Nik Naudts (° 1982, Antwerp) graduated cum laude in 2006 as a master in engineering sciences - architecture at the University of Ghent. After his studies, he worked as a researcher at the Labo S urban planning research unit at UGent. From 2005 to 2013, he worked as a designer at various architecture firms, including Guy Châtel’s ss/axx in Ghent, West 8 in Rotterdam and 51N4E in Brussels.

Since 2010, Nik has been taking on architectural assignments on a freelance basis. They are often small-scale but specific, change-oriented projects in which ambition and sobriety engage in dialogue. From smart, future-proof renovations to the realisation of collective housing types. From the master plan for a sustainable recreational area in the Netherlands to the exploratory design of flood-resistant building blocks in New Orleans. His work clearly demonstrates the belief that modest spatial interventions can also form part of an ambitious future story. And vice versa, that social challenges appearing unrealistic can be qualitatively portioned into comprehensible test cases.

Since 2011, Nik has applied the ‘spatialisation’ of major social changes on a daily basis as a senior design researcher in many projects by Architecture Workroom Brussels. He commutes back and forth between environments, scales, terms, functions, ambitions and actors. This dynamic is an integral part of his investigative, designing, guiding and steering role within AWB. An approach that he has regularly introduced in various external settings in recent years: from lectures to guest lectures, as a jury member or as an external design expert.

Linking distant future goals to innovative design on the ground, which serves as the guideline for many of the projects in which Nik is closely involved. Exemplary projects include the exploration of the future Metropolitan Coastal Landscape 2100 and De Lage Landen 2020-2100, the IABR Project Ateliers Brabantstad and Oost-Vlaams Kerngebied, the alternative development framework Kortrijk 2025, the exploratory trajectory Connecting Spatial Concepts for Zuid Holland and research by design for Water as Leverage for Resilient Cities: Asia. These are all projects in which a provocative cartography based on spatial quality reveals the future ‘places of change’. And where possible answers to these metropolitan or regional challenges are tested and depicted through integrated local interventions.