Christian de Portzamparc
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
1994
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...about Christian de
Portzamparc
Christian de Portzamparc will be celebrating his fiftieth birthday on May
5 (1994), an anniversary that will be made even more memorable by the fact
that he has just been named the 1994 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.
He is the seventeenth person and the sixth European to be so honored since
The Hyatt Foundation established the award in 1979.
Highly respected by architectural cognoscente throughout the world, this
relatively young French architect explains that he was "a designer who
painted before he decided to study architecture." While he still paints,
he says, "I am not a painter or sculptor, yet." He is however a frequent
lecturer and author. Although he has no built works in the United States,
he was one of the finalists in the competition for Chicago's new Museum
of Contemporary Art and an Art Museum for Omaha. Most recently he has gained
recognition in Japan where he designed apartment buildings for the city
of Fukuoka.
Most of his completed projects are in France, perhaps the most visible
being the City of Music, a group of structures situated on the edge of
the La Villette suburban park in Paris. The project actually has
two phases. The first part, housing the National Conservatory of Music
and Dance was completed in 1990. The second part with public spaces for
concerts will open next January. Portzamparc says when he began work on
the City of Music in 1984, his thoughts were carried back to a house in
Brittany, the first thing he ever built, "In that design, each room was
like a separate little house," he says. "I have discovered that each new
project is the sum of all my previous works. No new work springs to life
without some relationship to past inspiration."
President Mitterrand is credited with stimulating an architectural rennaissance
in France with his international competitions for new buildings in his
country. He has made his position clear with the oft-quoted statement,
"I believe that a people are great when their architecture is great." Perhaps
one of the most widely publicized of the Grands Projets has been
the addition to the Louvre Museum by the 1983 Pritzker Laureate, Ieoh Ming
Pei.
City of Music, known throughout Europe as one of the Grands Projets,
has
been praised in the architectural press around the world. Spain's
Interior
Architecture and Design (DiseñoInterior) magazine said of City
of Music: "A building with lyric qualities, full of whiteness and opacity,
it is the antithesis of the ethereal transparencies and other technological
approaches so typical of the new French academicism." The formal opening
is scheduled for early in 1995.
When the City of Music project was just beginning, another of Portzamparc's
important projects was being completed and hailed as one of the best examples
of contextualism in the city. It was the Erik Satie Conservatory of Music
and Elderly Housing. This project, which he began in 1981 after winning
a competition, has been described as being Post Modern, but the architect
himself prefers not to be categorized, and he calls attention to his subsequent
commissions as evidence of a much more personal style.
"When I was about 13, I had already become interested in art. But I remember
seeing some sketches by Le Corbusier," says Portzamparc, "and this stimulated
my interests not only in art, but it started my thinking about architecture."
It is not surprising that this most famous of French architects has been
an influence on a great many architects around the world, including some
prior Pritzker Laureates, including Richard Meier and Kenzo Tange, who
both cited Le Corbusier as their most important early influence.
Portzamparc began studying architecture in 1962 at the Ecole Nationale
des Beaux Arts in Paris, first under Eugene Beaudouin who encouraged his
taste for formal expressionism, and then later under George Candilis who
emphasized systematic work on grids and networks.
While still in school in 1966, he had second thoughts about a career in
architecture. "Architecture seemed to me to be too bureaucratic, and not
free enough compared to art; and the modernistic ideals which I worshiped
before, seemed to me unable to reach the richness of real life. I also
began to criticize my first influences like Le Corbusier." During this
time of reassessment, he traveled to New York. He spent nine months in
the city, living in Greenwich Village, enjoying the artist's life, mingling
with writers, poets and other artists. "I read and wrote and met people,"
he says, "I was fascinated by New York."
When he finished his degree in 1969, he still did not start working as
an architect immediately. "I became involved with a group that was studying
how people interact with their neighborhoods, doing interviews and studying
the buildings and why people liked to live in them and why they didn't.
These sociologists and psycho-sociologists suffered with the hundreds of
people they were interviewing. I got a realistic idea of a concrete way
to understand architecture as a social responsibility. This was after three
years of political discussion about `architecture as an obsolete subject—a
discipline unable to change the world.' I came to realize that architecture
might not be able to create utopia, but as an architect, I could help change
things for the better."
He continued the story, "So I quit my vanguard position of the sixties
to try to work modestly on what appeared to me to be the great task of
architecture: to make a small neighborhood successful, which seemed to
be impossible after twenty years of reconstruction in Europe." Even now,
I always consider a building as a part of the whole, a piece which creates
a collective performance, which is the city. At the same time, the building
must also be a response to a client or user's needs."
Portzamparc, in describing his philosophy of design, explains, "I don't
necessarily believe that an object is interesting in itself. The voids
around the object can be as important, or even much more important than
the object itself. Architecture and the voids created by it can produce
movement, but it must all be seen in context, not isolated parts. This
is why I insist on the void between buildings. I criticized Le Corbusier's
vision of the city as being made up of isolated parts. I criticized the
modern urbanism in its pretention to demolish most of Paris, a common idea
in the sixties for renewing the city and making it modern. My view was
to embrace the richness of the city as a phenomenon which contains the
past (in many different epochs), the present, and the changes for the future."
He continues, "All of these many different architectures coexist in the
city today, but they have evolved slowly throughout history. Our modern
era is a violent event in comparison. We must remain conscious that the
city (collectively) is more important than each building, but each building
can contribute much to create or transform the city. This is what guides
me as an architect."
He opened his first office in 1970, executing his first commission in the
following year. It was a water tower for Marne-la-Vallee, based on the
Tower of Babel. Placed at the center of a crossroads, the water tower has
an outer skin of fine mesh open trellis work covered with climbing plants.
