Jan de Vylder

This conversation was first published for OPEN Architecture Festival, Issue Five (2025): In the Eyes of the Ordinary.

In conversation with Ida Bjerga & Osmo Hadad-Lange 
Written by Ida Bjerga

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

Let’s see: House Rot, Ellen Berg, PC Caritas, Tangram, House BM, House Bernheimbeuk, House Sanderswal. The work of Jan De Vylder, partner in the Ghent-based practice architecten jan de vylder inge vinck / inge vinck jan de vylder architecten, has been widely exhibited, published, and awarded. Together with Inge Vinck, he currently operates under that same name – or, as it’s sometimes abbreviated, A JDVIV / IVJDV A. Jan also holds a chair at ETH Zurich, titled Share of Architecture an(d) Attitude. In addition, he co-leads the IN:DEPENDANCE SCHOOL at Furka Höhe – a side project that sits somewhere between academia and practice.

Getting hold of Jan De Vylder wasn’t easy. But we did, and when we did, he had a lot to say. Because, in his view, there’s quite a bit going on in architectural discourse right now – and not all of it is convincing. We had planned to speak with Jan about transformation. About how one might balance respect for the old with the new.

About how to approach a building not only for what it was, or is, but for what it might become again, without making it obsolete in the process. We wanted to speak with him about his many remarkable projects, and how adaptation and decay might inform architecture.

But, as Jan himself put it, he “torpedoed” our questions in a certain way – not out of disinterest, but out of concern. He made clear that he understands his work is being talked about, and that he’s thankful for it. He also did comfort us somewhat, letting us know that our questions were relevant – “very relevant” was the phrase he used. Still, he wanted to talk about other things: his worries. About the current discourse in architecture. About the rebranding of everything. About old horses pimped up.

Above all, he wants the conversation to return to being a conversation about form. And on that, we couldn’t agree with him more.

ORDINARY

At this point, not quite knowing what we were getting ourselves into, we thought we’d begin with something simple. A warm-up question, really. Something to set the tone and loosely connect to the festival’s theme. So we asked Jan for his thoughts on two words: ordinary and extraordinary.

Jan answers slowly. “Well. You know. At any moment, there’s always a word that calibrates your thoughts. But, when I’m thinking, I’m never really thinking, ‘Ah, this is ordinary,’ or, ‘Ah, that’s something extraordinary.’” He let us know that he’s well aware that words like ordinary, dailiness, and as-found are often used in relation to his work. But these words, he says, are not part of his mindset when approaching a project or going about daily life. “I appreciate being associated with those words,” he says, “but I want to underline that these words never appear in my mind when I think of everyday situations or things that seem overlooked.”

After a moment, he returns to the question. “I think… when it’s about the word extra, I think the ordinary itself is the extra.” He continues: “And the ordinary… A friend of mine, decades ago, described it very well. He said: ‘It’s like having a deck of leaves in the forest in autumn. It seems all dead, but once you put your hand underneath and throw it over, it’s full of life — insects, animals, mushrooms, mycelium. There’s a whole world underneath.’” That’s the point, Jan explains. “The ordinary is the deck we know. In autumn, we go into the forest, we look at it, and it’s there. We know that. The extra is just leaving it, and enjoying it, and looking at it, et cetera.” He pauses. “Voilà,” he says. “That’s my first note.”

LIKE WE ARE IN A CIRCUS PLAYING WITH BALLS

“But we should try to avoid many of these words,” Jan says. Lately, he’s grown increasingly aware and uneasy about how these constant qualifiers are shaping architectural discourse. He describes a broader phenomenon unfolding in the field: a tendency to label and qualify architectural intentions as much as possible. “We’re trying to rank architecture, to order architecture, to make one approach seem better than another. We’re playing with words like we’re in a circus playing with balls,” he says, his tone thoughtful over our video call.

He’s quick to admit he’s long been part of this conversation – since the 1990s. Back then, he and a friend built a very small house, House Ovo (1996), with next to no budget. One day, someone stopped by and asked what they were doing. Jan explained the project, their approach, the tight budget, and the choices they made. That encounter led to a lecture invitation at the Flemish Architecture Institute’s Single Lecture Series with the title ‘Reality Check,’ organized by 51N4E. “I was young at that time. It was the ’90s. I was nervous. I had to take photos of my drawings and explain what we were doing,” he recalls. “But from that moment, I became part of the conversation. Part of the discourse. And that was nice — I started to take part in discussions.” But over time, something has shifted. The scale of this discussion about these qualifications and categories of architecture has grown enormously. “I’m still wondering whether I find it enjoyable to be part of the discussion today,” he questions. “Because over time, I’ve become a participant in developing this whole scale of words, this scale of qualifications. And now I find myself stepping back, asking: Wait. Wait. Wait. Where are we going? Where are we going with this?”

