Geoffrey von Oeyen is Founder and Principal of Los Angeles-based Geoffrey von Oeyen Design. His work “mediate[s] between the existing and the new with the aim of reframing and redirecting existing views, patterns, and orientations.” Von Oeyen characterizes the relationship within each project as “a dialogue that seeks to reveal essential geometric paradigms.” His practice has several projects in development in California, Texas, Georgia, and Puerto Rico, including the Horizon House and the Case Room, a private study for two attorneys, which are due to begin construction this summer in Malibu, California.
Geoffrey von Oeyen Design is one of the winners of the 2014 Architectural League Prize, one of North America’s most prestigious awards for young architects and designers. The prize, established in 1981, recognizes exemplary and provocative work by young practitioners and provides a public forum — through lectures, an exhibition, and a catalogue — for the exchange of their ideas.
In this interview, von Oeyen details his design process as “using the building as an optical device for registering the natural environment,” with extensive study of natural light through computer and physical modeling as well as photography to calibrate light for the time of day and season. His Overlay installation arrays drawings, renderings, and models of seven of his firm’s projects in a grid on the wall, with the work framed and shaped to address the viewer directly and break the rectilinear image plane of the ubiquitous white box gallery. Von Oeyen’s interest in the relationship of built form to the natural environment is also explored in his discussion of architecture and sailing.
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