It is a monumental symbol giving what had been a non-descript expanse a
visual center.
His next major work was in the center of Paris, a housing project called
Hautes-Formes completed in 1979. Where two towers were originally planned,
Portzamparc has placed an arcade, a small square, and seven residential
buildings containing 210 apartments. Jaques Lucan, in A+U, described
the project: "...Portzamparc opened up a cramped irregular site by means
of a pedestrian thoroughfare and a centrally placed square indispensable
for dense housing developments. The housing blocks...soar in a dynamic
vertical gesture; their mutually echoing facades mark the limits of a universe
which is both open and enclosed, unified and fragmentary...he conferred
a degree of autonomy on each of the operation's constituent elements."
Portzamparc comments on Hautes-Formes, saying, "With this project, I tried
to find a way to work with the modern conceptual heritage of architecture,
and to create with it, a feeling of urban conviviality. To enter in the
irregular traditional urban network. Then it is easy to understand that
I was far from my first student influence (Le Corbusier). But my vision
was coming from a work that criticized his statement on urbanism, and respecting
his vision on the architectural object."
He continues, "In order to create a new understanding between architecture
and the city, I always refused to be trapped in the past. This would not
work. I believe we must re-think and adapt to a changing world."
Another of his major works is the Dance School of the Paris Opera in Nanterre
awarded to him in competition in 1983. The project actually consists of
three buildings, one each for teaching, lodgings, and dance studios. Predominately
white, the project is set in a natural hollow that completely encloses
the complex in greenery. Pritzker Prize juror Ada Louise Huxtable, writing
in the New York Review in 1992 described it, "...a series of luminous
studio levels wrap around a circular central stair for a continuous sequence
of visual and participatory experiences. The dormitory curves off in its
own undulating wing. Small lounges make physical and social connections.
The landscape is enclosed and revealed with grace."
Two more recent projects include the Cafe Beaubourg and Ungaro Boutiques.
The latter is a retail store which Portzamparc designed with bright colors
and sculptural fixtures. The Cafe Beaubourg is on a corner plaza site that
formerly housed three small restaurants. Portzamparc redesigned the space
to create a two-story, chic, comfortable atmosphere. He also designed the
furnishings and painted a mural on one wall.
Born in Casablanca, he is indeed, French, making his home in Paris with
his wife, Elizabeth, and two sons, Serge and Philip, aged 11 and 8 respectively.
That exotic birthplace came about because his parents were living there
in 1944, his father being an officer in the French Army. The family moved
to Marseille just a few months after his birth.
The family's roots are in Brittany where his parents still live. His father
is an engineer for the water development department. He has two brothers,
one a banker and another a pyschoanalyst, and three sisters, one of whom
is an urban sociologist.
His wife Elizabeth came to France from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil when she
was 18. They met when they were both involved in urban workshops and discussions
groups on design and architecture. That was in 1981, and their mutual interests
led to romance and marriage. She designs furniture, and managed her own
gallery which became known for many innovative exhibitions of furnishings
by artists, designers, and architects, including her husband and herself.
Her own furniture designs can be seen in such buildings as the National
Assembly and in the collections of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs.
Portzamparc's atelier employs anywhere from 15 to 30 people over
a given period of time, and is located in a five story structure that was
formerly an artist's studio, complete with skylight. "It is an old building,
but in comparison to most in the city, it is modern, from the thirties,
very plain and white," he explains, "of the style esprit nouveau,
which was of course inspired by Le Corbusier." His personal space is approximately
16 X 14 feet, with drawing board and surfaces piled high with books, sketch
books, models, and what would appear to be years of accumulated work. He
explains, "I do most of my work moving all around the offices, not just
in my small space."
Described by some of his clients and associates, the consensus is that
his good looks, boyish charm, and a youthful enthusiasm that will undoubtedly
survive into old age, make Portzamparc an ideal candidate for film directors
casting the role of an architect—a rare instance of reality being what
one might fantasize.
Chantal Beret, writing in the Encyclopedie Universalis, said: "In his works,
Portzamparc creates tension, transforming the void into matter, brilliantly
resolving a subtle and dynamic dialectic of fundamental contraries: symmetry
and dissymmetry, stability and movement, figure and background, `focal
object and finite void, totem and clearing, the two basic modes defining
space;' in his most recent projects, an unbridled subjectivity makes for
a rare freedom of interpretation."
In a speech before an architectural symposium in France, Portzamparc quoted
Victor Hugo as saying, "Books will kill buildings." He went on to explain
that Hugo believed architecture would disappear because it was an inferior
way of communicating.
"Yet," Portzamparc continued, "architecture has not disappeared...because
in my view, it is not language, and that is architecture's virtue. That
is why it has been so powerful throughout history; it asserts legitimacy
without recourse to ideology, to text. Architecture cannot be contradicted,
it is there. It may perhaps be laughed at, and quite a few of us find some
of it laughable, but as an urban phenomenon, as a symptom of civilization,
it is something that becomes a presence. And this seems to indicate that
architecture is thought without language — a fact that raises the possibility
that language is not the only means of articulating thought."
The point made is part of his concept that a new monumentality is emerging
in architecture, one that is not based on the mass of a structure, but
on the concept of space, form and voids between. Architecture is being
taken apart and put back together again—using resources available today
for research that would have been inconceivable before now.
In the seventies, says Portzamparc, "It was fashionable again (along with
MacLuhan) to believe that architecture was obsolete in the coming era of
telecommunication. But on the contrary, the place, the space on our planet
will continue to be necessary as the subject of the best human thought
on making the world livable."
