Kersten Geers and David Van Severen will give a lecture on the work of their Brussels-based practice, OFFICE, and present key projects illustrating their long-standing interest in the contemporary city. The lecture will highlight projects that navigate the scale of the evenly dispersed and decentralized “Large City,” including the Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS) headquarters in Lausanne and the Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT) headquarters in Brussels, currently under construction. By bridging recent work with earlier projects—such as Solo House (2017)—Geers and Van Severen offer a profound reflection on the position of architecture as a cultural tool in our increasingly dispersed social realm.
Geers and Van Severen founded OFFICE in 2002. Established as a means of exploring the prospects for architecture within contemporary cultural and urban environments, it gained renown in the mid-2000s for its idiosyncratic visual language and theoretical projects, including “Border Garden” (2005), “A Grammar for the City” (2005), and “Cité de Refuge” (2007). OFFICE developed its discursive practice through such early projects as the transformation of the entrance to a notary’s office (2005) and a private house in Buggenhout (2012). The firm represented Belgium at the 2008 Venice Biennial and received the Silver Lion two years later. Its international scope later expanded with the Pearling Path project in Bahrain, for which it received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2019. The scale of OFFICE’s built work then shifted with the RTS headquarters in Lausanne. Other notable projects include a crematorium in Ostend (2021), a brewery in Brussels (2022), the VRT headquarters, and a satellite factory in Charleroi, currently under construction. This output has been documented in numerous publications, including two monographic issues of El Croquis (2016, 2024) and an ongoing, multivolume survey of the firm’s work (2017, 2025). Parallel to this practice, OFFICE has directed design studios at Columbia, Yale, and Harvard, EPF Lausanne, and the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, where Geers is a full professor.