Dialogues 29 – Caroline Voet
September 2025
Henley Halebrown is hosting Dialogues 29 with Caroline Voet on her book ‘A House to Live With. 16 Variations by Dom Hans van der Laan and his Companions’ (Park Books, 2025) on 1st October 2025.
It took four years of research and travelling the sites of these elementary houses, built by the Dutch Benedictine monk and architect Dom Hans van der Laan (1904–91) and his companions. Sixteen of them, realised between 1966 and 1985, are captured over the seasons with photographer Annabelle Stampaert, and analysed through drawing with regard to Van der Laan’s spatial concepts of perception, numerical relationships and compositional systematics. The book is co-authored with Hans W. Van der Laan and layered with texts by Hans W. van der Laan, Elizabeth Hatz, Nicola Panzini and Theo Malschaert. With this deep reading and understanding of architecture, Caroline Voet takes you on a drawing expedition, exploring tools for the complex design challenges of the future.
Caroline Voet, PhD is an architect and associate professor at Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven and founder of VOET architectuur + objects. This lecture also marks the start of her sabbatical research year, which will bring her from China back to Venice and Rome, landing in her own scenographic projects and a new series of publications. She will explore transformations in architecture through the drawing of spatial poetics and patterns, connecting creativity and care.
Voet researches creative (re-)use, dissecting buildings, architectural drawings and the design process. Her scholarly research has been published in a number of international journals including ARQ (Cambridge University Press) and Interiors (Routledge). Her book Dom Hans van der Laan. A House for the Mind received the DAM Architectural Book of the Year Award 2018. She was co-editor of the book Autonomous Architecture in Flanders (2016) and of The Hybrid Practitioner; Building, Teaching, researching Architecture (2022). Her office VOET crosses the boundaries between small architectures and reconversions, scenography and curatorship, creating projects within the cultural domain for clients like Dublin Castle, Flanders Architecture Institute and Arts Centre deSingel.