Stretched between a nineteenth-century classicist façade and a twenty-first-century attempt at postmodernism, Tondo, the footbridge by Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen and Bollinger+Grohmann (B+G), offers the city a robust piece of infrastructure. The project needed to connect the Belgian Federal Parliament and the Forum building while bridging a difference in height of 90 cm over less than 15 m, being wheelchair accessible, and having as little impact as possible on the existing architecture. Critical of the new geometries often proposed for these kinds of projects, the architects returned to the classic, geometric form of the perfect circle. The circular plan was able to respond with a single gesture to the important and contradictory constraints while creating a strong and autonomous form. ‘If you have to mediate between two buildings, you can only do it tangentially. So, what you do is to turn the question around and create an ideal world that stands on its own’, the architects explain. Tondo is such an environment. Referring to the circular tondo paintings by Renaissance artists such as Raphael, Botticelli and Michelangelo, the eponymous project presents itself as a spatial element, an entity with its own autonomy.
“Despite its modest surface, this project attests to the masterful use of architecture that can not only satisfy functional and structural demands but also add an important conceptual dimension: the bridge might be understood as a mirage in the public realm, the illusion of an open window into the administration workplace and an echo of the sky and the street activity.” – Sofia von Ellrichshausen
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Kersten Geers
In this episode, host Grace La interviews Kersten Geers, who is a founding partner together with David Van Severen of OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen and the Kenzo Tange Design Critics in architecture at the GSD. Kersten recounts his early encounters with David in Belgium and the U.S., and the influence of Iñaki Ábalos and Juan Herreros during their studies in Spain. Commenting on the nature of collaboration with David, Kersten underscores the significance of dialogue in their process, in which design is understood as a cultural project and a conversation between people and across time. Reflecting on their long-standing academic inquiry of “Architecture without Content,” Kersten comments on the incapacity of architecture to keep pace with changes in technology, program, lifestyle and behavior; instead, he argues for space that is pleasurable and for an understanding of architecture as well-proportioned frames within which the complexities of life unfold.
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