Kersten Geers: Architecture Without Content

Kersten Geers (b. 1975, Ghent) studied at the Ghent University in Belgium and the ETSA in Madrid, Spain. In 2002 he founded OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen together with David Van Severen. OFFICE has received numerous honors and awards, including the Belgian Prize for Architecture, the Silver Lion at the 12th Venice Biennale of Architecture, and Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Kersten Geers has been teaching at various institutions, such as the Berlage Institute, Columbia University GSAPP, Yale School of Architecture, and École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne ‐ EPFL, and he is currently holding a professorship at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland, as well as the Kenzo Tange chair at Harvard GSD. He is a founding member of the architecture magazine San Rocco, and frequently publishes essays on architecture. 

Abstract:

Architecture Without Content is architecture reduced to its very perimeter. Only the economy of the envelope determines the success of the building. Its radical frugality does not make it less critical. Economy of means is the weapon of choice to express its ideology. Its primary function lies not in the manipulation of what it contains, but rather in the simple mediation between what happens inside and outside. If the big boxes are our new monuments, then the interior is our new world. In a world lacking an outside, scale is the only thing that matters. Architecture Without Content is too big to ignore.

Introduction by Andrea Simitch.