Alexandre Langlois

MA (Hons) in Architecture

(University of Edinburgh)

A.S.C.Langlois@sms.ed.ac.uk

research interests

teaching

practice

publications

Holding an MA (Hons) in Architecture, I am currently conducting research as part of an MScR in Cultural Studies. My work, set in motion by my undergraduate dissertation and further developed as part of my ongoing thesis, interrogates emptiness – in its spatial, photographic and semantic dimensions – as a condition saturated with past and future time. I aim to confront and dilate the compressive temporal forces exerted by reconstruction narratives in post-Blitz Rotterdam and, instead, give space to the expanded moment in which the Dutch port city became ‘empty’ – the clearing of rubble; the displacement of those whose homes were lost; the flattening of buildings in anticipation of a new city.

My work combines my architectural sensitivity with skills developed from editorial experiences for FRAME, RIAS and Crumble. My writing has been published in a number of FRAME’s physical issues and on its online platform, as well as in the most-recent issue of AMO-founded VOLUME Magazine, now co-produced by Archis and Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Drawing on these diverse experiences, I am employing writing, drawing, mapping and curatorial exercises as part of my research, seeking out the productive moments when they intersect and dissonances emerge – dissonances between the memories of those who witnessed their city being emptied, hollowed out, and the constructed emptiness on which reconstruction narratives were predicated.