Citation from the Pritzker
Jury
Christian de Portzamparc's new architecture is of our time, bound neither
by classicism nor modernism. His expanded perceptions and ideas seek answers
beyond mere style. It is a new architecture characterized by seeing buildings,
their functions and the life within them, in new ways that require wide-ranging,
but thoughtful exploration for unprecedented solutions.
Every architect who aspires to greatness must in some sense reinvent architecture;
conceive new solutions; develop a special design character; find a new
aesthetic vocabulary. Portzamparc's work exhibits all these characteristics.
He has an unusually clear and consistent vision, devising highly original
spaces that serve a variety of functions on an urban scale in the Cite'
de la Musique, or a more personal individual scale in a housing project
or the delightfully chic Cafr Beaubourg.
He is a gifted composer using space, structure, texture, form, light and
color all shaped by his personal vision. This reinvented architecture,
no matter how idiosyncratic or original, still has its common source in
modernism, appropriately assimilated.
Portzamparc is the first French architect to be awarded the Pritzker Prize.
It is a fitting tribute to the individual and to the rich tradition of
French architecture which he represents. No other country, with the possible
exception of Italy, has made such a contribution to the field of architecture
through its buildings, its urban design and through the Beaux Arts educational
system.
The Ecoles des Beaux Arts held sway over the minds of generations of architects
for a century or more, and even in recent times has proven more tenacious
and pervasive in its influence than is generally acknowledged. Its theories,
doctrines and teaching methods still dominate architectural education in
many parts of the world.
Portzamparc is a prominent member of a new generation of French architects
who have incorporated the lessons of the Beaux Arts into an exuberant collage
of contemporary architectural idioms, at once bold, colorful and original.
His is an architecture that draws on French cultural tradition while paying
homage to the master architect and countryman, Le Corbusier. It is a lyrical
architecture that takes great risks and evokes excitement from its audience.
Portzamparc is a high wire artist with sure and confident footwork.
Recognizing the talent of a powerful poet of forms and creator of eloquent
spaces, who is aware of the past, but true to himself and his time, the
Pritzker Architecture Prize honors Christian de Portzamparc, with the expectation
that the world will continue to benefit richly from his creativity.
Reinventing
Architecture: Christian de Portzamparc
by
Ada Louise Huxtable
When Isaac Newton was asked how he saw so far into the cosmos, he replied,
by standing on the shoulders of giants — acknowledging all that he owed
to those who preceded him and made his own achievements possible. Today's
architects truly tand on the shoulders of giants. Their debt to Le Corbusier,
Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright is enormous; they are the heirs
of the broad and diverse contributions of those modernist pioneers, from
de Stijl to Alvar Aalto, who led a 20th-century revolution in the art and
technology of building. Whatever one thinks of the world that followed
them and betrayed their dreams, architecture was never the same again.
In their turn, today's architects are creating revolutionary change. Building
on, but transcending the modernist rationale of structure and function,
they are pursuing a new and equally radical kind of design: sensuous, poetic,
complex, often fiercely intellectual, frequently dauting, always eye-and-mind
opening, offering brilliant and beautiful alternatives to conventional
practice. There has never been amore extraordinary time for architecture
than right now, more creative and challengin, more filled with the promise
of great work and art.
Some of this new work has already been honored by the Pritzker Prize: Frank
Gehry and Alvaro Siza, an American and a Portuguese of similar aims and
strikingly disparate styles, have both been recent winners. This year's
laureate, Christian de Portzamparc, is French, like the others, he explores
architecture in his own very original, distinctive, and one is tempted
to say, distinctively French, way. Like the others, he is pushing the frontiers
of the art. What all of these architects are doing, ina sense, is reinventing
architecture. They are stretching accepted limits, discovering new ways
of seeing and building, much as Mannerism and the Baroque stretched the
principles of the Renaissance, forever altering its vocabulary and range.
These buildings must be visited personally; what one usually sees in pictures
are strange shapes and stylistic mannerisms that merely hint at the unusual
design strategies underneath. Portzamparc's work, which invokes the shapes,
colors and images of the 1950's and 60's with unabashed elan, is easily
misunderstood. It would be simple to call it clever theater, an example
of the fashionable appropriation of the remote (for these younger architects)
near-past for its romantic and decorative appeal. His roofs soar, swoop
and hover; free-form shapes are lovingly recalled; nostalgic details are
reconstituted in aluminum, tile and concrete that honor Morris Lapidus's
"architecture of joy." In addition to Miami-modern redux, there
are echoes of Oscar Niemeyer and Roberto Burle Marx in the undulating curves
that transform Corbusian austerity in Latin American exuberance. He clearly
loves it all, without condescension.
To dismiss this work as homage to a trendy vernacular, however, one must
overlook the logic and originality of Portzamparc's plans, the expert and
effective way in which his solutions flow and function, his sure grasp
of scale and proportion, his superior sense of urban amenity, his lyrical
use of light and color. Given cultural distance and European perspective,
his sources transcent shallow sentimentalism. This is no artfully retro
exercise; the timeless elements of architecture are being dramtically reinterpreted.
These colorful, light-filled forms serve a functional and social organization
of exceptional skill. Portzamparc transforms his obvious delight in Arp-like
curves and giant cones and candy colors into a pop monumentality that takes
serious high camp into the realm of serious high art.
Make no mistake, this is serious architecture. It is also serious hedonism
and profound French chic. But unlike so much French architecture. where
the chic is skin-deep, this seriously innovative work with an impressive
range of invention.
