Jolein Bergers

Background

About Jolein Bergers

I am a Brussels-based researcher and designer working in the interstices of landscape architecture, urban design, and architecture. Rather than exclusively navigating one of these disciplines - I try to dwell in their overlaps, frictions, and shared questions. Currently, my main interest lies in engaging with the liveliness of cities in contexts of design, working with the entangled, everyday interactions between human and other-than-human life—such as plants, animals, soils, and other living entities. My PhD research focused on the development of a ‘Rubber Boots Design Anthropology’—an experimental field-oriented methodology that brings together approaches from design, ecology, and anthropology. Through this methodology, I explore how multispecies entanglements can be traced, made legible, and meaningfully engaged in planning and design contexts. Collaborations with citizen associations and environmental organisations are central to this work. After completing my PhD in Architecture at KU Leuven (2024), I joined the non-profit Blikveld vzw, where I contribute to the development of critical programmes in landscape architecture, as well as the landscape architecture office Plant en Houtgoed, where I participate in more experimental and research-oriented projects. Prior to my PhD, I worked as an architect with Architecture Workroom Brussels and 51N4E, as a researcher in urban planning at the University of Antwerp, and as a collaborator of citizen movement BRAL. I have also contributed to various architecture and urban design programmes through teaching and supervision. Positioned between disciplines, as well as between practice and research, I seek to explore how diverse ways of knowing—grounded in place, attentive to multispecies relations, and shaped through collective action—can reorient planning and design practice toward a more lively urban future.