OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen est représentatif de la nouvelle vague qui fait de l’architecture belge l’une des plus enthousiasmantes du moment. Ce numéro de la revue 2G dévoile la manière radicale dont ils détournent le programme de leurs constructions.
For some
time now Belgian architecture has been forging ahead as one of the most
interesting in Europe. Following in the wake of more consolidated studios like
Robrecht en Daem (2G N.55), Xaveer De Geyter or Stéphane Beel is a new generation
of top-notch architects such as De Vylder Vick Taillieu and OFFICE Kersten
Geers David Van Severen itself.
With a
track record stretching back ten years, the studio of Kersten Geers and David
Van Severen has tackled all kinds of projects from a radical POV: quasi-utopian
city proposals, frontier posts, single-family houses, government buildings,
exhibition designs and pavilions. Their architecture has not only to do with
the design solutions that emerge but depends on radical reformulations of the programme—such
as emptying the Belgian Pavilion in the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture
and filling it with confetti—rigid schemes in plan—like the square divided into
nine of the villa in Buggenhout—the construction of spaces based on
concatenated rooms (or enfilades)—like the weekend house in Merchtem—or the
burying of the volume—as in their villa in Brussels or the design for the
Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen.
This number
of 2G contains three introductory texts written by the British critic Ellis
Woodman, the American historian Joan Ockman, and the architects and editors of
the magazine San Rocco Pier Paolo Tamburelli and Andrea Zanerigo. To complement
these, the Nexus section includes texts by the architects themselves and an
interview with Enrique Walker. All the buildings have been photographed by the
superb Dutch photographer Bas Princen.
Espagnol / anglais.
