Kersten Geers of OFFICE in Conversation with Amale Andraos

GSAPP Conversations

Dean Amale Andraos speaks with Kersten Geers, who taught an Advanced Studio at Columbia GSAPP in the Spring 2017 semester and is co-founder of OFFICE KGDVS with David Van Severen. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including installations at the 2016 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, and most recently in an exhibition with Go Hasegawa at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Andraos and Geers discuss a shared obsession with books and the integral role that book-making plays in their professional offices and teaching. Geers echoes Aldo Rossi’s call for evaluating architecture within a cultural context, and sees books as the ideal tool for creating a place where architectural work acquires value and meaning – a device to establish a context of ideas. “David and I think we have quite an open-minded practice, but even so you somehow cannot avoid that it is enclosed – it does have borders. And if you want to keep on living with the practice, it’s important to keep on thinking, to keep on looking, to keep on discovering. The books, and for that reason also the teaching, allow you to look further and to find these other things.” –Kersten Geers on the integral role of making books as part of his practice with David Van Severen