Christophe VandenEynde (1994) is a pre-doctoral candidate who graduated in 2018 at KU Leuven with a Master of Science in Architecture degree.
Mainly interested in post-conflict reconstruction, his graduation project Conserving Heritage Preserving Peacefocussed on architectural heritage in conflict areas and the possibilities of their revitalisation within disaster recovery. Through a design-research approach, this thesis also took the Syrian refugee crisis into account and how social integration of displaced people could play a part in the rehabilitation of cultural heritage as a collective memory within regional instability. The project is part of the international long-term research framework Architecture of Peace, which calls for an interdisciplinary development of alternate strategies for post-conflict reconstruction.
With the contemporary situation in Beirut as a case study, he performed in-depth fieldwork in Lebanon on issues such as cultural development, human rights violation and the importance of a collective identity within communities recovering from conflict. By continuing this endeavour as part of the research group Urban Project, Collective Spaces & Local Identities, he aims to make a noteworthy contribution to research regarding post-conflict reconstruction and development.