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Sebastiaan Loosen

Profile picture of Sebastiaan Loosen

About me

Sebastiaan Loosen is a postdoctoral researcher based at KTH Stockholm. After obtaining degrees in architectural engineering and in philosophy at the KU Leuven (Belgium), he recently completed his doctoral dissertation Shaping Social Commitment. Architecture and Intellectuality in the 1970s and ’80s (KU Leuven, November 2019). It deals with the formative years of architectural theory in Belgium, and more specifically discusses the various vantage points from which ‘the social’ was addressed in architectural thought. The key themes that permeate his work are historiographical challenges, social commitment, and the intricacies of a globalizing architectural culture. On these themes, he recently co-edited for EAHN’s open access journal Architectural Histories a Special Collection on ‘Marxism and Architectural Theory across the East-West Divide’ as well as an open access volume at Leuven University Press based on the international conference Theory’s History, 196X-199X. Challenges in the Historiography of Architectural Knowledge, held in Brussels, February 2017; in addition to contributing articles most notably to the East West Central. Re-Building Europe, 1950-1990 volumes (2016) and to the Aggregate project Systems and the South. Architecture in Development (2018).

His current project at KTH Stockholm, In the Name of Development. Architecture and Training for Human Settlements in Sweden, 1960-80s, marks the start of a broader research project that aims to chart the role of architectural schools, centres and institutes in contributing to the 1960-80s ‘development’ agenda by offering ‘South-oriented’ training programs in architecture, urbanism, and spatial planning.

In the light of this project, KTH School of Architecture will host a two-day symposium on "Architectural Training and Research in the Foreign Aid-Funded Knowledge Economy, 1950s-1980s" on 9-10 September 2021.

 

Recent publications:

  • Sebastiaan Loosen, “The Challenge of the Poetic: Criticism in Search of the Real – with a Debt to bOb Van Reeth, 1975-1985”, CLARA Architecture/Recherche 7: Critique architecturale et débat public, ed. by Hélène Jannière & Paolo Scrivano (2020), pp. 106-121. [doi:10.3917/clara.007.0106]
  • Sebastiaan Loosen, Rajesh Heynickx & Hilde Heynen (eds.), The Figure of Knowledge. Conditioning Architectural Theory, 1960s-1990s (Leuven University Press, 2020). [Open Access]
  • Hilde Heynen & Sebastiaan Loosen (eds.), “Marxism and Architectural Theory across the East-West Divide”, Special Collection of Architectural Histories 6-7 (2018-2019). [Open Access]