Only a seriously assured architect could carry it off. Official French
taste tends to favor modish displays of real and faux engineering over
a "humanism" — a loaded word — that delights in subjective and evocative
images. But Portzamparc is not alonein the persistent incorporation of
personal stylistic icons — James Stirling had his lighthousese and Aldo
Rossi has his haunting skeletal stairs and lonely lookout towers.
At 50 — a young age in a field where the more important commissions tend
to go to experienced, older practitioners — Portzamparc is already the
accomplished designer of a series of major buildings. He has not yet perfected
the art of suavely flamboyant self-presentation of the celebrity architect.
Trailing a well-worn raincoat that is somewhat more, or less, than Armani-casual,
a gently beat-up fedora over curly dark hair and puppy-sad eyes lit by
an occasional wan smile, he has the look of a star-crossed, rather than
star architect. He is just as likely to wear out a visitor, preferably
in terrible weather, with earnestly commendaable rehabs than his star turns.
But when one gets to them, they are breathtaking.
There habe been approximately ten years between the start of the first
part of his compettion-winning design of 1983 for the Cite de la Musique
in the redeveloped area of La Villette and the completion of the second
half of this very large complex in the Parisian outskirts. One of Mitterand's
grand
travaux, this national conservatory for music and dance is less well-known,
but more interesting innovative than many of the projects to come out of
that imperial effort.
The completed structure, already in use, contains both performance and
student facilities. There is nothing conventional about this building.
A dramatic, multi-storied entrance serves as a circulation core; stairs,
corridors, and tiers of open balconies surround this central space, creating
visible stages ast many levels on which people come and go. Natural light,
top to bottom interior views, generous vistas out to those controversial
cones and curving balcines (one is the organ recital hall, the other connects
the roofs of separate units) belie the fact that the building is partially
underground. Deco details beguile in colors that conquer an institutional
air.
The second structure, which houses a major concert hall, a museum and studios,
starts with a stunning public act. Visitors step down from several entrances
into a plaza that serves as a collecting point for pedestrian traffic,
which is then carried along a curving, covered promenade leading to and
circling the concert hall. One follows and narrowing sweep until the ocrridor
reaches the street. Walls change in hue as the corridor unfolds; Portzamparc
is also a painter, with an artist's eye for what color does to a place
and the people in it.
In now way is this a traditional prmenade in the City Beautiful sense;
choreographed as much as designed, it relies on the drama and mystery of
movement as well as on traditional monumental scale and architectural form.
The space is intriguingly ambiguous in its covered-open, public private
nature and the cirular path that never quite reveals what lies beyond.
Inside the large concert hall — one of numerous performance and practice
spaces for which Pierre Bjoulez has been an active collaborator — a rainbow
of lights can instantly imbue the handsome wood panesl with Hollywood glamour,
a feature dear to Portzamparc's heart.
His Ballet School for the Paris Opera at Nanterre is also a competition
winning design. The building is treated, quite literally, as the sum of
its collective parts. A glass-walled entrance provides access to its three
areas — dance studios, a classroom and administration section, and student
dormitories while acting as a transparent link. These areas are shaped
and disposed by circulation patterns based on the acoustic isolation of
the studios, the social orientationof classrooms and offices, and the privacy
of the dormitories in a connected, serpentine wing, narrow and sinouous,
that curves across the landscape like a tail. The building's central feature
and dramatic focus is soaring, full-ehight helicoidal stair that connects
the dance studios. Constant movement up and down this spiral, and across
the open mezzanines that alternate with studio entrances on different floors,
can be seen from all levels. Bridges spanning this central space become
lounges that tie the activities together and provide a place to pause between
them.
Portzamparc is both a sophisticated stylist and sensitive urbanist — qualities
usually considered antithetical. IN his housing, sociology coexists comforably
with aesthetics and on insightful understanding of the nature of public
and private places. Although it is not uncommon for able architects to
court disaster when moving from small to large scale, he is equally capable
of handling the bold monumentality of the Cite de la Musique and the knowing
and subtle certainties of a small addition to Paris's Bourdelle Museum.
Bourdelle's heroically energetic figures tend to barge about a bit in the
restricted galleries, but the space has been opened up with natural light
washing pale gray, textured plaster walls from above, for a sympathetic
setting that offers subtle homage to the sculptor, in spite of overcrowding
and distracting spotlights.
Perhaps his famous, or notorious, building, depending on one's point of
view, is the "ski boot" office building for the Credit Lyonnais in Lille,
one of those "images" that editors rush to publish and architects love
to promote. He can go overboard for the occasional oddball idea, zealously
promoting something bravely boomerang-shaped to a less-than tuned-in audience.
Nor is he immune to the unremitting French fascination with googie, or
gimmicky modernism, where funky outrageousness passes for creative inspiration.
But Portzamparc's building succeed because they address fundamental concerns
— the needs and pleasures of the body and spirit — those human values that
all great architecture serves and turns into art. And he has something
that other architects recognize instantly, the single-minded application
of a poetic creativity of rich dimensions.
What is common to all of these buildings, and to much of the new work,
is an enormous, tradition-shattering change in concept and design. Architecture
is no longer approached as the making of a formal "container," as it has
developed over centuries of stylistic evoluntion. The process of design
begins inside, in "deconstruction" fashion, seeking new meanings, breaking
the building down into its component parts for a searching analysis of
their functional rationale. These architects think first in terms of interior
space and second in terms of enclosure; they handle space not as finite
form, but as serial, non-static and open-ended. The significance of this
approac is that the building's elements can be redesigned and reassembled
in a variety on uncoventional configurations, with a greater consciousness,
and sometimes total reinterpretation, of the relationship of use and form.
