Constructie als methode. Over materiaal, technologie, arbeid en cultuur

This keynote lecture was delivered at the award ceremony of the KNOB Stimuleringsprijs voor nieuw academisch talent, hosted at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Rather than viewing architecture as a finished object, the lecture proposed construction as a method: an analytical lens that starts from the processes, decisions and infrastructures that make building possible. In times of climate change, resource scarcity and growing inequality, it argued, we can no longer limit ourselves to the end product. Every choice of material, technology or form is also a choice about what is valued, who is involved, and which futures become imaginable.

Moving from materials and technologies to labour and broader building cultures, the talk showed how construction links material flows, tools, skills, regulations and power relations. Case studies from twentieth-century building practice – from asbestos cement panels to construction films and the Huberty house – illustrated how sites of making offer a sharp vantage point on social and ecological questions.

Treating construction as method thus turns architectural history into a way of reading society: from detail to system, from material traces to worlds of work, regulation and imagination, and from past building practices to the futures we choose to build.