LECTURE AT THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN STUDIES AT TORCUATO DI TELLA UNIVERSITY IN BUENOS AIRES

Kersten Geers will give a lecture on OFFICE work on Monday November 4th at 19h at UTDT in Buenos Aires. The lecture is organised by the Centre for Contemporary Architecture Studies. You can find more info on the event here.

OFFICE 126 Centres for Traditional Music is part of the group exhibition Restless Architecture at the MAXXI museum Rome. The exhibition was curated by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and will be on view from October 25th until March 16th 2025. You can find more info here.

Fondazione ICA Milano presents Picture Window Frame, an exhibition by Stefano Graziani and OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, curated by Cloe Piccoli, running from 03.10 to 30.11.2024.

This second iteration of a commission by window manufacturer Finstral, showcases Graziani's photography of Finstral’s production process and art collection, alongside new photographs from Milan’s artist archives, academies, and museums. The display, designed by OFFICE, reuses the aluminium window frames from the first exhibition, now reconfigured to fit a smaller space. A catalogue will be published by a+mbookstore. More info available here.

LECTURE AT THE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA

Kersten Geers will give a lecture on OFFICE work on Wednesday October 9th at 7PM at Kuppelsaal at TU Vienna. The lecture is organised by the Institute of Architectural Design. You can find more info on the event here.

OFFICE 301: UNIVERSITY CAMPUS COMPLETED

OFFICE 301 University Campus in Antwerp, developed with Jaspers-Eyers Architects, is ready for its first academic year. The project transformed a former slaughterhouse into a hi-tech campus for 3,500 science and biomedical students. The single-story industrial hall was repurposed with a new floor slab, doubling its original 7,600 m² surface and blending smooth concrete with exposed structural elements. The lower façade was cut for continuous glazing and features round openings above for windows or air vents. The campus includes workshops, labs, and lecture rooms along two wide parallel corridors. A new connected tower houses classrooms and administration, with stepped terraces on the upper floors, forming a landmark for the future sustainable mixed-use development.

"Written as a kind of anti-guidebook, Something Completely Different by Christophe Van Gerrewey, appropriates certain clichés about Belgium (Baudelaire famously called Belgian monuments “counterfeits of France”), eschews the pragmatism of most guidebooks in favour of meditative, essayistic prose, and finally, cunningly, reveals that all along the subject has not been Belgium at all, but rather the nature of architecture." Published by MIT Press.

Cover photo OFFICE 50 After the Party by Bas Princen.

The latest edition of El Croquis magazine dedicated to the work of OFFICE has just been published. It presents a selection of twenty-five projects made over the period of seven years since the previous OFFICE monograph, including several projects that have not been published before. The issue also features an essay by Christophe Van Gerrewey and an interview Giovanna Borasi conducted with Kersten Geers and David Van Severen. You can find more info and order your copy here. 

LECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

Kersten Geers and David Van Severen will present the latest publication on OFFICE work at the International Architectural Education Platform SEKISUI HOUSE - KUMA LAB. The lecture will take place on Friday July 19th at 6.30PM at Haseko-Kuma Hall. You can find more info on the event here.

EVERYTHING XVI-XX
A MODERNIST ENDING

This book chronicles the fourth academic year of the studio led by Kersten Geers at the Academy of Architecture USI in Mendrisio. It was produced as a counterpart to Experiments in Thickness, a book which focused on the work of Giancarlo de Carlo in Urbino. As a means of grappling with that elephant in the room—the modern project—and its perceived failure of good intentions, all the projects gathered here are an update of sorts. Abstract overarching narratives were updated as premises for projects in Milan, De Carlo’s campus in Urbino was updated to accommodate current student population, and unrealised projects in Milan were revived to create a radically contemporary urbanity. But this was not an exercise in nostalgia and retrieval of the lost cause, as much as seeking an opportunity in a modernist ending.

CHURCH TOWER AT THE PORT OF ANTWERP
BY BAS PRINCEN

Bas Princen is the laureate of the artist competition organised by the Port of Antwerp for the gothic church tower of Wilmarsdonk, the only remnant of the polder villages that have been erased in the 1960s for the expansion of the harbour, today completely surrounded by the shipping containers. Bas Princen's design — executed in collaboration with OFFICE – is a small garden around the tower, sunken to the original ground floor level, and enclosed by a railing structure that carries fourteen large photographs printed on metal sheets that depict 1:1 details of the tower. The official opening will take place on May 27th and this will be a rare occasion to see the tower and the installation, which will remain inaccessible. 

