Stories that resists, ethics that persist: A. J. Lode Janssens’ living experiment in 1970s suburban Belgium

Journal article, 2023

In 1973, Belgian architect A. J. Lode Janssens embarked on a ten-year-long countercultural living experiment together with his young family in the outskirts of Brussels. A fascinating adventure began, taking the remarkable shape of a series of bedroom capsules on stilts, akin to moon-landers, connected through an overarching transparent dome. Very little has been published about the work until, in 2022, an exhibition and catalogue publication were dedicated to the project. Confronted with a project whose maker has shunned publicity for decades, I will take this paper’s own history as an opportunity to reflect on the ethical dilemmas that occur when studying architectural projects from the recent past that seem to resist publicity through scholarship. I will discuss Janssens’ living experiment as a fascinating countercultural effort and seemingly paradoxical attempt to make an anti-architectural position in and through architecture, and contextualise the project within the wider context of Belgian architecture in the 1970s and 80s.