Orbanism
Academy of Architecture 2004-2005

In his Orbanist Manifesto Luc Deleu claims that the intrinsic meaning of urban development and architecture needs to be drastically revised. In his eyes, the core task is no longer individual architecture, but rather the implementation of collective planning wherein and whereby the freedom of the individual is safeguarded. Through his many theoretical and design studies, Deleu has developed a proposed complex urban planning programme for a global community, the Unadapted City.
Deleu focuses on the living, not the dwelling. Key to his work is his emphasis on the importance of infrastructure and freedom of individual design. In this context his mobile container installations in public spaces can be viewed as a homage to infrastructure.
Not only do they evoke images of transport and travel, but they are also industrially produced objects, the precise volumes of which are difficult to estimate without frames of reference. Perception of the containers’ (original) function and scale becomes unstable.
Deleu’s container constructions are a splendid illustrations of just how thin the dividing line is between architecture and sculpture, and how little it has to do with building homes.

About Luc Deleu
In 1970, the Belgian architect and urban planner Luc Deleu established T.O.P. Office and promptly distanced himself from the world of architecture. His oeuvre is characterised by his break with a conservative lifestyle and by his search for alternatives. From the end of the 1960s, the visual arts world became Deleu’s base of operations, and from here he struck out in search of another approach to urban development, one that was critical, sociological and ecological. His findings are the wellspring of his frequently startling designs and proposals for a different, utopian and unadapted city.