Circulation holds it all together; movement through the structure is an
essential part of its multi-faceted design. In Portzamparc's buildings,
this fragmentation and movement involves all of the senses; it induces
a profound sense of pleasure. This is a most sophisticated updating of
the architecture of joy.
The exterior enclosure of these new spatial relationships becomes a free
exercise in style, a matter of personal preference in this time of pluralistic
taste and expression. Far more important is the expansion of the art itself:
To architecture's conventional definition as a three-dimensional, spatial
art, a fourth dimension has been added — an aesthetic of time-related experiences
and effects. Movement and change and multi-dimensional compositions replace
the classic, static experience of form and space. Interlocking, layered
views are seen simultaneously and sequentially. The eye and the body are
invited, and required, to register perceptions and sensations of an actual
and aesthetic complexity rarely encounted before. Both the vision and the
reality of architecture are enlarged by a process that quite literally
alters the way we see and use buildings. It is creative change of this
magnitude that defines the history of art.
In the end, it is not how this transformation is achieved, but what it
does for us, that matters — whether we receive that extra dimension of
dignity or delight and elevated sense of self that the art of building
can provide through the nature of the places in which we live and work.
Today everything seems to conspire to reduce life and feeling to the most
deprive and demeaing bottom line. What counts more than theory or intellectural
argument is whether the results improve our experience of the build world;
whether they make us wonder why we never noticed places in quite this special
way before.
The final test is the manner in which ideas, vocabulary and structure are
emplyed, how far these instruments of exploration carry architecture into
new areas of use and sensory satisfaction, how well they move it beyond
current limitations, whether the buildings serve and please us, in the
personal, and much larger societal sense, and ultimately, how this process
engages and reveals necessity and beauty in the language of our time. That
this is happening now, in spite of culture of the transient, the shoddy
and the unreal, is a matter for recognition and celbration. There are some
exceptional talents producing extraordinary buildings on the leading edge
of this changing art. It is a privilege to be able to honor them and their
creators.
Formal Presentation
Ceremony at the Commons, Columbus, Indiana
June 14, 1994
Speeches as follows:
Robert N. Stewart
Mayor, Columbus, Indiana
Greetings, everyone. I am Robert Stewart, mayor of the City of Columbus,
Indiana, USA. We are delighted to welcome each of you, including the Pritzker
Architecture Jury, the Hyatt Foundation, the 1994 Pritzker Laureate, and
architectural leaders, both international and domestic. Your presence here
this evening is putting our city in the spotlight in the world of architecture,
the art and science of building. We are very appreciative of your visit.
The residents of this community are pleased to have you here. May your
experiences in Columbus, Indiana, be a most impressionable event in your
life of memories. A grateful mayor thanks you for coming.
J. Carter Brown
Chairman of the Jury
Well, Your Honor, I think that the gratitude is on the other foot. We are
delighted to be in your city. I come from the District of Columbia, which
I hope sounds a little like Columbus. Actually, you have it better here
because you have a state; we don't have a state. And yours at least recognizes
the role of those who were here before Columbus. But Indiana, after all,
dons its cap. But tonight we are celebrating something very transatlantic.
I am Carter Brown. I am here as chairman of the jury of the Pritzker Architecture
Prize. And I would like first of all to recognize those members of the
jury, past and present, who are here with us tonight. I am going to impose
on each of them to stand and ask the rest of you please to withhold any
applause until the end of that recitation.
The first is Ada Louise Huxtable of Marblehead, Massachusetts. No applause
please or we'll be here all evening. The next, Charles Correa, who's come
here from Bombay, India. And after that, Toshio Nakamura, who has come
here from Tokyo, Japan. And after that, we have Ricardo Legorreta, who
managed to make it from Mexico City, even though his luggage didn't. And
then among other former jurors, Ricardo is our most recent juror to have
rotated off, but we are very privileged to have with us the architect of
this building, Cesar Pelli, and another juror of the Pritzker Prize is
also here. He came all the way from Columbus, Indiana, J. Irwin Miller.
Applause for all of them.
I think that June of 1994 will go down in the annals as one of the high
points in the relations between France and America. I know that in the
last weeks many of us on this side of the Atlantic have been glued to our
television, reminiscing, or learning, as the case of most of you in this
room I'm sure, the first time about 1944 and the great Normandy invasion.
And we have a president, who had the opportunity, not only spending time
with the president of France (and hitting it off so well that they spent
a great deal of time upstairs in their White House, the Elysee Palace)
before heading downstairs. So the dinner didn't start `til late. And when
it was over, the president of France and our president, and their entourage,
decided to visit the Louvre. What else to do at midnight? They were there
until almost two o'clock, and were accompanied by a former Pritzker laureate,
I.M. Pei, and by the Minister of Culture in France, from whom we will be
hearing shortly.
Well, that was in celebration of the Normandy invasion. Tonight, we are
here in celebration of the Brittany invasion. Christian de Portzamparc
comes from Brittany, and he is one of our youngest laureates, and therefore
has not had a chance, the French patronage system being so much more advanced
than our own, to build much outside of France, maybe Japan, but not yet
in the U.S. We think that needs remedying, and we are very much hoping
that your great artistry will be built on this side of the Atlantic as
well.
And so I am now going to turn the podium over to a man who has been a partner
in crime in all kinds of plots and joint enterprises; he is the Minister
of Culture of a country that has one, which we ain't got. It does bring
back other reminiscences of a previous U.S. president and his beautiful,
loving wife and their visit to Paris, when a predecessor of Mister Toubon
was invited back by Jacqueline Kennedy to visit Washington, and specifically
the National Gallery of Art. And the two of them specified, or rather Andre
Malraux specified, that the then-director of the National Gallery would
not be included in this tour. But Mrs. Kennedy very sweetly said that his
young assistant, Carter Brown, could be. And so I had a wonderful morning
with just the three of us. And it brought back wonderful memories, and
rather sad memories a matter of weeks ago, when we were focused on a great
visit of a more recent president and his lady to France.