In the past, he says, he never felt nervous about the discourse. But these days, he does, especially with all these words being thrown about. They also stick to his own work, and he feels they do little to help the conversation. “I want to talk about architecture,” he says. “But I don’t want to talk about architecture with any prefix in front of it.” The conversation should be about what we mean with all these prefixes and all these qualifications. “It’s about how we think. It’s about how we evaluate things,” he says. “Do these words and labels help the discussion? Or do they avoid it?”

He gives an example. “If I tell you, ‘I’m a sustainable architect,’ you’ll say, ‘Wow, good guy. Sustainable. Honest.’ But is it really? Can we actually talk about what sustainable means? Can we talk about whether we are sustainable? Or do we just let the conversation stop there, with you saying, ‘You are,’ and me replying, ‘Thank you’? What’s the value in that?” Jan reflects. “These words are attempts to either upgrade or downgrade architecture. By adding all these qualifiers, the focus becomes far too narrow and way too specific.” He adds, “Are you sure sustainable architecture is anything other than architecture? Shouldn’t architecture, in its nature, in its essence, already be sustainable? Why do we need to add another word in front? It’s like saying twice, ‘I’m driving a car.”

THE REMARKETING OF EVERYTHING

“I would say I’m concerned about the remarketing of everything,” Jan continues. This tendency, he adds, goes beyond language; it’s embedded in the building economy itself. “When we talk about sustainable architecture, that should be a tool discussion – not a goal discussion.” What’s needed, he says, is to rethink how we speak about things, how we value them, where we place our focus, and how we work. “Right now, we’re not changing the economic model. We’re just renaming things within it.”

The economic model of designing and building centres on value: how you bring value, or add value, to a building. But the problem, he explains, is that the very notion of value has fundamentally shifted over the years. “That’s what we need to discuss!” he says with emphasis. “We need to take a look at the economic model of things, ask how it came to be as it is
— and why we’ve started to value buildings the way we do.” With a half-laugh but also a note of concern, he adds, “But every time I try to have that conversation, everyone seems to get really nervous.”

He illustrates his point with a story. Years ago, they would reuse old windows collected from demolition sites. “We’d just go to a building, ask, ‘Can we have these windows?’ And they’d say, ‘Take them, please!’” Today, those same windows have become part of a commercialised recycling market, with branding agencies seemingly obsessed with inserting the word ‘re’ into any product or name they can get their hands on. “Now it’s a recycled window. A reused window. Or a vintage window, with a story attached. ‘Maybe, just maybe, even the great Le Corbusier once looked through it.’” He smiles, though there’s a trace of unease. “Suddenly the window costs more, because now it’s a ‘branded recycled window.’ And we go home with that same window in our arms, telling everyone we meet along the way: ‘My house is now a sustainable house with a branded recycled window that maybe, just maybe, even Le Corbusier once looked through.’”

The same, he says, goes for tiles, or anything else for that matter. “We once worked with these beautiful tiles that we had simply found in a dumpster. They’d been thrown out during a refurbishment. But now, recycled tiles cost more than new ones. And still, we tell ourselves: it’s okay – at least they’re recycled.” Jan’s reservations about this value system are clear. He’s concerned. Whenever he tries to bring up the issue, he says, people often respond defensively, questioning whether he’s against recycling or sustainability. “It’s not about being against recycling,” he says. “It’s about how we’ve failed to change the economic model behind it. We’ve just dressed it up in different words.”

IT’S STILL THE OLD HORSE, PIMPED UP

Today, Jan argues, sustainable thinking often means doing exactly what we’ve always done, only with so-called ecological means. “What I believe we really have to think about, or question, is: can we do things differently?” “And if we open up that conversation — which, to me, is a conversation about form — it might actually have a different kind of repercussion on the ecological means themselves.”

He compares this to our broader inability to imagine living differently. “We don’t rethink how we live. We’re basically just trying to preserve the same life, only with ‘green’ upgrades, or within so-called ecological dimensions.” The houses stay the same size – often even larger – but now they’re labelled sustainable. We preserve the same habits and ways of living, just with a green coating. He likens this to the car and the way it too has been wrapped in a so-called responsible discourse of ecology and sustainability. “When you look at the car, in terms of sustainability, the cars have actually got bigger and fatter — but with less energy-soaking engines,” he says. “But then there’s so much more energy soaked up in the materialisation of the car itself. And by that, I also mean human energy, including child labour, battery production, all of that.” He pauses. “But the car itself hasn’t changed.” “The car didn’t change,” he repeats. “Our way of thinking about transport didn’t change. Nothing changed. It’s still the old horse, pimped up. And this time, pimped up with a so-called responsible discourse of ecology and sustainability. But we haven’t changed the thinking behind the car — or how we think about movement and transportation.”

