12 June 2023

Radio Architecture - Episode 6

Radio Architecture with Ilana Razbash - Episode 6 (Jan van Schaik) June 12, 2023

Ilana's guest this week is Jan van Schaik, a Melbourne-based artist and architect who directs MvS Architects, lectures at RMIT Architecture & Urban Design, founded +Concepts, created Lost Tablets, and works as a creative sector activist at Future Tense. The episode focuses on MvS's award-winning Edithvale Seaford Wetlands Discovery Centre, completed in 2011.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COOK

09 MAY 2023

WAMA gets funding boost

Home for wildlife art receives a boost - Australian Geographic

This 2023 Australian Geographic piece reports on the Wildlife Art Museum of Australia (WAMA) receiving a $6.75 million Victorian government grant, funding its central gallery, café, shop and conference centre near Halls Gap. Led by patron Glenda Lewin, WAMA relies on volunteer working bees and over a decade of fundraising. Architect Jan van Schaik notes the building draws the surrounding landscape inside, "like an outdoor room." Australian Geographic, a long-time supporter, donated its illustration archive to WAMA in 2022. The gallery will host art borrowed from major collections and award its biennial $15,000 WAMA Art Prize.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAN VAN SCHAIK

17 APRIL 2023

2B Or Not 2B drawing

Jan van Schaik - 2B Or Not 2B Architects Drawing Art

2B Or Not 2B, an "Architects Drawing Art" showcase/exhibition site, featuring a work by Jan van Schaik. The piece, titled Shoal Lost Tablet Aeolus (ballpoint pen on paper, 2023), is described as one in a series of 100 drawings exploring the fine surface variations found on the faces of the 100 objects that make up his Lost Tablets series. The page sits within the site's 2023 contributors section, alongside other architects' works (navigation links show James Staughton and Jill Garner as neighbouring entries).

DRAWING BY JAN VAN SCHAIK

30 MARCH 2023

Happy Mag article

Lost Tablets feature in Happy Mag’s article about The Other Art Fair in May, 2023

The Other Art Fair returns to Sydney's The Cutaway at Barangaroo from 11–14 May 2023, showcasing over 120 emerging and established Australian artists across styles like abstract painting, NFT photography, oversized sculpture, and surreal collage. Featured artists include SYYPHER, Nkosi Ndlovu, Franca Turrin, Madi Whyte, and Zoe Milah DeJesus, with Jan van Schaik's "Lost Tablets" also appearing. Fair Director Luke Potkin called the lineup an exciting, diverse showcase of independent talent. Alongside art sales, attendees can enjoy installations, workshops, DJs, and a bar. Early-bird tickets offer over 50% off if booked by 12 April.

23 FEBRUARY 2023

Boom Gallery

Boom Gallery - 23 February to 19 March 2023

Boom Gallery in Geelong West hosted Lost Tablets Insomata by Jan van Schaik, opening 25 February and running through 19 March. The series uses found LEGO blocks — marked with the wear of previous owners — to explore tension between a recognisable children's toy and architectural symbolism, drawing inspiration from ruins like the Parthenon, Borromini's churches, and Gothic cathedrals. Each tablet has a "sheer" and "dynamic" face, with titles borrowed from ships found crewless at sea. Van Schaik, director of MvS Architects and RMIT senior lecturer, explores architecture's cultural dimensions through intuitive spatial work.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

21 FEBRUARY 2023

Melbourne Now Exhibition

Architectural highlights of upcoming Melbourne Now exhibition - ArchitectureAU

The NGV's Melbourne Now exhibition returns in 2023, surveying contemporary art, design and architecture from over 200 Victorian-based practitioners. Its Civic Architecture section features five urban-transforming public projects, including RMIT's New Academic Street, designed by Lyons with NMBW Architecture Studio, Harrison and White, MvS Architects — the firm led by Jan van Schaik — Maddison Architects and TCL. Other highlights include No House Style, showcasing residential architecture and object design, an Indigenous-focused installation by N'arweet Carolyn Briggs and Sarah Lynn Rees, and the returning Design Wall. Free entry runs 24 March to 20 August.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

