Orban Space: Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office

20 January - 24 March 2013
Opening: Saturday January 19, 5 pm
Location: Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Open: Wednesday thru Sunday, 12 noon- 5 pm
Curated by: Wouter Davidts and Stefaan Vervoort, in dialogue with T.O.P. office

DOWNLOAD exhibition guide (pdf)

Stroom School Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office
Side program of lectures (Céline Condorelli on Wednesday 6 March), guided tours (John Körmeling on Sunday 10 March and Vera Yanovshtchinsky on Sunday 24 March) and workshops with Research Lab Next Door (KABK).

Increasing world population and decreasing earth's land surface - live feed click here
T.O.P. office in collaboration with Eduardo Cachucho
(graphics & animation) and Babak Fakhamzadeh (technique)

Accompanying publications:
Book: Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office: Orban Space
DVD: Luc Deleu: Tribune (Diary 1971-1978)

When the Belgian architect and artist Luc Deleu (1944) founded T.O.P. office in 1970, the name he chose resonated as an admonition: Turn On Planning! Centered on contemporary concerns about the vertiginous population growth, uneven food production, rash environmental pollution, and the friction between the individual and mass society, Deleu developed an eco-centric and global urbanism, operatively recast as Orbanism.

Over the past four decades, Luc Deleu and T.O.P. office have produced a rich and multifaceted body of work, consisting of architectural projects and urban schemes, as well as visionary proposals, specific objects and installations, and critical writings. Principally driven by the planetary dimension of human activity, Orbanism addresses the main questions confronting architecture and urban planning in the second half of the 20th and at the start of the 21st century, while entering into a critical dialogue with former utopian formulations.

The exhibition Orban Space: Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office centres upon Orban Space, the latest research project initiated by Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office in 2006. Orban Space brings to full circle the ambition of T.O.P. office to develop a theoretical framework and a practical methodology to think about public space on a global scale, and ultimately to develop suitable strategies to design it.

In a unique scenography devised by T.O.P. office, the exhibition will distribute a distinct selection of previous works and projects around recent results of Orban Space. Newly produced work will be put into an historical perspective by means of older works and projects, as well as through a distinct selection of sketches, models, design tools and archival documents from 1969 to 2011, many of which have never been shown to the public to this date.

Neither a solo-show nor a retrospective, Orban Space: Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office first and foremost wishes to provide unforeseen perspectives and to unveil new ensembles within the oeuvre as a whole. It hopes to retrace the many recurrent operations, actions and strategies that mark the work and practice of Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office.

Publication: Luc Deleu - T.O.P office: Orban Space
In parallel with the exhibition, a comprehensive publication with both visual and written essays on the work and practice of Deleu and T.O.P. office is published by Valiz, book and cultural projects. It brings together, for the first time, an international group of artists and scholars in an effort to chart this intricate body of work, and to situate this practice within a broader historical and theoretical framework.

Book presentation:
Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office: Orban Space
Friday 30 November 2012, 5 pm

Masterclass Luc Deleu-T.O.P. office: Orban Space
21 - 25 March 2011

Lecture The Knight's Move: Luc Deleu
24 February 2011

The project benefited from the generous support of:
Vlaamse Overheid, Flemish-Dutch House deBuren, Municipality of The Hague, Mondriaan Fund, Creative Industries Fund NL, SNS REAAL Fund, Fonds BKVB/Mondriaan Fund, VU University Amsterdam Faculty of Arts, Ghent University Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Duvel Moortgat N.V., Milo-Profi Photography.

Production partners of the exhibition are:
Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi), Extra City, LLS 387 and Etablissement d'en face projects.

Special thanks for the works given on loan by:
M HKA Antwerp, Bernard Blondeel, Koen Deprez, Vlaams Bouwmeester, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Museum Dhondt Dhaenens, Catalijn Ramakers and Piet Warffemius.

And special thanks to:
Peter Swinnen, Janus Boudewijns, Evi Bert, Bart De Baere, Emma Lessius, Nicolien Kipp, Eduardo Cachucho, Babak Fakhamzadeh, Dorian Van der Brempt and Mathieu Buyse (deBuren), Ulrike Lindmayr (LLS 387), Etienne Wynants (Etablissement d'en Face), Wim Catrysse, Mihnea Mircan en Caroline Van Eccelpoel (Extra City), Jean-Pierre Le Blanc, Guy Châtel, Astrid Vorstermans (Valiz), Hans De Wolf, Dirk Milo, Christoph Grafe (VAi), Rosa Vandervost, Ernst Davidts, Julie Quisquater, Koen van den Broek, Jef Lambrecht, Pieter De Clercq.

Later in 2013 the exhibition will travel to Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp.
www.extracity.org

LINKS
www.topoffice.to