EEAB 2022
Welcome to the chronicles of my participation to the ECOLE D'ETÉ D'ARCHITECTURE DE BELGIQUE 2022 (Architecture Summer School of Belgium 2022)!

Every day (or almost), for a month, I will provide a short summary and pictures of what is going on. As a record, and as a way to tease you for the next edition! Click on the arrow below, and expand the content of this post. Have a nice read!
 
 
 
Dear 3 or 4 readers of this website,
This series of posts will be in English language, so forgive me in advance as my native language is —many of you know it already— Italian! We call it «maccheroni English».
For a month, you can find on this page updates of what has happened during this amazing and admirable initiative.
Many events are taking place this summer, as every year, thanks to INTBAU
, especially this other summer school in the Netherlands— keeping us of the "traditional Twittosphere" really busy. And this is one of them.
 
The Architecture Summer School of Belgium 2022 takes places in the historical city of Bruges (or Brugge, in Flemish), and it's an omni comprehensive, full-time school in which I will be partecipating as a student (it's never too late to learn, and always a pleasure to sit in the audience), reviewing traditional architecture from a theoretical point of view, integrating practical exercises, site visits to historical and notable buildings, talks and activities with real traditional craftsmen, researchers, urbanists, open-air sketching and so on, along with a bunch of interesting people all based at château Bellem a refined location in the vicinity of...Gent (well, it's almost halfway between Gent and Bruges).

A great occasion to spread the word of a dawning architectural renaissance that actively proposes an alternative to the status-quo, condemning the contemporary anti-classical, anti-traditional, anti-human and ugly design approach at all scales, which is devouring the richness of our Western Culture, ultimately replacing it with a corporate, soulless, globalist and disfunctional planning.
The goal is to demonstrate the simple concept that if we want to go forward we cannot cut ties with our own past. On the contrary, we have to metabolize and enhance it to innovate and further elaborate.
 
So here I am, wearing the garments of the student by day, of the reporter by night, always being an architect (especially according to the clients that keep bombing me with their emails...).
Please share this among your friends and on the social networks, and most importantly don't forget to check the progresses through this very intense month!
Tot ziens!
 
You can find the final impressions for the whole Summer School at the end of the page.
Click on a thumbnail to open the related article.

DAY 1 - INTRODUCTION
bellem thumb

DAY 2 - PREPARATION

DAY 3 - deTOUR

DAYs 4 & 5 - PEDRO PALAZZO

WEEKEND 1

DAY 8 - DE BURG

DAY 9 - DRAW AND LEARN

DAY 10 - THE ENGINES ARE BURNING

DAYs 11 & 12 - CONOR LYNCH

WEEKEND 2

DAYs 15 & 16 - LET'S IMAGINE

DAY 17 - KASTEEL VAN LOPPEM

WEEKEND 3 (AND JAKUB RYNG)

DAY 26 - SAMUEL HUGHES

WEEKEND 4 - NICHOLAS BOYS-SMITH

FINAL DAY!


 
 

 Final Impressions
 

 
Dear readers of this blogging series, we're finally at the last post of all! With the usual latency (we're now on the 26th of september, exactly one month after the finish of the Summer School of Bruges) I logged back on my blog's account to post them. And it's fine, because in these weeks I had the time to let it sink in and have more clear ideas on what to write.
So, this is fundamentally an answer to the questions of my mother who wasn't totally
convinced of what I was doing, and perhaps you don't know how apprehensive an Italian mamma could be!
 
The Summer School of Architecture is something extraordinary. Nadia and Noe gave the right Beaux-Art imprint to the whole thing, encompassing the various activities that were followed during that month.
So, when mamma asks me puzzled «B-but what are you going to do there?? Nobody builds like that anymore, everyone use the computer to draw!» I can answer many things:
I can say —as every artist and craftman knows- that drawing and making things with
your hands gives you the best understanding on the nature of the things involved in what you are doing.
Stubbornly avoiding the use of PC's forces you in this process of rediscovering the link between hand, brain, and soul.
For a professional like me, who is kind of constrained by the work environment, the market, the clients etc, to work in the "modern way", it was a kind of rehabilitation therapy, a detoxifying balm.
 
In short, it is a brief, ultra-condensed Beaux-Arts academy training camp: from hand drawing to painting, measuring and scaling, building construction and history, practical workshops and projects, we students were fully projected into the subjects we were studying.
To me, with a personal history of artistic culture and formation, it was like going back in time to high-school and the long hours passed copying capitals. But way
funnier and stimulating!
As a professional, I realized that I forgot many basic things and all this was very important to recover and reappropriate them.
Having to design big buildings —like the proposal for the station of Bruges- was a real challenge, I took it very seriously and pushed it until I reached the result that I
wanted. Apparently it was appreciated by the jury, the mates and the public, further than myself, and this makes me really satisfied and glad for what I've done, and could say the same for my mates. Some of them were really talented and promising at a very young age, and I hope that my small advice to them were useful.
 
For what may concern my experience, there is a "before", "during" and "after" the Summer School: before, I was tormented with doubts, I didn't really like what I was doing in my office and had an urge to draw by hand, paint while listening to classical music and immerse myself in traditional stuff whatsoever. During the school, the experience itself, it's something evolving day by day while developing projects, personal bonds, discussing and changing one own's ideas on many things.
After it, I could feel the difference. Now I know who I am much more than before. I had the occasion to know many wonderful people, expand my network of contacts and enter the world of the Traditionals.
I am sure that, even within the different experiences of everyone, each of my mates would say more or less the same of what I am writing here as a conclusion of this amazing initiative.

Wether you are a student, a professional, an amateur, or someone who doesn't have anything to do with art or architecture but wishes to learn and challenge himself, I feel to advise you warmly to take the future editions into consideration for your self improvement.


 
 
 
Posted: 22/07/2022 11:36 — Author(s): Polemicarc

Responses

Anonymous   29/08/2022 20:49
Great that you made this story! Hopefully many people will get inspired by this!
Polemicarc   27/08/2022 21:45
Thank you for being interested!
Darren   27/08/2022 20:17
Thanks for the summary on the summer school!

I am not a robot
 
 
 

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