Thibault Desmet

Thibault Desmet works as a doctoral researcher on the project ‘Architectural Space Taught and Thought. Trading Zones of the Concept of Space, 1945-1980’ led by Filip Mattens, Rajesh Heynickx and Stéphane Symons. His research focuses on the circulation of notions of space and spatiality in (anti-)psychoanalysis, philosophy and anthropology at the time, and more specifically on the interaction of body and space. For him, autism, nomads, pilgrims, refugees, foreigners and people in need serve as teachers of how body and space are intertwined rather than opposed. By bypassing the main narrative of domesticity or linguistic intersubjectivity, this study shows how architecture helps us to be outside, before forming an inside.

In 2021, Thibault completed his Master’s degree in architecture at Ghent University with a thesis on Belgian architect Wim Cuyvers, about which he published in De Witte Raaf. He then studied at the Institute of Philosophy in Leuven, where he obtained his Bachelor’s degree in 2022.