CAN WE GET BACK TO WHAT WE DO AS ARCHITECTS?

Jan’s work is often associated with transformation, renovation, adaptive reuse, recycling, and the seamless interweaving of old and new. But as we speak, it becomes clear that the current discourse around these terms no longer feels like a meaningful conversation. It has started to feel like a kind of pious fiction – a constructed narrative.

He tells us he’s often approached by people inviting him to speak about transformations he’s done, or the adaptive reuse projects he’s been part of. Others want to include his work in books or exhibitions centred around the word transformation – or Umbo, as it’s known in German. “I think it’s been published a hundred times in that discourse,” he says. One work that’s frequently mentioned is the pair of production studios his office completed 15 or 20 years ago for Les Ballets C de la B and LOD, the Ghent-based dance and music theatres. “I still get asked to talk about the transformation of those buildings,” he says — then stops. “But they’re new-builds. They are new-builds.” He tells us about questions he often gets: “Ah, that façade you created at Les Ballets — the transformation of the existing building. How did you do that?” His response is always the same: “Well… it’s not a transformation. It’s new.”

He brings up another project, House Rot Ellen Berg – a house with building poles and a glazed interior. It’s been published countless times under the banner of adaptive reuse. But, as Jan is keen to clarify: “At no point — alone or with the client — did we use or talk about the word reuse. Or recycling. Or adaptive. But now, suddenly, this project has become an example of that discourse. The words have been projected onto the work.” Jan looks slightly weary. “I want to say — wait, wait, wait! This house is about light and shadow. This house is about a family with children living there. This house is about having only 100,000 euros and wanting to imagine a place to live. These are the core values of the house. These are the core values of the project. These are what we should talk about!” He pauses. “It’s important, he says, that we bring the conversation back to the work itself. That’s what matters”. Then he adds: “Can we talk about what you do as an architect — not how you value a project, or assign value to what you do? What we talk about now are the mechanisms — and that’s all we talk about. But we’ve forgotten to talk about form. We’ve forgotten to talk about space.” He hesitates. “That’s what I try to…”, he searches for the right word, “…I wouldn’t say offensively — but that’s what I really want to try to state in every discussion. Can we get back to what we do as architects?”

GREEN COLUMNS

The discourse, the discussions, should be about: “Do you know what you’re doing? Do you know what you’re saying? What is the origin of the aesthetics? To me, the beauty comes together with the narrative. What meanings do we give to things?” He tells us he’s grateful that people discuss his projects – but when he reads how they’re talked about, he increasingly feels the need to return the conversation to what was in mind at the beginning and to the original intentions behind each project. Not just what it looks like in the end.

“You know the story of the green column?” Jan checks, half-questioning, as if confirming we’re familiar. You’ve likely seen the project with the green column. Many have. He tells us he’s often approached with the assumption that all his projects include a green column. “It’s not true!” Jan laughs, lightly amused. “Go to our website — I’ve marked them. There are only seven. But by now, it’s been repeated in 7,000 ways.”

“But what the green was about,” he begins, “is that I arrived on a building site where we needed a new steel structure. And the contractor was painting it quite happily in that green. ‘Wait, wait, wait — what’s this?’ I said. I mean, I didn’t know that green. I told him, ‘Wait, wait. First, you need to have an oxidation protection paint.’ And he said, ‘No, no, no — it’s fine. It is an oxidation protection paint.’” Jan explains that the paint came from a small brand that identifies itself by using that particular green pigment in its formula. When he understood that, Jan grins, recalling the moment: “So I said, ‘Oh, wow. All right. Let’s do it!’ I used that green wherever it was needed. If there was no steel, we didn’t use it. But then that little company went bankrupt. And now it’s over.”

He continues: “When I see everyone happily painting stuff green, that’s what the discussion should be about: Do you know what you are doing? Do you know what you’re saying?” Using the green column as an example, he asks, “On a project, what can you read? What is available? Which colour will we give it?” The addition of colour, he argues, should be due to the honesty of the material, but also the honesty of the material colour, and how you compose things.

“There’s a difference between being original and being authentic. They’re not the same. Being original is a search for difference – a search for wanting to be original. Not origin. That’s something else entirely. Origin refers to the word authentic – namely: what, where, and how can you reveal authenticity?” That authenticity, he explains, is not only about materials but about the capacity to bring forward free, thoughtful ways of forming things. “When we talk about form,” he says, “we must also talk about the capacity to compose. The capacity to make ensembles, to find complexities between things. And that only happens when whatever materials you find – whether on a building site, in a material catalogue, or just as they come – are used in composition.” “It’s the same with colour. The same with interpreting a building pole as an eternal column in a building. Et cetera.”

