Marie Nevejan is a doctoral researcher at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture in Ghent. Her project is entitled ‘The role of spatial memory in urban reconstruction planning after disaster. The Ypres case.’
This project identifies the relationship between places and memories within the reconstruction of the everyday urban environment after a disaster through the pilot study of Ypres, a city in the Westhoek region, in the province of West-Flanders (Belgium). Ypres is both unique and exemplary since the city was destroyed during the First World War and has been rebuilt according to its pre-war configuration, and since the war memory is tangibly present today and is now part of the identity of the city. First, a spatial questioning of the accepted narratives analyses the effect of the reconstruction on the recovery of the residents up to the present day. Second, this project aims to understand the spatial configuration of the interaction between place and memory and what position this occupies within reconstruction processes to create support for contemporary reconstruction strategies.
The PhD is part of the research project ‘Restoring Broken Journeys’ with professor Gisèle Gantois as a supervisor (Research Group ‘Urban Projects, Collective Spaces and Local Identities’) and professor Rajesh Heynickx as a co-supervisor (Research Group ‘Architectural Cultures of the Recent Past’).
In 2019, Marie attended the Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden. She obtained her Master’s degree at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture in 2020 with a thesis on ‘Forgotten Modernisms. Regenerating urban environments through young architectural heritage.’ Her thesis has been nominated by the university for the Van Hove Award 2020. After her graduation, Marie worked as a practising architect at Dhooge & Meganck Architecture for two years, where she worked on different projects from small to medium scale.