Interviews
Kersten Geers and David Van Severen Interview / OFFICE KGDVS / Part 1
04.21.09 / 2009 · Belgium · Brussels · David Van Severen · Interview · Kersten Geers · OFFICE KGDVS
Interview to Belgian architects Kersten Geers [Ghent, 1975] and David Van Severen [Ghent, 1978] principals of OFFICE KGDVS, founded in 2002. They have worked at Neutelings Riedijk Architects [Geers] and with Stéphane Beel and Xaveer De Geyter [Van Severen]. Currently, they’re both teaching at the TU Delft, the Berlage Institute and Ghent University.
In 2008, this practice was invited to participate in Ordos100 project, curated by Ai Wei Wei. They also represented Belgium at the eleventh international architecture biennale in Venice that same year.
OFFICE KGDVS works with primary operations [back to the roots], away from the superdutch [and also Danish] manners of Rem Koolhaas and his thugs [although this may or may not be a coincidence].
In this part of the interview, Geers and Van Severen describe their participation at the last Architecture Biennale, the Belgian context, historical references and how to approach different projects without any form of rhetoric or diagrammatic operations.
“OFFICE constantly tests the basic conditions of space –delimitation, embedment, inclusion and exclusion- in various scales and contexts.”
– Moritz Küng in Half modern, half something else
They’re currently presenting a solo exhibition in deSingel International Art Center, -Antwerp, Belgium- titled 7 rooms, which opens until May 03, 2009.
“Seven Rooms articulates the trajectory of a decision, a problem deliberately self-imposed and relentlessly addressed: The definition of a room, inside or outside a given architecture [a room within a room: sometimes a room inscribed in a existing room, sometimes a room circumscribed about an existing room], and against which the room is formulated as a mathematical correction; a problem whose resolution [the demarcation of limits, the positioning of thresholds, the reduction of leftovers] is met once this room, and its delineation, seems as if it had actually preceded rather than followed the given architecture- a project as an erratum.”
- Extract from Erratum by Enrique Walker
Recorded Feb 2009
Interview by Kim Courreges / Felipe De Ferrari M.
Transcripted by Kim Courreges / Felipe De Ferrari M.
Edited by Felipe De Ferrari M.
Music by Matías Aguayo
Posted by Felipe De Ferrari M.
