Coussée & Goris architecten

A portrait of COUSSÉE & GORIS architecten by Marie-Françoise Plissart

Twenty years after founding their firm and ten years after being awarded the Flemish Cultural Prize for Architecture, Ralf Coussée and Klaas Goris present an overview of their œuvre with an exhibition. In Natura Naturans they emphasise the importance of the surrounding landscape, the inspiration that they draw from the artistic and literary repertory of contemporary artists like Guiseppe Penone, and the value that is added by collaborations with like-minded architectural firms such as RCR Arquitectes, Gafpa and Raamwerk.

Marie-François Plissart:
In the Natura Naturans exhibition, artist Marie-Françoise Plissart presents a personal interpretation of the work of COUSSÉE & GORIS architects. Using photographs and video clips, she has created her own version of the buildings designed by the firm over the past ten years. The result is an idiosyncratic visual journey in which Plissart places herself in the viewer’s shoes.

COUSSÉE & GORIS architects: back to basics
The title Natura Naturans refers to Spinoza’s concept of ‘nature natured’. The seventeenth-century philosopher wanted to demonstrate that everything can be traced back to a single cause or origin. In this exhibition, Coussée and Goris return to the starting point.
The architects strive for sobriety and a certain perfection. But the hand of the creator is always visible. Adopting a position in which they nestle between the human and the material is crucial to the success of their projects. COUSSÉE & GORIS architecten achieve a simplicity of language and a great constructive precision. This is clear from recently completed buildings such as the art gallery Zeno X in Antwerp, the crematorium in Holsbeek, het Zwin Visitor Centre and de Krook city library in Ghent.