Janno Martens studied Philosophy and Architecture History at the University of Amsterdam, specialising in postwar French philosophy and Dutch architecture from the same era. His publications deal primarily with the intellectual history of architecture in the second half of the twentieth century, and focus mostly on how notions of space and environment influence the social dimensions of architectural thought and practice alike.
Janno is currently a PhD candidate at KU Leuven with a grant from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), investigating how technological and psychological notions of environment shaped architecture and urbanism in North America between 1965 and 1980. His research is affiliated to the project ‘Architectural Space Taught and Thought. Trading Zones of the Concept of Space, 1945-1980’, led by Rajesh Heynickx, Filip Mattens and Stéphane Symons.
Before joining KU Leuven, Janno worked as research assistant for Erik Rietveld (partner at RAAAF), with whom he has co-authored several articles about the relation between architecture and ecological psychology, with special attention to the notion of affordances. In 2018-2019, he served as coordinator of the Jaap Bakema Study Centre in Rotterdam, which links the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning to the research agenda of the Architecture Department at TU Delft. Together with Dirk van den Heuvel and Víctor Muñoz Sanz, he edited Habitat: Ecology Thinking in Architecture (nai010, 2020).