And so from France we have tonight the Minister of Culture, Jacques Toubon,
who will be followed by Catherine Bersani, who will represent the other
minister in France who deals with architecture, the Minister of Construction
and Public Works. She has the title of Director of Architecture. Wouldn't
we all love to be that? And we will hear from them, and then from the Secretary
of the Jury, Bill Lacy. So I now ask, would the minister Jacques Toubon
come to the podium. Thank you very much.
Jacques Toubon
Minister of Culture, France
Mister Mayor, Mister Chairman. I try to say some words in English to express
my feelings tonight. They are very simple. From a personal point of view,
I am very happy to be here to congratulate Christian de Portzamparc, because
Christian is a friend of mine and I appreciate the architect, the artist,
and the man, and Elizabeth and his two sons. And if I am here tonight,
after a very short flight, and tomorrow morning, the same in the other
way. it's why the dinner was very important for me. Because I think that
in certain circumstances we have to be there to be with our friends, and
Christian is a friend. And I think for some of you, who don't know Christian,
it will be in the future perhaps a friend, too, because he's really a guy
which is worth to know, and we should work to be friends with him. So my
first feeling is a personal one.
But as Minister of Culture from France, I would say that this night, this
dinner is a very important event, a very important event because it's the
first time that a French architect is a laureate of the Pritzker Prize,
which is called in France the Nobel Prize for architecture. But it's not
totally important for this reason. It's important, too, because as Carter
Brown said just a minute before me, it's a very special moment for the
relations between France and America, and especially for the relations
about culture and arts.
And I think, from my point of view, for my part, that our relations have
to be very friendly and cooperative relations. And in this field of culture
for movies, for television, for books, for art, and for music, for all
things like that. And this prize, this Pritzker Prize for Christian de
Portzamparc, it's a very important event because it means a very special
regard from America on French culture and a very special thanks from France
to America. Frank Gehry was a previous Laureate of the Pritzker Prize,
and he just completed now in Paris the famous American Center last week.
It's said that art and architecture came from the same sources. I agree
with that. And I feel that sometimes in the modern architecture, there
is...the art is not too much present. I regret that. But for Christian,
and for people like you, for Jay Pritzker, for Mr. Miller, art and architecture
are in the same spirit. And that's why I am very happy tonight. Because
for France, for French people, for European people, and for people like
Christian, architecture is probably the first of the arts, the origin of
the arts, and probably the most important for people, because it is where
they live, And if they live very well, its because of architecture, and
if not very well, it's because of architecture too.
So it's a very important event. And I would thank you very much on behalf
of the French government, the Pritzker Prize, Jay Pritzker, (to Jury, Mr.
Miller, all the people of Columbus, today, tomorrow, tonight, Christian
de Portzamparc. I visited Columbus this afternoon. It's, Mr. Mayor, a marvelous
town, a really marvelous collection of piece of arts and of architecture.
I was very happy to see those marvelous pieces under the sun of Indiana.
I thank you very much. I thank Mr. Miller for his marvelous idea to commission
such a project since 1957 in Columbus. I thank very much the Pritzker Prize
and Jay Pritzker, and all the people there, because for me and for France,
it is a recognition, a very important one. And I think for Christian it's
perhaps the best day of his life. And so I am very happy with him. Thank
you.
Catherine Bersani
Director of Architecture
Ministry of Infrastructures, France
Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of the French Minister of Public Works,
Transporation and Tourism in charge of Architecture, Bernard Bosson, I
am extremely pleased to be with you this evening. You are awarding the
1994 Pritzker Architecture Prize to Christian de Portzamparc, a French
architect of immense talent. By paying homage to the man and his work,
you are honoring a way of thinking which is firmly anchored in the questions
of our times; you are honoring a determined personal engagement, and the
work of an endlessly inventive mind. While the question of urban development
is one of the major challenges we face as we approach the 21st Century,
Christian de Portzamparc had continuously worked on the problem of the
cities even before it became the important concern that it is today.
He developed the central theme of his work, "Architecture serves both man
and the city," beginning with his first projects in the 1970s: the water
tower at Marne-la-Vallee; the Hautes Formes public housing project in Paris'
thirteenth district, where he revived the public square and which replied
to the question of the dream and the symbolic in city dwelling. Christian
de Portzamparc was immediately recognized by his peers as one of the leading
figure in the revival of the architectural scene in France.
De Portzamparac kept his distance with regard to the urbanism of the Modern
Movement, although he did not entirely dismiss its architectural heritage;
and likewise he did not take refuge in a regressive attitude of the past.
Quite the contrary, the architect called on his own creative talent in
his fight for the city, creating urban forms, places for people and citizens,
picking up the loose threads of history and knowlege, conistently opening
new perspectives and thus nurturing modernity.
Every one of his projects bears witness to de Portzamparc's double preoccupation
with the city and usefuleness. He works on the size of living spaces, both
inside and outside the buildings. He works with light, thickness, materials,
and he works with space because, as he says, "Space will always be an architectural
problem because we have a body." He thus seeks to relate man to the buildings
in his environment, to reconcile him with a space by means of the body
and spirit, within judicious architectural design.
Christian de Portzamparc is a humanist architect. He is also an eminently
responsible architect.
