Sophia Holst

Sophia Holst (1988, The Netherlands) is an architect and researcher based in Brussels. Her work departs from the question of housing as a moral and material testimony of society. Through archival research, mapping, fieldwork, publications and local conversations, she studies the social ideals embedded in modernist public housing and the ways they are reinterpreted today.

During her residency at MORPHO, Sophia will continue investigating processes of renovation, revitalisation and displacement in Belgium and the Netherlands, exposing the socio-urban ideologies behind them and imagining alternative, socially sustainable strategies. Focusing on the Arenawijk in Deurne by architect Renaat Braem, she will revisit his socialist ideals and confront them with the current sale of the former social housing, examining what happens when puplic housing becomes a speculative object, and what this shift reveals about contemporary urban ideals.

Sophia studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam and obtained a Master of Architecture at KU Leuven, campus Sint-Lucas Brussels. She was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie (2020–2021). Sophia exhibited in various art and architecture institutes in the Netherlands and Belgium, such as Z33 Hasselt, the Flemish Architecture Institute in Antwerp (VAi) and Arcam, centre for architecture in Amsterdam.