Hoboken / ongoing

In a modest urban garden in Hoboken (Antwerp), a neglected brick-built volume has been carefully reinterpreted and transformed into a comfortable garden studio with a covered terrace. The project introduces a highly insulated timber-framed inner shell, constructed primarily from reclaimed materials, giving new life to the existing structure while enhancing its performance and atmosphere.

A large five-panel folding door connects the studio to the covered terrace, creating a fluid transition between interior and exterior. The spatial concept unfolds in layers — from garden to terrace to studio — establishing a seamless relationship between built space and greenery.

2024, ongoing
Architecture / design: Architectural Appetite
Curtains, textile & play zone: Nani &Friends (design & production), in collaboration with Architectural Appetite (design)
Construction: Ronald Versteeg & Vincent Vergote

Becoming / in progress

is a somatic playground and installation, a soft and interactive landscape that brings visitors together through a sensory collective experience. A mirco-cosmos of togetherness generating a soundscape sourced by bodily movements and becoming a playground for the bodymind, reflecting how each is always in the process of becoming the other.

2026 (ongoing)

in collaboration with Nani &Friends

2404_paper steel lights / ongoing

is a design research project exploring the interplay between contrasting materials—reclaimed industrial stainless steel and traditional washi paper. Hard, heavy, cold, brut, dark at the bottom - Soft, light, warm, fragile, illuminated at the top.

Each lamp is crafted by hand. The steel tubes act as molds over which the paper is cast: liquid wallpaper glue is carefully brushed onto the washi, allowing it to take on the tube’s form and rigidity. Once dry, the paper retains the tube’s shape and stiffness. It is then removed, inverted, and placed above the tube as a self-supporting structure—a delicate counterpart to the solid metal beneath.

The process emphasizes circular production by using mostly reclaimed materials and minimal new resources, with components designed for easy assembly, disassembly, and transport. Inspired by traditional Japanese architectural elements like Shoji panels and Chochin lanterns, the project aims to further experiment with new shapes, traditional paints, and paper fibers in future iterations.

2024 (ongoing)

washi paper, stainless steel ducts, tube clamps, bulb and switch

180-190 cm high, variable diameter

2401_atelier reshuffle / completed

is an unconventional interior transformation that converts a cluttered personal workspace into a functional and compact but generous shared workshop. The project reconnects four separate entrances into a single coherent atelier, establishing a clear circulation and maximizing usable floor space. Working under the strict condition that no new building materials could be introduced, the entire reconfiguration was realized using elements already present on site.

Existing storage racks were transformed into an elevated walkway linking the ground-floor entrance, the main outdoor access, and the stair to the first floor, while a reclaimed stair was relocated to connect the walkway with the basement. Lighting, storage systems, workbenches, and other functional elements were improvised and constructed from materials uncovered during the process of cleaning and reorganizing, making reuse both a design strategy and a guiding principle.

2024 (realised)

in collaboration with Roeland Dubbel & Vincent Vergote

2301_traffic signs traffic signs / completed

is a spatial installation that playfully resembles a collection of signs and symbols, which refer to a sense of orientation, safety and care.

During an intense 10-day residency together with artist Ayrton Eblé in Het Bos (Antwerpen), we have not only focused on the creation of new work, but were endeavoring to arrange a safe space for other

youngsters to let them co-create with us. Within the framework of graffiti and streetart workshops organised by us, we aimed to open up the residency environment and context as a playground. We invited a group of youngsters from Betonne Jeugd and Boslabs (both organizations are engaging to organize activities for socially vulnerable youth) to tag and alter our spatial installation. The newborn “vandalised” installation symbolizes the concept of the “playground as safe space”.

In Traffic Signs Traffic Signs there’s no right or wrong, there’s only make.

with support of Vlaams Architectuurinstituut. After the residency the installation was moved to the Singel and exhibited at the Festival van de Architectuur, with the central theme of that year being ‘playground‘.

2023

Het Bos, Antwerp (BE)

in collaboration withAyrton Eblé

with support ofVlaams Architectuurinstituut

2001_backyard b-2140 / architecture / completed

was a personal experiment into designing and building at a 1:1 scale. In a backyard in Borgerhout, Antwerp, we slowly constructed a small ceramics studio and sauna, as an architectural exploration realised almost entirely from reused and second-hand materials.

Working with a minimal budget but without a fixed deadline, we aimed to question and redefine what “the act of building” could be. Free from external agendas, clients, or stakeholders, Backyard B-2140 embraced building as a non-dogmatic practice. The process unfolded as a continuous dialogue between theoretical design intentions and on-site ad-hoc decision-making. Along the way, we revisited the many paradigms of working with reclaimed materials and tested hands-on approaches to ecology and circularity—using biobased materials where they were available and logical, and relying primarily on dry construction methods and demountable joints.

The construction itself was a balloon-frame timber structure composed of previously used—or previously owned—materials: wooden studs and sills, OSB and plywood sheathing, rockwool and wood-fiber insulation, Nordic spruce panelling, polycarbonate cladding, and polyester corrugated roofing sheets.

Backyard B-2140 became both a building and a practice—an investigation into making, re-making, and the boundaries of the informal.

Antwerp (BE), completed in 2021
Justin Dirkx, in collaboration with Roeland Dubbel
private client

MMXX Millennial Perspectives (Architectural Appetite) / architecture / theory

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.

2020

19,2 x 24,3 cm, 84 p, full colour,

paperback, glued

non-official publication

limited edition of 35

October 2020

Hypermuseum / architecture

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).

2019 / scale mode 1/50 / sketches, collage, CAD drawings, logo (sticker)