Bart Leo Decroos (1989) is an architect, writer and editor based in Antwerp and Brussels. His work revolves around the intersection of architecture, ecology and fiction.
In 2015, he graduated from Sint-Lucas Brussels with a speculative design project, combining architectural theory, fictional narrative and satirical renderings, titled 'The Fourth Wall of Architecture'. The materials of this project were published in various places, such as Between the Fiction and Me and The Journal for Artistic Research.Over the following years, he has written for various magazines and journals, while editing several books on architecture, such as Bravoure Scarcity Beauty, Linkeroever: Across the River, 3 boek 7 8 9, and Unless Ever People. Additionally, since 2017, he has been an editor at OASE Journal for Architecture, where he worked on issues as OASE 105 'Practices of Drawing', OASE 112 'Ecology and Aesthetics' and OASE 119 'Rationalism Revisited'.Parallel to his work as a critic and editor, he started to work on more experimental projects too. In 2019, in collaboration with Laura Muyldermans, he developed the project 'Inventory of Experience', which was shown at the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019. In 2021, this led to a public performance at the street art festival 'Openbare Werken', organized by Vooruit in Ghent.Aside from his work in architecture, in 2020, he was also selected for the literary residency of deBuren in Paris, which led to the publication of several short stories in literary journals as Kluger Hans and De Lage Landen.After several years of research, he obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Antwerp in 2023, with a dissertation titled 'The Ecological Sensibility: Between Ruskin and Banham'. Supervised by professor Lara Schrijver, his research connects contemporary ecological theory to historical debates in architecture, using the work of John Ruskin and Reyner Banham to argue in favour of a hybrid vitalist politics for the twenty-first century.Currently, he is a guest professor at the University of Antwerp, where he teaches architecture theory and criticism, as well as a researcher at the Flanders Architecture Institute, where he is editing the official catalogue on the exhibition Building Biospheres in the Belgian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Bienale 2025.Additionally, he is collaborating with Laura Muyldermans on the development of an archive of fictional building biographies, while also writing a book that mobilizes fiction as a tool to explore gender performance in architecture.
