About

Computer Laboratory for Analysis and Representation in Architecture

Founded in 1994 by Marc Meurrens and Vincent Burnetta, AlICe laboratory focuses on the formal analysis and graphic representation of architecture, using the digital model as a source of knowledge and as a basis for studying the architectural object. Born in the midst of the “digital revolution”, AlICe has never seen the introduction of the computer as a revolution, but rather as an evolution. As such, the laboratory seeks to establish a form of historical continuity between traditional projective methods and contemporary digital tools, and places its approach in an exclusively epistemological context.

At AlICe, teaching and research covers matters as diverse as the understanding the codes of canonical representational tools, the study of composition and formal languages, the digital survey and the analysis of historical buildings, the generation of shapes through procedural modelling, the drawing with analogue tools, the digital fabrication and 3D printing.

Denis Derycke, coordinator of AlICe laboratory
Denis Derycke qualified as an architect at ISACF La Cambre and gained his Ph.D from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is currently a professor at the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre Horta, ULB. Since 2008, he has been the head of the AlICe lab research unit where his work focuses on the formal analysis and graphic representation of architecture, both traditional and digital, historical and contemporary. The specificity of his approach is the use of graphic representation as a concrete tool for research and knowledge production. He has carried out an analysis of a number of complex theoretical projects by the Californian group Morphosis, producing drawings and models to function as the principal tools of investigation. He has also overseen several 3D reconstructions of historical buildings, including Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple.
Publication list
David Lo Buglio, co-coordinator of AlICe laboratory
David Lo Buglio is an architect and professor at the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta, ULB (Brussels). Since 2007, he has been involved as a teacher and researcher. He obtained his PhD in 2016 and he is currently in charge of the course of "Theory of representation" and the option module "Graphic documentation of the built fact" in the years of Master. In addition to his involvement as teacher, he oversees numerous research projects within the AlICe laboratory (ULB) and has been a member since 2010 of the UMR MAP (CNRS, France). His personal work focuses on representation systems in architecture. More specifically, he has been investigating for several years the fields relating to the survey of built heritage and the characterization of architectural elements. The originality of his work is based on a “low level” (non-interpretative) approach, where the meaning of the elements (“semantic” and “geometric” structure) comes from the study of the morphological similarities observed within collection of architectural elements. His work was praised both by an international award in 2013 (at the Digital Heritage congress) and by the nomination of his doctoral research to the prize for the thesis of the French Academy of Architecture in 2017.
Publication list

Michel Lefèvre, architect, academic
Michel Lefèvre qualified as an architect at ISACF La Cambre in 2002. Since 2008, he has been a part-time educator at the Faculty of Architecture La Cambre-Horta, ULB (Brussels) and a member of the AlICe lab teaching team. In 2004, he co-founded the architecture studio Label architecture with Thibaut Rome and Jean-Didier Bergilez. He currently divides his time between architectural practice and education.
Alexandre Van Dongen, architect, researcher
Alexandre Van Dongen is an architect and was awarded the DoCoMoMo Prize in 2010 for his photomodelling of Paul-Amaury Michel's Maison de Verre. He contributes to the development of photogrammetric survey protocols at UMR MAP (CNRS, France) and specializes in the use of drones for photogrammetric surveys of built heritage. His research focuses on leveraging data from heterogeneous scans for the analysis and representation of large-scale archaeological sites, particularly at Pachacamac (Peru) and Congo.
Publication list
Julien Rippinger, PhD candidate, born 354 ppm
Julien Rippinger holds an MA in Architecture from the Université libre de Bruxelles. He works in the intersecting fields of architectural representation and the history of science and technology. His research examines graphical projection as a technical object, focusing on the algorithmic formalizations of projection in nineteenth-century descriptive geometry and in the early days of computer graphics developments. His work is supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund and the Auguste van Werveke-Hanno Foundation.
Publication list | Website | julien.rippinger@ulb.be
Myriem Saoud, architect, PhD student
Myriem Saoud holds an MA in Architecture and an MA in Urban Planning from the Université libre de Bruxelles. Her research focuses on architectural representation as a research and projection tool. She is currently carrying out her PhD funded by the FNRS on the practice of copying as an analytical tool for architecture in which she explores Baroque representations through re-drawing.
Publication list
Jean Trottet, architect, scientific collaborator
Jean Trottet holds a BA and an MA in architecture from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). After spending two years as a student in AlICe lab, he specialized in the study of built heritage through high-level 3D modelling. He worked as a researcher on the 3D restitutions hypothesis of Victor Horta’s Maison du Peuple and Joseph Hoffmann’s Palais Stoclet. He regularly takes part to the lab’s teaching and research on matters related to 3D survey and 3D modelling.
Uri Wegman, architect, assistant, PhD student
Uri Wegman is an architect and an educator. He received his bachelor's degree at the Cooper Union and his master's at Sci Arc. He taught at the Cooper Union, New York and at the EPFL in Lausanne. He is currently conducting research about the representation of air in architecture. He is a co-founder of the Truant School, an independent platform for research, production and education.

Past members: Vincent Brunetta (founder), Marc Meurrens (founder), Maurizio Cohen

Image: Cube Folding, Vincent Brunetta (1995)

alicelab@ulb.be · Laboratoire AlICe · FL.1.4 · Place E. Flagey, 19 · 1050 Brussels · Belgium