Freek Persyn was born in 1974 in Belgium and lives and works in Brussels. He is married to Sotiria Kornaropoulou and is the father of three children, Polly, Kimon, and Zoé. In 1998, he co-founded the office 51N4E, a spatial design practice focused on urban and social transformation. 51N4E works across a wide range of scales, from strategy to realization, and approaches the built environment with an affinity for both the physical and invisible dimensions of space. The work of 51N4E has received particular attention for its adaptive reuse projects in Central Europe and for its long-term engagement with Albania. Since 2019, Freek Persyn has combined his partnership at 51N4E with a professorship in Architecture and Urban Transformation at ETH Zürich.