The Verbeke Foundation. Geert Verbeke is a collector of art and large objects, and has built a museum on a 20.000 m² natural domain to showcase them. The roll is redesigned into an intimate bedroom so museum visitors can spend a night at the museum.
Both museums were addressed, and presented with a scale model and building plans. A work in progress.
Justin Dirkx
2020
19,2 x 24,3 cm, 84 p, full colour,
paperback, glued
non-official publication
limited edition of 35
October 2020
MMXX MILLENNIAL PERSPECTIVES
MMXX Millennial Perspectives (Architectural Appetite) aims to coolly criticize today’s commercialized, mediatized and digitalized world, and comments on the role of the architect within this very present context. Anno MMXX the architect has lost its autonomy and reduced its tasks to those of a service provider. Architectural Appetite serves specific ways of (re)action. The theoretical framework which backbones this thesis is materialized in an architectural proposal for Brussels’ Beursplein/Place de la Bourse. An applied essay was written in order to gain insight into the ideas and propositions underpinning the project. Simultaneously, the project grew from the desire to communicate through autonomous (architectural) images (drawings, paintings, plans, …), which don’t necessarily need to rely on text.
MMXX Millennial Perspectives is a Master's thesis and was nominated by KU Leuven for Archiprix International 2021, and has won the KU Leuven Master's Thesis Award.
Still a few copies available, contact if interested.
Justin Dirkx
2020
inkjet prints & acrylic painting, CAD drawing, aquarel & pencil drawing
video, 7'40''
SQUARE 4 MILLENNIALS
A Square for Millennials is an autonomous proposal for and a partial redesign of Brussels’ Beursplein/Place de la Bourse. The square represents an enlarged (x 360) iPhone 11 Pro Max; Apple’s latest released smartphone. The enlargement materializes every single pixel of its screen (resolution 2688 x 1242 px) as a mosaic tile of 20 x 20 millimeters. The surface of the new square is slightly lifted from the surrounding pavement, and features a continuous border in Belgian blue limestone and a descending rounded edge in proportional radius. A Square for Millennials measures 57 x 28 meters and is implemented in the existing urban context.
This monumentalization might allow us to look differently (certainly at a different scale) at an object that so deeply determines our perception of space and environment. The pervasive characteristics of the iPhone – both as an object and a medium – keep growing on us. Besides this, materiality and monumentality seem inevitable in order to signify the deep physical grip we – inhabitants of the Anthropocene – have on our environment – the Earth.
Square 4 Millennials is part of the Master's thesis MMXX Millennial Perspectives and was nominated by KU Leuven for Archiprix International 2021.
→ ''Digital render painting'', inkjet print and acrylic paint on paper, 56 x 76 cm.
→ CAD drawing
→ ''iPhone painting'', inkjet print and acrylic paint on paper, MDF board, 50,5 x 25 cm.
→ ''Architectural detail 1:10'', aquarel and pencil on paper, 76 x 56 cm.
Justin Dirkx
2019
scale model 1/200
382,5 x 122 cm
digital map, inkjet print
120,1 x 84,7 cm
sketches, CAD drawings, logo
exhibited at deSingel
Antwerp, June 2019
MVA
Museum Voor Antwerpen is a proposal for Antwerp's Museum of Contemporary Art (M HKA) as a musée dédoublé ∼ a divided museum. MVA instrumentalizes the ‘public museum’ as an architectural tool to overcome the city's centuries old spatial trauma. The design revives the dead link between three separate entities; downtown Antwerp, the Scheldt river and the Left Bank (Linkeroever), by means of an iconic infrastructure along which new activities are bundled. Two buildings and a bridge fulfill the museum’s demand for 20.000 m2 surface, a renewed public position within the city and international recognition; though reinterpret the context and extend the provided site.*
MVA is an imagination of Antwerp’s untapped urban potential. A memento mori of Luc Deleu’s ‘Antwerp, your next cruise stop !’ (1990) and numerous other proposals to bridge the river, i.a. Leon Stynen (1930) and Le Corbusier (1933).
*MVA is a project in response to the official open call for a new M HKA (Open Oproep 3702)
Thomas Rasker
2018
digital collages, 3D renders, CAD drawings, crayon drawing, scale models
partners: Field Station,
Design Museum Gent
PARALLEL COMPETITION
Parallel competition coolly criticises the phenomenon of architectural competitions, by simulating one.
Five architecture offices take part in a competition to design a new wing for a Design Museum in Ghent. A fictive competition, parallel to the actual ongoing competition, is launched.
Performing as a ‘ghost designer’ at all five offices at the same time, five proposals were generated, staying true to each office’s design strategy, visual language and theoretic discourse.
Parallel Competition was exhibited at Design Museum Gent. The five proposals, represented by drawings, collages, models and texts, were displayed alongside one another. A jury consisting of museum visitors and museum staff voted for their favourite design. A few months later, the same architecture office won the actual competition as well.
Competing offices, from top to bottom, left to right:
🏆 TRANS architectuur, 🏆
BEL Architecten,
OFFICE KGDVS,
ASSEMBLE studio,
and MONADNOCK.
