2x2: Jonathan Olivares with Kersten Geers and David Van Severen

09/15/2015
esigner Jonathan Olivares will present work from his office; architects Kersten Geers and David Van Severen will present work from their office; then the three will interview each other. "2x2": two design practices seen two ways.

Jonathan Olivares established Jonathan Olivares Design Research in 2006 and works in industrial, spatial, and communication design. Based in Los Angeles, JODR approaches design through basic everyday objects reflecting the human condition and the body, in order to question conventional archetypes and emphasize use-value over showmanship. Recent projects include the exhibition Source Material (2014), co-curated with Jasper Morrison and Marco Velardi; the website "A View on Natural Motion," for Nike (2014); the Olivares Aluminum Chair, for Knoll (2012); and the book A Taxonomy of Office Chairs (Phaidon Press, 2011). Olivares’s work has been published internationally and has won several design awards, including Italy’s Compasso d’Oro, and his firm has received grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for two design research projects.

Kersten Geers, Design Critic in Architecture, is a principal of OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, which he cofounded in 2002 with David Van Severen. The firm is known for its idiosyncratic architecture—utopian and non-realized projects are customary. It does not invent the architecture but reflects and considers what architecture can signify and be today, reduced to bare essences. Its architectonic ideas are derived from geometric corrections and rigid classifications, to measure the world as it presents itself and to allow life to unfold in all its complexities. In 2010, OFFICE Kersten Geers David van Severen won the Venice Biennale Silver Lion for most promising young architect. In 2012 an overview of their work and was published as a monographic issue. Recently, they were awarded a double Belgian Prize for Architecture.