"Architecture is a public art," he says. With these words, he puts first
his own responsibility as an architect, as well as that of all those who
are engaged in building. He reminds us that we cannot build anything any
place, that we must constantly "think about the question of use and meaning,
of dwelling and the city."
His architecture, with its complex, subtle volumes, its skillful use of
full and empty spaces, of lights and shadows, gives life to a new urban
space, a new dialogue with the city, and with a special kind of dream and
poetry.
Christian de Portzamparc's work involves and flourishes in modest as well
as immense projects: the Music Conservatory in the Seventh District of
Paris; the Pris Opera Dance School in Nanterre; the Bjourdelle Museum;
the Beaubourg Cafe; the City of Music in Paris' Villette Park, which will
soon be finished; city and national public housing projects. In addition,
the architect has been commissioned for large urban projects, notably in
Toulouse, Montpellier and Metz.
De Portzamparc's growing international reputation is attested to by invitations
to work and teach abroad, notably in the United States and Japan. And today,
it is further enhanced with the Pritzker Prize.
France is especially pleased and proud of this distinction inasmuch as
the country also honored Christian de Portzamparc with our National Architecture
Grand Prize in 1992. Since 1975, my ministry has been awarding this prize
to our most talented architects with a view to promoting their international
reputations.
In awarding this prize to Christian de Portzamparc, you have honored a
man of exceptional world-class talent, who also happens to be the youngest
architect to have received your prize.
In attributing this outstanding distinction to a French architect, you
are today honoring all of French architecture. In Christian de Portzamparc,
the revival of French architecture is today being recognized.
"The great architectural tradition of France," to which the Pritzker Prize
jury has paid homage, is today carried forth by a myriad number of highly
talented and greatly diverse architects, who, after the large building
projects of the 1980s, are today setting their sights on renewing our urban
landscapes.
The quality of urban architecture and renewal are priorities for France.
And France has never hesitated to invite numerous architects of international
renown to realize those priorities in a spirit of fruitful exchange. Among
them, a certain number of Pritzker Prize winners have built large projects,
including Oscar Niemeyer, Aldo Rossi, Kenzo Tange, Richard Meyer, Frank
Gehry, and of course Ieo Ming Pei.
I hope that the Pritzker Prize will now give new international opportunities
to Christian de Portzamparc in particular, in order to further richer and
more frequent exchanges between cultures and civilizations through enhanced
urban architecture.
Bill Lacy
Secretary to the Jury
Good evening. I am Bill Lacy, Secretary to the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
We have held our ceremonies over the years in castles, palaces, museums,
and libraries, and once in a wooden Buddhist temple eight hundred years
old. But Columbus, Indiana, surpasses all of them for sheer density and
intensity of remarkable architecture. We're delighted to be here.
One of the conditions of the generous invitation to come here from Irwin
Miller, founding jury member of the prize, was that we not mention his
name during the course of the festivities. You can see how well we have
lived up to that already tonight.
And I must say that it's not that easy a condition to abide by, when the
taxi driver, on entering the city limits, says, "that's Mr. Miller's church
and that's Mr. Miller's fire station, that's Mr. Miller's bank." He is
the only cab driver that I've ever met that knew the difference between
I.M. Pei and Robert Venturi.
Irwin, thank you for the invitation and for Columbus' special architectural
nature. It has been a pilgrimage for many of us that we would not have
missed.
This past spring, the jury toured, as they have in the last several years,
various parts of the world, to look at buildings by prominent architects,
because that's really the only way you can experience architecture, by
looking at it and walking through it. And we had the opportunity to see
projects in Paris by tonight's Pritzker Prize winner, Christian de Portzamparc.
Many of us had seen his work on other visits, had experienced firsthand
those remarkable spaces and forms which he created in his School of Dance
and City of Music. But no photograph or slide can really convey the feeling
of actually walking through a Portzamparc building. It is, to use a very
tired musical analogy, like strolling through a symphony of spaces, solids
and voids, always with a well composed three-dimensional view ahead, above,
and to either side. Portzamparc's architecture has been called: "icononoclastic,
idiosychratic and lyrical..." by Time magazine; "an urban synthesis
of modern and traditional forms..." by the New York Times; "fifties
modern and streamline," by the Boston Globe. And our own jury member,
Ada Louise Huxtable, describes his work as "a joyful architecture, which
leaves the rigidity of modernism and the cartoonish decoration of post-modernism
far behind."
Later, on that same tour, after leaving Paris, we made a nostalgic detour
to visit a modest chapel at Ronchamp. It is an iconic building that is
at once small and monumental, and at least for architects, always magical.
It was designed by another Frenchman, Le Corbusier, whose built works,
though relatively few in number, have inspired generations of architects
the world over, including a young architect named Christian de Portzamparc.
Like Corbusier, Portzamparc is a painter as well as an architect, and like
him, he had to withstand established Beaux Arts traditions to find his
own "voice." In March, our jury met, deliberated, and eventually selected
Monsieur de Portzamparc. It is my role and privilege not only to solicit
names and present them to the jury for consideration, but also to notify
the laureate that he or she has won. No call has ever given me more pleasure
than to inform Christian of this honor and to hear his jubilant "Fantastique!"
as a response.
Several weeks after the official announcement, he wrote to me and said,
"Dear Bill: The effect of the prize is great and wonderful. The young feel
that it is a recognition of a certain "idea" of architecture, one that
is not always understood here. There was a surprise birthday party," he
continued, "my fiftieth, at the Cafe Beaubourg. Instead of four friends,
as Elizabeth had promised, it became an ovation by 150 persons, important
figures in French architecture, including the Minister of Culture, and
they were singing `the first French Pritzker'."