Justin Dirkx
2018
scale model 1/50
sketches, collage, CAD drawings, logo (sticker)
video 0'49''
HYPERMUSEUM
Hypermuseum is a design for the extension of Design Museum Gent. It is an exploration for an image and a design that propagates the idea of:
[A museum as] 'link between the existing exhibition spaces and the city'[,]
[a] 'cross-sectorial and interdisciplinary' [museum][,]
[the museum as] 'driver for change'[,]
[the museum as] 'participative and interactive space'[,]
[the museum as] 'crowdsourcing'[,]
[a museum for] 'non served audience'[,]
[a] 'community sense making museum'[,]
[a museum for] 'degrowth'[,]
[a] 'smart' [museum][,]
[a] 'future proof' [museum][,]
[a] 'receptive' [museum] [and]
[the new museum as] 'ongoing proces'[.]*
PARTS OVER TOTAL. Hypermuseum is the high-priority of less-prior museum spaces: a shop / a cafe / an elevator / a canopy / a business room / a camping / a thermal bath / a landing platform.
*Quoted from a report written by the museum director in which the architectural vision on the new Design Museum wing was expressed. Hypermuseum is a project in response to the official open call for a new Design Museum extension (Open Oproep 3601).
Architectural Appetite was founded in 2021 as an after-education collab to provide a brand and a platform for exciting architectural practices. AA is now – young, fresh and eager – and ready to be further shaped and polished by fellow thinkers & doers, architects & artists.
hello@architecturalappetite.eu for all questions, suggestions, proposals, support, vibes, etc. ✌
Rue Adolphe Marbotin 25, 1030 Schaarbeek (Brussels), Belgium
AA is:
...
JUSTIN DIRKX
Lives and works in Brussels and is the initiator of Architectural Appetite. Graduated magna cum laude at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Sint-Lucas Brussels in June 2020.
I consider architecture a public tool to democratize today's commercialized, mediatized and digitalized environment. My architectural projects aim to over-identify with the self-centeredness of the discipline, by claiming the discipline's language and media, though applied from an autonomous nature rather than as a service.
Whether building or drawing, I believe all architectural ideas and projects should be open to be read, interpret and enjoyed; to be mentally appropriated by anyone. No irony, less inside jokes. I translate ideas through both the fast tools of branding and the craft tools of physical creation. Accepting both ---!F@ster! --- and ---Sl0wer..--- as a mantra; standing still in order to get deeper rather than wider.
His Master's thesis MMXX Millennial Perspectives was nominated by KU Leuven for Archiprix International 2021, and has won the KU Leuven Master's Thesis Award.
THOMAS RASKER
I am an architect trained at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, Brussels and Ghent, working and writing from Brussels. My practice currently consists of designing architectural proposals for museums and the city, as well as writing. I write for BAVO, a Brussels based research collective, and I’m a critic for the architecture website Archined.
I believe in architecture as a catalyst for freedom, a space for cultural expression and intercultural exchange. My architectural proposals have taken shape in the form of sketches, collages, emails, CAD plans, critical texts, exhibitions and scale models. They have come to embody my search for a role within architecture, as a contemporary architect who is committed to society, and therefore political. A work in progress.
March 2021
NEE tegen Koning Bouwpraktijk
A polemic contribution by Justin Dirkx to Rekto:Verso's new NEE edition. Why build? On the urgency of practicing architecture through other media than just buildings. On the opportunities of the architect as an 'autonomous service provider'.
''The construction industry is a coughing emission machine, with itchy tentacles and sticky suction cups in polluting sectors such as energy, industry and transport. [...] Architects depoliticise the architecture debate. They don't design, they follow the industry. Pragmatism suggests neutrality. But obedience means complicity.''
March 2021
Myth and Superarchitecture intersect in Brussels
A critical review by Thomas Rasker of the exhibition ‘Superstudio Migrazioni’ (2021) at CIVA in Brussels, written for the architecture website Archined. The article draws parallels between Superstudio’s radical paper architecture and Brussels’ megalomaniac urban modernisation in the 70s.
"Superstudio is an architecture group which became world famous in the late 60s and 70s, not through building, but through the distribution of ideas, wrapped in iconic collages and drawings. Their 'Superarchitecture' took off in Florence, travelled the world, and recently landed at the CIVA in Brussels. Superstudio Migrazioni' explores, through an exhibition, a book, podcasts and live streams, the visual brain power that is Superstudio."
November 2020
Release # AA00 - MMXX Millennial Perspectives
MMXX Millennial Perspectives is released and currently available as paperback book. Unofficially published by Justin Dirkx in a limited edition of 35 copies. Full color print, 19,2 x 24,3 cm, 84 p.
Contact if interested, few copies available!
October 2020
MMXX Millennial Perspectives nominated for Archiprix International 2021
Master's thesis MMXX Millennial Perspectives (author: Justin Dirkx) was nominated by KU Leuven for Archiprix International biennial competition, edition 2021.
With each edition Archiprix International presents a new generation of the world's best architects, urbanists and landscape architects together with their graduation projects. All university-level training colleges around the world are invited to take part by selecting and submitting their one and only best graduation project.
An independent jury rewards the very best submissions with the Hunter Douglas Awards. The aim of the awards is to stimulate the introduction of starting, talented designers into the world of professional practice.
