The Night is Darker Before Dawn

From the expanded International Centre for Art and Landscape on Vassivière island in central France to installations for the all-night arts festival Nuit Blanche in Paris, from the extended Collection Lambert in Avignon to a mobile museum project for the Centre Pompidou, this monograph offers a glimpse into an approach at the intersection between architecture, visual art, design and scenography.

Berger & Berger was founded by the architect Cyrille Berger and his artist brother Laurent P. Berger. Together they engage in an uninterrupted dialogue between architecture and art that explores our relationship with space and the environment.

At a time when ecological crises are forcing us to rethink and reinvent our way of being in the world, the “age of the builders” seems to be well and truly over. The Bergers demonstrate this through an understated approach and quintessential, humble gestures, both in the field of art and in their way of responding to construction projects.

With a sensitivity to the environment, their works underline the necessary reconciliation of concepts of nature and culture. Taking note of the irreverence of our attitudes towards the environment, they invite us to rethink the way in which we act upon it and, through art, nourish new links with it.

“One would first of all have to remove any sentimental value from space, any duty to signify, any psychological adjectivity, to take away its gender in order to reach the neutral, to define space as something that tells no story at all, that bears no feelings.”
Extract from the essay by Philippe Rahm