JOLIEN NAEYAERT

Graduated as Master of Science in Engineering: Architecture at the University of Ghent in 2012, Jolien Naeyaert (BE) decided to continue her research about alternative ways of exploring and representing architectural places. A research she started during her stay in Paris at the School of Architecture, ENSAPLV. Focussing on different media, she looks for ways to approach architectural places in a more active way. The act of experience, of really being at a certain place and discovering - through the presence of your whole body - what lives at that specific place, is very important for her work. She is convinced that as architects, we should connect more closely with the place we are working with. Really being there to get to know the place instead of making a ‘plan’ of the place as a (detached) medium for further analysing and creation.

In June 2015, Jolien Naeyaert graduated as Master in Fine Arts: Multimedia and Autonomous Design at the School of Arts, KASK, in Ghent. As part of her master project, she built up her own ‘research center’ in a caravan and decided to wander, in and around Belgium, questioning the notion of ‘landscape’. A practice – currently titled “…am wOAndering…” – that evolved more and more into a practice of wandering and procesbased working. Artists who joined her in the wanderings over the last few years are: Elisa Schmitt (DE), Michelle Saenz (MX), Antigone Michalakopoulou (EL), Xaidi Tsirogianni (EL), Bára Sigfúsdóttir (IS), Ezra Veldhuis (NL), Leo Rottmann (DE), Laura Muyldermans (BE), Christiane Blattmann (DE) en Kim Snauwaert (BE). 

From December 2015 till May 2022 Jolien Naeyaert worked at Robbrecht en Daem architecten in Ghent. In 2018, she started writing articles for Belgian architecture magazine A-plus and in 2020 she began teaching at the Faculty of Architecture, Sint Lucas Brussels. Together with cineast/architect Anne Philippe, she founded the collective 'desespiegles'. Currently, she is living in Brussels and has a studio at Level Five Brussels.