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ARCHITECTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY AND GRAPHICS ARE MERGED IN THE COLLABORATION BETWEEN ARCHITECTS OFFICE KGDVS AND PHOTOGRAPHER BAS PRINCEN. OWEN PRITCHARD REPORTS ON THE MEETING OFTWO DISCIPLINES AND THEIR GARDEN PAVILION AT THE VENICE BIENNALE
Brussels-based Office KGDVS, founded by Kersten Geers and David Van Severen, has been a long-time collaborator with photographer Bas Princen. Their latest project, the Garden Pavilion, won the Silver Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Working together on and off since the start of their careers, this collaboration was in some ways an inevitability, but also a new development: until now Princen has only documented the practice's completed work.
In 2008 he recorded Office's Belgian Pavilion, titled After the Party, which contained and reorientated the existing 1907 pavilion. Consisting of a large steel wall, which encircled the building, it forced visitors to encounter the existing architecture in a different way, before providing the visitor with an enclosed, contemplative space inside.
In the same year, the practice was invited by Ai Wei Wei to design a house for the Ordos project in Inner Mongolia. Its villa, 25 Rooms, explores the notions of boundaries and social order. Crucially, however,...