For the past ten years, Ghent-based architecten de vylder vinck taillieu has produced built and unbuilt work characterised by a thoughtful criticality. Many projects transform, refurbish, and engage directly with existing structures in ways that blur simple distinction between pragmatic concern and rarefied conception. Their recent contribution to the Chicago Architectural Biennial began as a rejected proposal to correct space in a gallery and continued as an exploration of the structural and dissembling functions of the column, a fundamental typology. This lecture will present the sources of their architectural references, and reflect on the role of history in their practice today through the subject of the column.

The What is/was history for… ? series searches for answers to the question, What role can history play in architecture practice? The CCA invites historians to reflect on the approaches to history of significant historical architects, and contemporary architects to reflect on their own approaches to history. It expands the conversation begun in the exhibition Besides, History: Go Hasegawa, Kersten Geers, David Van Severen.

Jan De Vylder is co-founder of architecten de vylder vinck taillieu (a dvvt), with Inge Vinck and Jo Taillieu.