Soft Storm
Workshop

+ Alexander Auris

International Design Week IDW 2023, University of Antwerp and Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp

A soft storm is temporary. When passing, moves things up. A soft storm can embrace the city with tender waves. We will use this soft storm to bring gradual politics that look towards a deeper understanding of memories that were erased. During the IDW23 week, we promoted a soft storm, rethinking the design and agency of monuments in Antwerp through queer theory in architecture.

The monuments erected around the city tell elected and solid narratives. But what other stories have been forgotten? If classical monuments are devices to see, remember, and celebrate acts of (so-called) heroism, we propose designing the celebration and remembrance of (dis)affection in the city through queering it.

Queering as a political and ethical tool – an act of change and resistance to ongoing practices of violence.​​​​​​​

By revision of the history of queerness in Antwerp, we approached supposedly banal spaces in the city to recuperate its memory, commemorate them and retell a story of a community. We inserted temporary memory floating devices, a assembly of balloons, as tools to retrieve lost narratives. By that, we propose replacing the roughness, tallness, highlight, and heroism of existing monuments with the softness, touchiness, fragility, and disruptiveness of the queer monument.

During the week, our group reflected on how classic monuments are conceived, patrimony politics held, and how critically think about the design of new, soft monuments based on queer theory in architecture.

Participants:

Fine Van Cauwenberghe

Caro Van Hooydonck

Yannick Vertessen

Bente Bomans

Lynn De Jonghe

Maroussia Elewaut

Bo Janssens

Evelien Van Santfoort

Anudari Zorigtbaatar

Li Wen Hu

Lonneke Verhelst

Emma Verstrepen

Rosanne De Gryse

Karen Vande Bergh

Eduardo Rubio Parra