Everything Architecture: OFFICE KGDVS stages ambitious retrospective

Since being formed in 2002, Belgian architecture firm OFFICE KGDVS (Kersten Geers David Van Severen) has quickly become one of the country's leading emerging – and most influential – practices around.

The firm's new exhibition, entitled 'Everything Architecture', situated within the antechambers at Bozar – the Brussels Centre For Fine Art – has a suitably ambitious goal: to shake up the existing stereotype and format of what an architecture exhibition should be.

Geers and Van Severen have curated their retrospective to convey their firm's central ideology: that all of their studio's output – models, sketches and technical drawings alike – can exist as standalone products in their own right.

The show itself – built mostly around a series of models, but also drawings and paintings – aims to distill the practice's architecture down to its ‘very essence and original form’ by bringing architecture theory back to the basics and focusing on essential values. This approach is accompanied by a visually powerful and pragmatic analysis of the geometric processes that lead to the creation of a three-dimensional volume.

The exhibit’s ‘family of models’ is presented alongside this calculated addition of art, which challenges the architectural elements, creating a dialogue between the two. Selected pieces from key artists such as Jené Daniëls, John Baldessari and Lewis Baltz stand side by side with the work of Geers and Van Severen. Their arrangement's spatial organisation simultaneously drawing on its surrounding space though a series of tables mirroring the impressive dome and setting.

 

The exhibit includes architecture models, drawings, art, and sculpture. Pictured: one of OFFICE KGDVS's designs for the Solo House, currently under construction in Spain. Courtesy of Kersten Geers and David Van Severen

 

Geers and Severen hope to challenge the stereotype of what an architecture exhibition should be by showing their drawings and models as beautiful and meaningful objects in their own right. Photography: Stefano Graziani

 

The Belgian architects created this pavilion, entitled Oasis, for the Sharjah Biennial 11, which opened in 2013 at the United Arab Emirates. Photography: Bas Princen

 

The practice's proposal for Dar Al Riffa Al Oda, the concervation and redesign of the existing Dar in Bahrain, done in collaboration with Emaar

 

Strategically placed amongst the architecture works are pieces from artists such as Jené Daniëls, John Baldessari and Lewis Baltz. Pictured: 2 figures and 2 fisures, John Baldessari