Luis Fernández-Galiano   Kersten Geers and David Van Severen write like they design, with a clear line. Their interpretative transparency – both are committed to teaching –, their visual acuity and their intellectual impact make it almost redundant to comment on the work of

Jean-Louis Cohen   Questioned on the appropriation of existing forms in OFFICE’s projects, Kersten Geers has affirmed in 2017: “We are interested in references, but we use them ‘lightly’.” This modest statement provides an initial orientation for the analysis of the wo

David Van Severen, Kersten Geers    These projects were designed between 2004 and 2019. Until now, fifteen have been built. Some of them are better known elsewhere than they are in their own neighbourhood. They have double lives – both as the main protagonist of an architectural narrat

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The expansion of a nineteenth-century townhouse in the heart of Ghent resulted in a second house – a ‘summer house’ marked out by a precise modular frame of steel sections, overgrown with grapevines, that sits in the irregular outdoor space alongside

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   This freestanding dwelling is placed in the middle of a parcel between woods and farmland near the village of Buggenhout. The modular steel fence that encloses it is an integral part of the design, defining the volume of the house and setting it apar

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The small town of Tielt, in the province of West Flanders, is the home of this electronic components shop built on an an elongated, irregular site. The first design decision was to raise the brick party walls to their maximum height. On the side towa

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   This weekend house fills the whole of a deep lot in a small town in Flanders. An existing row house on the site is turned into guest quarters, while its long backyard is absorbed, transformed into the weekend house proper. The new house is organized

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The center of Brussels has a periphery inside. A piece of landscape, green, open, idyllic, as if it were on the fringes of the city. In order to double the surface of a seemingly freestanding house in this strangely lush environment, it was decided t

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   Set on a large, secluded site on the periphery of Brussels, Villa Der Bau replaces a mansion from the 1900s, taking roughly its volume. The base of the building, half-submerged in the rising terrain, is formed by a compact grid of rooms organized as

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   United Arab Emirates   This set of gardens was designed and built for the 11th Sharjah Biennial, directed by the Japanese curator Yuko Hasegawa. After developing a strategy to urbanize the existing heritage area of Sharjah, the design proposed a set of pavilions that compl

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Bahrain   Dar Al Jinaa and Dar Al Riffa are two similar buildings, part of an urban renewal project in the historic center of Muharraq in Bahrain. The ambition is to give a public face to the ancient community of pearl divers and their musical and cultural tra

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Spain   The geometry of this house designed by the Belgian practice of Kersten Geers and David van Severen and located in Matarraña (Teruel) originates from the idea of maximizing enjoyment of the surrounding natural landscape through a panoptic, 360º view.

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   This building was commissioned by the Provincial Development Company of West Flanders to provide four large rentable working and production spaces for young companies in various professional fields. Raised on an elongated site in the municipality of

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   This project converts a decaying building into a contemporary and durable office space without demolishing its skeleton. The existing building was stripped and then wrapped with an independent facade that serves as both an architectural element and a

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   A crematorium is an important public building. It has, however, a conflicted attitude towards self-expression, torn between its technical content and its ceremonial character. To overcome this, the building is designed as a big inclined table, of whi

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Estonia   This proposal is for a center dedicated to the contemporary classical composer Arvo Pärt. It is located near Kellasalu in Pärt’s native Estonia, in an elegant, dense stretch of forest where the silence of nature presents itself to those who are willi

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   France   The competition-winning project set out to renovate and transform the Caserne de Reuilly, a former infantry quarter located in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. Dating from the 19th century, during World War II the Caserne de Reuilly served as a mobi

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Switzerland   The new building for RTS (Radio Télévision Suisse) is positioned in the heart of the double campus of EPFL and UNIL and functions as a ‘hinge,’ not just between the two campuses, but between fields of education and research, between classical broadca

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   Tondo is a footbridge in the center of Brussels that connects the offices of the Chamber of Representatives with its recent extension, the Forum building, on the other side of the street. The bridge was explicitly designed as a spatial element rather

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The new library for Sint-Martens-Latem is first of all a central gathering point. In the tradition of the cultural center, it is set up as a large living space, shared by local residents. A saddle-shaped roof is delimited by a circular perimeter that

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The new Tim Van Laere Gallery of contemporary art in Antwerp goes up in a central location within the New South district (Nieuw Zuid), an ambitious urban redevelopment plan launched by the city council in collaboration with the private developer Trip

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   Sited right at the entrance to the new Mediapark in Brussels, the Maison Media Huis contains various entities related to media and broadcasting. Instead of one large building, three buildings are stacked in a pyramid formation that is immediately rec

Christ & Gantenbein, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   A latent symbol of a declining automobile industry, the Citroën showroom and workshop form an urban island that dominates the north of the ringroad alongside the Brussels canal. The project is intended to revive the importance of this place and resto

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   United States   Being as it is in a seismic zone, the Yale Union contemporary art center needs to update its current infrastructure, a complex of historic brick buildings from the early 1900s. Rather than undertaking a structural renovation and jeopardizing the spat

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Italy   This modest industrial building, small in scale yet state of the art, stands in an exceptional location, a UNESCO world heritage site that hosts the Villa del Trebbio, the first Medici villa outside Florence, and possibly the first Renaissance villa

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The new brewery for Brussels Beer Project (BBP) is located along the Brussels canal within the rapidly redeveloping industrial zone of Port Sud. The building houses the complete beer production process, but is also open to the public. It is conceived

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The project for an extension of the Design Museum Ghent is composed by a stacking of various geometrical figures. Together with a concrete slab defined by the perimeter of the site, the stacking offered a variety of spaces on each floor. While the ma