The architects De Vylder, Vinck and Taillieu have only recently joined forces. They take a characteristically intuitive approach: they see design as similar to browsing through a pile of leaves until you find something, as distinct from the prevailing paradigm of the ‘architectural concept’. Inspiration full of fantasy, images that evoke random associations, for them these are a means of shifting boundaries, of abandoning a purely determinist pragmatism and fuelling the imagination and poetry. The design and building process is ongoing and should through improvisation be able to respond at any moment to strict government regulations or the whims of the parties involved. These disruptive elements do not impose limits, but provide input for a turn in a new direction, a one-off intervention in the design and an additional stratification of the architecture. For that matter, the buildings by De Vylder Vinck Taillieu are never completely finished: being incomplete gives the user the freedom to intervene so that it stimulates their creativity.
Their renovations and single-family homes, their changes to the urban fabric to create the dance studios for Les Ballets C de la B and their transformation of the Schermenhuis scenery store at the Bourla theatre did not go unnoticed. And their work is successful internationally too. In 2006 Herzog and De Meuron and Ai Wei Wei asked them to design a 1000 sq. m. villa in Koakoashina, a Chinese district still to be developed. In 2010 the Japanese curator Kazuyo Sejima invited them to create an exhibition at the twelfth architectural biennale in Venice.
The exhibition at deSingel focuses on the most recent work by ‘Architects De Vylder Vinck Taillieu’. It is not intended to be a retrospective or to tell a completed story, but to explore certain topics and present a snapshot of the still early collective career of this trio of architects.
Coproducers deSingel international arts campus, Flemish Architecture Institute.