19 JANUARY 2023

Oldskull blog review

Veronica reviews Lost Tablets for Spanish blog Oldskull, January 2023

Australian architect Jan van Schaik, based in Melbourne, creates "Lost Tablets": monochromatic architectural sculptures made from secondhand LEGO, standing about 25 cm tall. The ongoing project, now with 89 pieces, explores the relationship between humanity and environment, blending the childhood toy with architectural symbolism. The works feature weathered walls, arches, holes, and grime, evoking legacy and decay; each piece is named after a ghost ship. They've earned honors in art and architecture awards and been exhibited at the 2021 Venice Biennale, Melbourne Design Week, and the Quarantine Art Fair.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

13 JANUARY 2023

Langweile Dichnet

Maik Zeherfeld reviews Lost Tablets for German online publication Langweiledich, January 2023

Melbourne based architect Jan van Schaik builds intriguing sculptures from LEGO that appear flat yet dynamic. His ongoing series "Lost Tablets," now numbering over 80 works, also happens to showcase the versatility of the beloved building blocks along the way. A lovely thing indeed!

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

10 JANUARY 2023

Lost Tablets, Alfa Gallery

Alfa Gallery Artsy Exhibit, Miami - 10 January 2023 to 10 January 2024

Jan van Schaik's work explores the cultural and societal dimensions of architecture, translating intuitive spatial insights into the coded geometric language of the built environment. His Lost Tablets project extends this inquiry through art, probing the mysteries of human existence by juxtaposing a universally recognisable children's toy with architectural symbolism.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

09 JANUARY 2023

Mixed Grill blog review

Lost Tablets reviewed on Dutch blog Mixed Grill, January 2023

LEGO and art pair well together, as shown by Australian architect and artist Jan van Schaik, who builds monochrome sculptures from secondhand LEGO under the name "Lost Tablets." Following his intuition and drawing on architecture, he creates unique 25 cm-tall works blending technology and decay, each named after a ghost ship found adrift without crew. He has now built 89 sculptures and plans to finish the project at 100 with a second book — a first book, featuring 50 essays responding to his work, appeared after his 50th piece. The project is followed on Instagram.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

05 JANUARY 2023

Colossal Journal

Grace Ebert reviews Lost Tablets for Collosal, January 2023

Melbourne based architect and artist Jan van Schaik began his Lost Tablets series by accident, describing the first piece as a "three dimensional doodle." Now numbering 89 secondhand LEGO sculptures around ten inches tall, the works use worn, marked bricks to evoke decaying structures like Matera's caves, Borromini's churches and Gothic cathedrals, each named after a ghost ship. A third generation architect, van Schaik explores how cities rebuild upon themselves, citing the Acropolis of Athens. He plans to complete 100 works this year, with a new book and exhibitions at Boom Gallery, NAP Mildura and The Other Art Fair, Melbourne.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

07 NOVEMEBER 2022

Aus. Co. Report

Australia Council research report: “Developments in Web3 for the Creative Industries, November 2022

The Australia Council for the Arts and RMIT have collaborated on new research, Developments in Web3 for the Creative Industries, examining how creative practitioners use Web3 tools and platforms and helping the sector decide whether to engage with them. The launch featured report authors Professor Ellie Rennie, Dr Indigo Holcombe-James and Alana Kushnir, followed by a panel with artist Michelle Brown, creative technologist Sean Gardner, architect Jan van Schaik and artist Serwah Attafuah. The report covers NFTs and intellectual property, restitution and repatriation, and infrastructure around the metaverse and gaming.

29 SEPTEMBER 2022

Out of the Box

Out of the Box: A Celebration of Contemporary Box Art, Tom Buchanan, September 2022

The book Out of the Box explores box art, assemblage and collecting, bringing together more than 100 artists and creatives from 21 countries. It features over 500 works that use boxes and everyday objects in different ways, crossing the boundaries between fine art, design, decoration and sculpture. The book looks at how the simple box can become a space for creativity, memory and storytelling, while also reflecting on our everyday habit of organising and collecting objects. Overall, Out of the Box celebrates the diversity and accessibility of box art, showing how an ordinary object can become a vehicle for artistic expression and a way of exploring the world around us.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTIAN CAPURRO