OFFICE 398: EXPO PARK PARK PARK
COMPETITION PROPOSAL

OFFICE and Inside/Outside’s competition proposal for a multifunctional exhibition center on the outskirts of Tirana aims to create first and foremost a park: a structuring ecosystem for the city’s future development. The design reduces to minimum the footprint of the multifunctional exhibition center by lifting the light structures from the ground and creating an uninterrupted continuation of public space. The architecture is organized into three volumes where simple geometric typologies and double skin envelopes provide maximum plan adaptability and programmatic flexibility. Its future-proof character, the capacity to stand ready to meet yet unformulated needs, contributes to the sustainability of the Expo Park.

A BIG HOUSE
STUDIO AT TOKYO UNIVERSITY

Kersten Geers and David Van Severen are teaching an International Design Studio this semester at Sekisui House — Kuma Lab, a program for international architectural education, founded at the University of Tokyo. Titled “A Big House”, the studio will explore new concepts for urban housing typologies within the extreme density of Tokyo. Pushing against typical residential scale, students will design timber “big houses” that test the limits of domesticity through repetition, exaggerated shared spaces, or other means of achieving an intentionally amplified presence. The aim is to inject new models of urban living into Tokyo’s urban fabric. You can find more info about the program here.

OFFICE 359: MEGAFACTORY
GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY

The groundbreaking ceremony for the Belgian small satellite manufacturer Aerospacelab took place on May 16th in Charleroi. The project for a new factory comprises two volumes: a vacated modernist building repurposed as a parking facility and, connected to it by a pedestrian bridge, a 130m-long elongated elliptical volume. The latter works like a box in a box: a central rectangular ‘clean room’ for production and assembly is enclosed by peripheral smaller spaces for ateliers and laboratories. Above, there is a field of offices pierced by a grid of circular patios. With 7’000 square meters of production area and 4’000 square meters of clean room, this will be the third largest satellite factory in the world. The building is scheduled to be completed in June 2026.

OFFICE 285: TWIN TOWERS, GHENT
BUILDING PERMIT GRANTED

The building permit has been approved for the housing complex located next to the main railway station in Ghent. The project consists of two identical towers with a public square in between, and is part of a larger redevelopment of the area enclosed by the railway and the Ringvaart canal. The project had a predefined base: the foundations, as well as the underground parking garage had already been built. The two towers thus adapted to the existing structural grid, and were conceived as shelves of cast-in-situ concrete carrying isolated wooden boxes of housing units. The plans range to accommodate four, six or eight apartments per floor, each with a small winter garden. The central core has a generous bicycle storage, so the residents can bring their bicycles to their apartment floor, rather than leave them downstairs. Additionally, the program includes two commercial spaces on the ground floor, and a bar and a restaurant on the public plaza. 

OFFICE 283: HOUSING COMPLEX, ANTWERP
CONSTRUCTION STARTED

Part of an urban strategy to redevelop the old “Slaughterhouse district" in Antwerp into a vibrant neighbourhood with a university campus and collective housing, the project consists of two corner buildings on the first residential block of the masterplan. Striving for architectural coherence, OFFICE worked closely with the designers of the adjacent buildings —Robbrecht & Daem and De Smet— to achieve six volumes with distinct identities, yet harmonious in materiality. Together, the different buildings are creating a roof-scape with alternated flat and pitched roofs, visually resembling the heterogeneous industrial past of the area. Construction works started in mid-2023 and the buildings are expected to be finished in the beginning of 2026. Another OFFICE project within the same masterplan— the nearby former slaughterhouse transformed into a new University campus of the AP Hogeschool is almost completed and will open its doors in the academic year 2024-2025.

OFFICE 324: MEDIA HOUSE VRT
CONSTRUCTION SITE VISIT

Construction works for Media House VRT (Flemish Radio and Television) proceed at a fast pace. TV studios are currently being built with the key public and logistic spaces around them. Ground floor level construction has started and the multi-faceted perimeter of the building that addresses the city and the forest, shaping four outdoor spaces, is now visible on site. The competition was won by OFFICE in a design-and-build process with consortium VRT Morgen (OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Jaspers-Eyers Architects, Bureau Bas Smets, Willemen, Jan De Nul, EEG, Tractebel, CES, iDeal Acoustics) in June 2021, and is scheduled to be completed at the end of 2025. A guided tour of VRT construction site will be organised on May 26th, on the occasion of the “Open Wervendag”. You can subscribe via this link.