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OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen. Refleção crítica para o elogio
| Summary: | This dissertation is born from a personal motivation that became the object of critical research, the architectural practice of the OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen studio. Starting from an initial, almost intuitive attraction for graphic clarity, formal rigor and the latent ambiguity in the projects, the work builds an analysis that is both theoretical and sensitive, seeking to understand the mechanisms of design and the discourses they cross. The proposal is not only to describe and comment on the work, but to position a gaze, a critical compass, from which one can construct a compliment, an informed compliment, constructed with distance and proximity, capable of recognizing both the strength of gestures and their contradictions. The reflection is structured around central concepts such as ambiguity, conflict and the rhetoric of form and function, establishing parallels with other fields of thought, such as the literature of José Saramago or the art pieces of Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, among others. The work also investigates how the studio uses themes such as the «big box», «the perimeter», the void and about materials, not only as formal solutions, but as structures that carry a critical intention about the act of designing, production and representation. At the same time, the role of drawing, photographic image and collage as modes of rehearsal, as ways of thinking about architecture before, during and after its material materialization, is discussed. Through the reading of paradigmatic projects, the study reveals a practice that is built by accumulation, repetition, citation and confrontation between references. The architecture of the OFFICE studio is understood as a field of tension between simplicity and complexity, between literalness and abstraction, between disciplinary autonomy and cultural contamination. It is in this game that its strength lies in the ability to establish silent but dense atmospheres, to design spaces that more than solve, they question. This work thus intends to contribute to the understanding of the relevance of the Belgian studio's practice in the context of contemporary architecture, not only as a production of built moments, but as a form of critical thinking, whose apparent formal neutrality hides a clear position before architectural thinking. It is, ultimately, an essay on the possibility of thinking about architecture as a language and as a cultural construction, where praise is not an end, but a means to deepen the gaze. |
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| Subject: | Arts Artes |
| Country: | Portugal |
| Document type: | master thesis |
| Access type: | Open |
| Associated institution: | Repositório Aberto da Universidade do Porto |
| Language: | Portuguese |
| Origin: | Repositório Aberto da Universidade do Porto |
| Summary: | This dissertation is born from a personal motivation that became the object of critical research, the architectural practice of the OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen studio. Starting from an initial, almost intuitive attraction for graphic clarity, formal rigor and the latent ambiguity in the projects, the work builds an analysis that is both theoretical and sensitive, seeking to understand the mechanisms of design and the discourses they cross. The proposal is not only to describe and comment on the work, but to position a gaze, a critical compass, from which one can construct a compliment, an informed compliment, constructed with distance and proximity, capable of recognizing both the strength of gestures and their contradictions. The reflection is structured around central concepts such as ambiguity, conflict and the rhetoric of form and function, establishing parallels with other fields of thought, such as the literature of José Saramago or the art pieces of Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, among others. The work also investigates how the studio uses themes such as the «big box», «the perimeter», the void and about materials, not only as formal solutions, but as structures that carry a critical intention about the act of designing, production and representation. At the same time, the role of drawing, photographic image and collage as modes of rehearsal, as ways of thinking about architecture before, during and after its material materialization, is discussed. Through the reading of paradigmatic projects, the study reveals a practice that is built by accumulation, repetition, citation and confrontation between references. The architecture of the OFFICE studio is understood as a field of tension between simplicity and complexity, between literalness and abstraction, between disciplinary autonomy and cultural contamination. It is in this game that its strength lies in the ability to establish silent but dense atmospheres, to design spaces that more than solve, they question. This work thus intends to contribute to the understanding of the relevance of the Belgian studio's practice in the context of contemporary architecture, not only as a production of built moments, but as a form of critical thinking, whose apparent formal neutrality hides a clear position before architectural thinking. It is, ultimately, an essay on the possibility of thinking about architecture as a language and as a cultural construction, where praise is not an end, but a means to deepen the gaze. |
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