M HKA Ensembles

Collage, 65.5 x 65.5 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK5218_M31B).

For Luc Deleu and his collaborators, plans and ideas are elaborated collectively.  The modern trend for personality cults in the worlds of architecture and art provided the impulse (in 1970) for Deleu and colleagues to establish their alternative urban planning office, T.O.P. -office (Turn On Planning).  The young office did not have the aim of pushing to the top of the existing architectural establishment, but rather wished to act as a critical, irritating presence in that world, as an agent for radical change (indeed, the O of T.O.P. was designed as the globe of the Earth turned 'upside down').  As token of their disruptive efficacy, for 15 years T.O.P. was banned (by the official Order of Architects) from being listed in the phone book under 'Architects'.

The T.O.P.-office does not proceed with their projects in the 'normal' way: they start with detailed drawn plans, then comes the architectural scale model, and finally the realization of a building.  As a colorful and playful alternative, an architect - as 'homo ludens' (playing man) - may for example make his scale modeled out of Lego blocks.  This way, created are objects that do not directly mimic a final, 'real' execution.  The criss-cross use of the colored blocks breach the objects' symmetry.  There are six elaborated Lego constructions, and each construction is composed from out of the Lego blocks of its predecessor.  What remains from the first five is the documentation in the form of a photograph of each respective construction, where below is written: model demolished or in one case model destroyed, followed by the year such took place.