Just before the Easter holidays, Ghent University’s architecture programme held its traditional ‘Joker Week’. For a whole week, teaching activities gave way to a vertical studio, and the architectural engineering students worked together to tackle a single problem.

This special moment in the academic year, organised by a team from the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning and the second-year Master’s students, forms an intrinsic part of the programme – one might say it is the very DNA of architectural education. At the same time, Joker Week often serves as a link to research within the department, as was the case this year. The theme of this 22nd edition was linked to the development of a travelling exhibition marking 20 years of the Open Call, commissioned by the Team Vlaams Bouwmeester. For a whole week, the students showcased completed and ongoing Open Calls at the Kuipke in Citadel Park. For the first time, all the results of the competition process were visualised on the scale of the indoor cycling track, covering an area of over 1,000 m². The students grouped a total of 457 projects according to geographical location and spatial conditions. This resulted in 36 sets, each allocated a place on the track to collectively form a continuous panoramic landscape of Flanders. An equal number of student groups combed through the Flemish Chief Architect’s archive and translated the Open Calls and the landscape conditions of their segment into cut-outs, collages and bas-reliefs.