In this video, architect Jan De Vylder reflects on architecture as an ethical and social practice rather than a formal or stylistic discipline. Through projects ranging from private houses to educational initiatives and psychiatric care facilities, he frames architecture as an act of attitude: working with scarcity, delay, reuse, and shared responsibility to create spaces that enable living, learning, and healing. Central to his presentation is the idea that economy and ecology are inseparable, and that architecture gains meaning by embracing gaps, interruptions, and the everyday realities of use. The presentation is followed by a conversation with Philip Ursprung, expanding on themes of togetherness, education, and the capacity of architecture to foster encounters — often by resisting completion, certainty, and spectacle.
“To me, economy is ecology. As architects, we have the task to enable housing, to enable a home under whatever conditions there are, with the shortest means possible. It becomes a question of attitude: how to bind all the elements that have to do with life in a place called home.”
— Jan De Vylder
