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For me DOGMA | OFFICE is one of the most interesting architecture firms around. Their large scale anonymous architecture of clean white blocks mixed with their fantastically looking images is really mind-blowing. Their architecture and way of presenting makes me think of the first projects of Koolhaas, Superstudio and Yona Friedman. For me a great inspiration, don’t forget to check their website for more interesting projects!
DOGMA|OFFICE was born at the beginning of 2005 as a joint office between DOGMA and OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen. DOGMA|OFFICE is run by four architects, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Kersten Geers, Martino Tattara and David Van Severen and operates between Italy and Belgium.
DOGMA|OFFICE is interested in establishing an interpretation of the contemporary urban condition through an idea of architecture based on an ordinary and intelligible vocabulary of forms. The centre of the production of DOGMA|OFFICE is the architectural project in its capacity of establishing a dialectic relation with its environment, the city and its territory.
DOGMA|OFFICE sustain this position through a wide range of activities. The office is constantly taking part in competitions worldwide and has been carrying out projects at different scale, from housing renovations to neighbourhood master plans. Its members have been and are involved in teaching, writing, publishing and research activity.
“Architecture is like dogma, deliberate decision upon the undecidable, doctrine without proof.
Architecture frames and supports what cannot be predicted: life. If we were to summarize life in a city and life in a building in one gesture, it would have to be that of passing through walls. Every moment of our existence is a continuous movement through space defined by walls. Architects cannot define how program changes, how movement performs, how flows unfold, how change occurs. The only performance that can reliably be attributed to architecture is its specific inertia in the face of life’s mutability
Architecture is the definition of its boundaries rather than representation of its image. It is not the sculpting of an object or the shaping of a landmark, but the composition of parts through the framing of spaces. “Reality as found” can only be contained and confronted by architecture, not reproduced or represented.
Architecture is the continuous tension between inside and outside, between what it includes and what it excludes. Architecture is at once an aspiration to unite and recognize its own limits. As such, it always defines itself in relation to, and in antagonism with, its context.
Architecture must address the city even when the city has no goal for architecture. Ultimately, the form of the city is simultaneously the object for, and method of architecture. Architecture has an implicit and reciprocal relationship with the city i.e. without the city, architecture would not exist.
The architecture of our projects is form without style. It is radically silent and anonymous. Composed of authorless forms, its aim is to suspend all unnecessary celebrations and to postulate intelligible spatial configurations.chitecture is its specific inertia in the face of life’s mutability. “
