Born from a long-standing creative dialogue between two studios, RASTERS resists easy categorisation, existing somewhere between furniture and architecture. Hannes Van Severen describes it as “small architecture.”

As a tool long used by architects to establish order, proportion and rhythm in space, the grid occupies a central position within RASTERS. In conversation, the designers explained that grids have long been present in the work of both OFFICE and Muller Van Severen. The form had been, in Kersten’s words, “hovering in our heads for years,” making it a natural point of departure for the collaboration. But the project truly took shape when the original industrial grid was translated into wood. 

RASTERS begins with a simple grid, but its identity is defined by the way its planes connect. As Kersten notes, “what really made the project were the connectors.” More than a technical detail, they establish a defined logic for the system: how surfaces meet, extend and open. 

Within each paravent or cabinet, the grid’s openings are not incidental. In a very poetic sense, they are “activated through function” (as explained by Fien Muller). Shelves, hanging rails, and tables populate the grid’s openings, allowing the system to remain deliberately unresolved. As David Van Severen puts it, “the void becomes the real project.

This way, the system’s openness allows for it to continuously shift in use and meaning. A shelving unit becomes a space divider. A divider becomes a workspace. The same grid can hold different accessories for different needs.

This same material logic extends beyond the object and into the space around it. RASTERS does not simply sit within a room; it actively shapes it. The transparency of the lattice keeps the room itself part of the composition, so that, as Fien Muller puts it, “you show a piece of furniture, but you also show the room and the space around it.”

This ability to define space without fully enclosing it is what gives the system its particular presence: one that, in Hannes Van Severen’s words, is also “disappearing.” Boundaries remain suggested rather than fixed, allowing space to continue through the structure.

Kersten draws a parallel with traditional Japanese architecture, where the distinction between structure, furniture and room remains intentionally fluid.

In this sense, the project echoes the fluid boundaries of traditional Japanese architecture, a reference Kersten Geers draws on to describe the way furniture, structure and room begin to overlap.