Marie-José Van Hee architecten

When Yvonne Farrell visited the house of Marie-José Van Hee, she experienced an atmosphere which reminded her of a Samuel Beckett play. It transpired during a conversation with Marie-José that indeed she very much admires the work of Beckett. This observation somehow touches on the intangible mysterious component of Van Hee’s work which is pleasantly quite difficult to put a finger on. We found the Stadshal building in Ghent (a collaboration between Van Hee and Robbrecht en Daem, exhibited in the Biennale Architettura 2012), to be one of the most relevant poetic urban projects we had seen in a long time.
Van Hee’s work ranges from thoughtful small interventions into domestic contexts to the making of new public spaces and rich ground surfaces which gather people together. There is always a sense of care present, a depth of thinking, an exploration of the language of construction, an atmosphere of stillness and calm embedded in the spatial language.
For this exhibition she focuses, through her drawings, on the search to find architecture in each project. The energy of the drawings expresses an almost frantic impatience to find that space she is looking for. What is very important for us as curators is that the visitor will appreciate the process and the journey of the architect in the making of architecture.
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