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Institution: University of Antwerp Field of responsibility/ Role in the RMB project: Research and Methodology & Documentation and Analysis Field of specialization: Building History Research and Interder Design History Research
Marieke Jaenen (°1981, Belgium) has a Master of Art Science and Archaeology (VUB), a Master of Conservation of Monuments and Sites (RLICC- KULeuven) and aMaster of Culture Science (VUB). After her studies she worked several years as a freelance building history researcher and as a part-time scientific researcher for the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven and for the Faculty of Design Science at Artesis University College Antwerp.
At the moment she is teaching assistant in the Master Heritage Science at University of Antwerp and finalising her (double) doctoral research in Conservation of Monuments and Landscapes (University of Antwerp) and in Engineering Science (VUB).
During and after her studies she was focused on interior design history research and building history research. She has developed a certain expertise, on a professional as well as an academic level, in investigating historic buildings and more specific the interior.
– Building history research
Between 2007 and 2013, she made as a freelance researcher seventy building history research projects on a professional level and on a wide diversity of building typologies in Flanders and Brussels. Out of this expertise she was invited to teach two courses at the Master Heritage Studies at Artesis University College Antwerp (since 2013 encapsulated in the University of Antwerp). In the first Master year she is responsible for both the course on methodology and sources for building history research and for the interdisciplinary research project, where students have to work in an interdisciplinary group (historians, interior designers, architects, garden designers, …) and develop a historical and architectural analysis, a valuation, and a restoration and reconversion concept of an historical building and/or site.
– Interior design history research:
Two master theses were focused on interior design of the second half of the 19th century: ‘The interior of the Brussels townhouse between 1850 and 1900’ and ‘Museum interior design: a comparison of the historical interior of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Royal Museum for Fine Arts in Antwerp’. The research of both subjects investigated the interior design concept and its related decorative and material finishing of the immovable an movable elements. Her doctoral research ‘Modern with Wood: Interior Design of the Antwerp Interwar Living Room’ deals with 20th century interior design and focusses on the innovative application of the traditional material wood within the context of the Antwerp interwar living room. Also here she investigates the immovable and movable wooden elements on their design, construction, wood species, use, and conservation.