We are delighted to announce that Xaveer De Geyter will present this year's Metzstein Architecture Discourse, which will take place on Wednesday 11 October at the Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre.
Xaveer De Geyter Architects (XDGA) is a Brussels and Paris-based office practicing architecture, urbanism and landscape design, founded in 1988 by Xaveer De Geyter after his experience at OMA/Rem Koolhaas.
Since then, XDGA has managed to build up a significant portfolio and obtain worldwide recognition thanks to its radical approach, diversified expertise and international team. XDGA counts to this day 5 monographs, numerous awards (Mies Van der Rohe Award, Bigmat Award, Flemish Culture Award for Architecture) and 3 travelling solo exhibitions.
"Ideally architecture is not about fixing activities, fluxes or programs, or worse, about solving spatial problems. On the contrary, it is about opening up possibilities: the potential of a site, the hidden opportunity of a particular situation in time, of a programmatic conflict. It is about dealing with uncertainty, about enabling different and unforeseen scenarios. In that sense architecture and urbanism are not opposed disciplines with different outcomes, but similar mediators, on different scales and in different degrees of complexity, with the same goal of enabling life." XDGA Statement.
The Metzstein Discourse, inaugurated in 2014, is named after Professor Isi Metzstein OBE RSA, a hugely respected architect and teacher as well as former Treasurer of the RSA. Generations of students, both at the Mackintosh School of Architecture where he taught for most of his life, and at Edinburgh University where he was Professor and Head of Department, found him to be an unforgettable inspiration.
Doors open 6.15pm