12 JUNE 2022

Lost Tablets, Brotherhood

Lost Tablets | Cheap Second-hand Books Online

This is a Brotherhood Books listing (a second-hand book charity retailer) for Lost Tablets, edited by Jan van Schaik and designed by Yanni Florence, published in 2022 under the Creative Arts, Design & Architecture category. The brief product description notes the book explores the recognisability of a well-known children's toy alongside the geometric language of architecture. The item is currently listed as out of stock, with no pricing options available, and the page includes standard site navigation, related book suggestions, and newsletter sign-up prompts.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY YASEERA MOOSA

03 MAY 2022

Lethbridge Gallery

Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award, May 2022

Finalists of the Lethbridge 20000 art prize (2022), a small-scale art competition based in Brisbane, Australia. It lists the winner, Paul Trefry, for his mixed-media work "Unwanted" (about homelessness), the People's Choice winner Jacqueline Michell Butterworth, and numerous "Highly Commended" artists across mediums including oil painting, watercolour, acrylic, mixed media and pencil. Each artwork entry includes the artist's name, title, medium, dimensions, price, and an artist statement exploring themes like identity, nature, memory, and social issues. There's no mention of Jan van Schaik on this page.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

23 MAY 2022

Lost Tablets, Booktopia

Lost Tablets by Jan van Schaik, Yanni Florence | 9781922601186 | Booktopia

The Lost Tablets is a series by Jan van Schaik that explores architecture's geometric language through repurposed children's building blocks — each tablet paired with a mute face and a dynamic, architectural counterpart. This accompanying book gathers responses from 50 contributors across disciplines including architecture, economics, comedy, law, and poetry, each interpreting one tablet in their own voice. Exhibited throughout 2021 at venues including Spring 1883 Art Fair, Neon Parc, and the 17th Venice Biennale of Architecture, the project captures a richly subjective, collective reading of building and symbolism.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY YASEERA MOOSA

07 MARCH 2022

LEGO and architecture

The Definitive Union between Lego and Architecture, Connections by Finsa, August 2021

This article explores the relationship between LEGO and architecture, beginning with LEGO's Architecture sets and expanding into real-world architectural projects and design. It highlights examples such as LEGO staircases, public artworks that use LEGO to repair damaged buildings, the LEGO House in Denmark, and LEGO's collaboration with IKEA on modular storage. The article also focuses on Jan van Schaik's Lost Tablets, which uses second-hand LEGO to combine architectural forms with ideas about time, ageing and the effects of damage on buildings, inspired by the ruins of the Parthenon.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PETER BENNETTS

28 OCTOBER 2021

Old Lego into new art

David Hopkins reviews Lost Tablets for Nikkei Asia, October 2021

Melbourne architect Jan van Schaik uses the familiar toy to create abstract architectural forms that explore ideas about buildings, time, memory and existence. Van Schaik collects large quantities of used LEGO and sorts the pieces by colour before experimenting with combinations. The worn, previously owned bricks are an important part of the work, giving the sculptures a sense of age and history. The article highlights how he transforms an everyday children's toy into serious contemporary art, combining his architectural training with ideas about recycling, creativity and the passage of time.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE COOK

27 JULY 2021

Minimalist Lego Sculptures

Interview: Jan van Schaik on Lost Tablets. The Artling’s Artzine, July 2021

Jan van Schaik's Lost Tablets is a sculpture series made from second hand LEGO that combines architectural forms with ideas about mystery and existence. Van Schaik describes his creative process as a mix of intuition and planning, sorting large quantities of LEGO by colour, experimenting with small combinations of pieces, and gradually developing each sculpture while letting the pieces themselves influence the final form. His background as an architect, researcher and teacher strongly informs the work, which he sees as a new visual language for exploring questions that cannot easily be expressed in words.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON CHRISTOPHER REES

24 JULY 2021

Lost Tablets Talk

Floor talk by Jan van Schaik at Sarah Scout Presents Salon Projects April 2021

Jan van Schaik opens Lost Tablets first exhibition at Open House Melbourne.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AARON CHRISTOPHER REES