Jan continues: “As an architect, I think this is what I would say to many young practices: Please surprise me. Not confirm me, but surprise me. And I think the surprise, link to words like fantasy… That architecture can be based on fantasy. That it can be based on the imagination. That it can be based on a dream. That’s what I would say. Colour it green if you want to – but surprise me with it. Don’t just confirm what’s expected, or the tone of the day.”

IT’S NOT A MATTER OF

We ask Jan about Chapex in Charleroi, and how he approaches the balance between respecting an existing building and transforming it into something new. He answers softly, “I only want to talk about architecture from now and nothing else. Not about adaptive reuse or things like that. I want to talk about architecture.” He explains, “Architecture is not a matter of architecture. Scale is not a matter of scale. Context is not a matter of context. Meaning is not a matter of meaning. Making is not a matter of making. Beauty is not a matter of beauty. If I go to the matter of things – for me, how can I put it – beauty is, in the end, the starting point of everything,” he continues. “And it should be the start after the end of doing things.”

He continues: “I found that our task at Chapex was to reveal the beauty of that building.” Jan elaborates: “I actually have quite a discourse on that building. It’s about the idea that we, as architects, should act more like an interact. We’re just an in-between. We don’t finish a building entirely. We keep it open for something that’s to come.” Rather than reuse, he speaks of pre-use – preparing a building for its next use. That, he says, is what Chapex was really about. “It’s a beautiful building,” he adds, clearly fond of it. “The architect before us did a marvellous job. But it was hidden.” He recalls that once they removed the façades, a lovely perspective emerged, they felt air move through, and greenery appeared. “We had a park. A place we believed people would come to, would stay at, would want to return to.”

The essence of the project, he explains – or indeed any project – lies in how one reads things, and how one makes things available for reading again. “So if the word re- fits anywhere,” he says, “it’s in the word reading.” He repeats it with emphasis: “It’s in the word reading.” Chapex, then, becomes a way of talking more broadly about the very essence of architecture. “It’s about understanding, for example, that the building had been wrapped in this bourgeois-style urban architecture, while the actual structure is a piece of engineering. That engineering belongs to the era of metal construction and concrete evolution, while the bourgeois white stone façade was more like a kind of reenactment of the city.” But again, he says, we are an interact. “I hope, later in life, to pass by and see that the building has been transformed again. Maybe someone will hang new façades on it, because they need it to be one space again.”

FORM IS YOUR TOOL AS AN ARCHITECT

We end the conversation by asking: going forward, what can we – as architects – do? “Today – and fortunately so – much more of society is aware of the urgencies we face,” Jan says. “(Well, we’re also seeing a counter-reaction to that, of course.) Still, there’s growing awareness that we have to consider these urgencies. Around the big round table, we now find a variety of contributors: sociologists, biologists, engineers, anthropologists, architects, designers, artists, perhaps politicians, legal minds. So we are a lot of people around the table. And that’s interesting. That’s great,” Jan says. “But we, as architects, almost uniquely, have the tool of form. And this is where the discussion lies.” He explains that when architects use the word form, it often sounds formalistic and is misread as formalism, or it might sound as if one is disconnected from the so-called “shouting urgencies”. But that’s not the case. “With form, we can twist an ongoing discussion.”

“Everyone brings their own logic to the table, and they try to bring it together to get somewhere – and that’s good! But in the end, no one knows how to make it. That’s what you can do as an architect.” “All of a sudden, you can show a drawing and say, ‘Listen – interesting. But what if we did it like this?’ And then – oh, wow. That’s your contribution. Not by shouting ‘sustainability’ or ‘ecology’ louder than the rest, but by quietly saying, ‘Listen, I made a drawing. I built a little model, just now, while you were talking. But if we do it like this… you, and you – your ideas are in there.’” He pauses. “Form is your tool as an architect in a discussion. And in my experience – at least nine times out of ten, let’s keep it modest – it shifts the conversation. And it helps.”

We end by asking what we – the so-called “next emerging generation of architects” – can do. Jan replies: “Let me underline what I mean. It’s not about the emerging generation. It’s about the emerging changes. And these changes – as you ask – what you can contribute as an architect is this: How can you, as an architect, think about form differently from what we’ve come to accept as the starting point? Because once you do that – all the other discussions will follow.”

This conversation was first published for OPEN Architecture Festival, Issue Five (2025): In the Eyes of the Ordinary.

The issue was produced by students from the Aarhus School of Architecture:
Ida Bjerga, Osmo Hadad-Lange, Alexander Skovgaard Bagger Hadi, and Birke Langkjær Jakobsen.

The non-profit project was supported by The Dreyer Foundation.

Image credits: 1) Juan Rodrigues, 2) Filip Duiardin, 3) Filip Duiardin, 4) Jan de Vylder, 5) Filip Duiardin, 6) Filip Duiardin, 7) Filip Duiardin, 8) Jan de Vylder