WITH THE PASSING OF GIDEON BOIE, KU LEUVEN LOSES A GREAT CRITIC

IN MEMORIAM

“Write about it,” Gideon Boie told his student Kaj Zwerver whenever he shared his passion for something. Now Zwerver writes about Boie himself, who passed away last week.

On Friday evening, February 27, 2024, I was sitting with a few other students from the Faculty of Architecture (KU Leuven) in café L'Âne Fou in Brussels. Sitting opposite me was Gideon Boie, whose Sofa Talk we had attended earlier that evening.

It was the first time I had seen Gideon since the events of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war of occupation by Israel in Gaza. I wanted to talk to him about the hitherto deafening silence regarding that conflict within the world of architecture. It was only 5 months after October 7. The Hamas attack was still too fresh in the memory to offer criticism or to broaden the scope of the conflict.

I expressed my concern about the images circulating online of Israeli soldiers bombing hospitals, schools, and churches, filling Palestinian water wells with cement, and spraying fields with poison. Israel appeared to intend to completely annex Gaza. What remained was a broken country, an open-air graveyard about which speculation was already rife on the Israeli real estate market with plans for luxury villas on the coast and a water park.

"Write about it," Gideon said, as he always advised anyone who came to him with clear passion. I tried, but ran into the complexity of the subject.

Gideon, however, did succeed in writing about it. On May 29, 2024, he published a sharp-witted article in De Standaard under the title 'Even the architecture in Israel breathes apartheid', in which he wrote: "You can hardly boast about academic research into the architecture of the Israeli occupation and then remain detached when things get out of hand."

With that, he targeted the academic stance of KU Leuven, the university where he was to defend his PhD less than two weeks later. I was present at that defense. In the corridors, there was more talk about Gideon's newspaper article than about his research.

That was typical of Gideon: he loved to challenge the status quo. For ten years, together with Lieven De Cauter, he planted seeds in the minds of architecture students in their Architecture & Activism course. In doing so, he inspired an entire generation. It is incredibly sad that this must come to an early end. KU Leuven loses a great critic.

Farewell Gideon, it is now up to your students to carry the torch.

Gideon Boie, architect-philosopher and co-founder of the collective Bavo, he dedicated himself to civic organizations for years, held a PhD in architecture, was a guest professor at KU Leuven, and a committed activist for the city. He regularly contributed opinion pieces to this newspaper. A number of these are compiled in the book Kleine filosofie van de verkeersveiligheid (A Small Philosophy of Road Safety) (published by Zuidzee). Gideon Boie passed away on May 20, 2026, at the age of 51.