The person who wrote the words and produced that hit French song, is a
gentleman who I have the pleasure of introducing next. Jay Pritzker and
his wife, Cindy, with the blessing of the entire Pritzker family, set this
prize in motion in 1979. Since that time, it has brought heightened public
awareness and recognition to the profession, and has become the preeminent
prize in the field. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jay Pritzker.
Jay A. Pritzker
President, The Hyatt Foundation
Tradition has it that as we move around the world with these ceremonies,
I try to say a few words in the honoree's language. I trust you French
speakers will restrain your snickers. (The following paragraph was spoken
in French.)
I would like to welcome Mr. Toubon, Minister of Culture of France, Christian,
his parents, his children, his sister, his colleagues and his friends from
France. We are thrilled to welcome you here in Columbus, Indiana for the
presentation of the Pritzker Prize for architecture. Columbus is a jewel
unique in the world. It is a mecca for the greatest architectural talents
of the century. It is a great pleasure to welcome Christian to the rank
of Laureate in this beautiful city.
What a wonderful confluence of people and events focusing attention on
architecture: the Pritzker Architecture Prize being presented to a French
architect in a community that has become an architectural mecca in America's
heartland; and an exhibit of all the previous Pritzker Laureates' works;
and tomorrow extending the activities with a seminar and architectural
tour.
Architecture is all around us. At the time we established the prize, we
felt it was the least acknowledged of all the arts. We wanted people to
become more aware of their surroundings, and in turn, stimulate architects,
builders and developers to greater achievements. This is what The Hyatt
Foundation was attempting to do when we established the prize in 1979.
Columbus had a head start on us. Several decades before, the Cummins Engine
Foundation worked out an arrangement with the local school board providing
that as long as a distinguished architect was selected to design the project,
the Cummins Foundation would pay the architectural fees.
Over the years, other public groups applied, and the program was extended
to other public structures and landscaping. You can see the result all
around us—scores of exceptional buildings. And encouragement to others
not only to build well, but to preserve what was built before and to maintain
a culture in the community that I think is most unusual in America, or
any place in the world.
This past weekend, Columbus proved to the world that it has heart and soul,
as well as being beautiful. The city was honored by being named one of
the top ten All American cities, a recognition for its progressive, socially
aware thinking meant to improve the quality of life for all its citizens.
We salute you all for this latest achievement.
I'd also like to acknowledge the Indianapolis Museum of Art for instigating
the process of bringing the touring exhibition of Pritzker Laureates' works,
which you can see upstairs, in their new Columbus gallery.
As you know, we move the ceremony each year to pay homage to something
or someone of architectural significance. Last year, it was in Prague,
honoring that city's past architectural achievements, and the fact that
it remains largely intact in spite of wars and rebellion.
Another year, as Bill mentioned, we were in Todai-ji, a Buddhist temple,
in Nara, Japan. It's the world's oldest and largest wooden structure. We
went to Fort Worth, the Kimball Museum in 1987. It was in homage to the
memory of the late Louis Kahn, who designed that structure. It's one of
the most beautiful museums in America.
Other locations have included the Harold Washington Library in Chicago.
I believe the architect, Tom Beeby is with us here tonight. In our founding
days, we went to Dumbarton Oaks in Washington. And we've revisited Washington
twice more, at the National Building Museum and the National Gallery of
Art East Building, which was a tribute to I.M. Pei, another laureate.
Tonight, of course, we call attention to a great many architects, whose
works are in Columbus, the most obvious being Cesar Pelli. We're occupying
one of his buildings for this ceremony. Cesar also served as one of the
Pritzker jurors in the early years of the prize.
I cannot over emphasize how important the jury is to this prize. The quality
of the jurors is paramount in giving credibility and recognition to the
choice of the laureates each year.
J. Carter Brown, director emeritus of the National Gallery of Art, as both
founding juror and chairman of the jury, bears a lion's share of the responsibility.
For his continuing guidance, he has our heartfelt gratitude.
The guidance of another man whose vision and interest in architecture made
him indispensable in our founding jury is the same man who conceived the
architectural commission idea for Columbus in the first place, Irwin Miller.
As you already heard, we promised not to honor Irwin, but we can offer
our sincere thanks to both Xenia and him for their extraordinary hospitality.
The man we are honoring is a young architect from Paris, Christian de Portzamparc.
The jury describes his work as both "new," and "of our time, bound neither
by classicism nor modernism." They further describe him as a "powerful
poet of forms and creator of eloquent spaces, aware of the past, but true
to himself and his time."
As the first French architect to be awarded this prize, the jury honors
him as an individual, as well as the rich tradition of French architecture.
I'd like to read at this time a message we just received regarding Christian's
selection:
"Dear Christian,
I am delighted to congratulate you as you receive the 1984 Pritzker Architecture
Prize for your contributions to humanity, to your bold vision and your
enormous talent. The art of architecture is an essential component of our
society. It powerfully influences the design and structure of our homes
and places of work. It transforms our cities and it stimulates our imaginations.
At its best, architecture beautifies the landscape, encourages economic
and social development, and profoundly affects our lives. You deserve to
be proud of your lifelong work, exemplifying the highest standards of structural
achievement.
Your commitment to the significance of style and fuction have produced
such notable buildings as the City of Music in Paris, the exceptional apartment
complex in Fukuoka, Japan, and the water tower in Marne-la-Vallee, all
stunning contributions to our world. Blending the discipline of classical
architecture with the genius of modernism, you have perfected a truly international
style of design that fulfills the unique needs of individual cities and
adds to the splendor of our urban regions.
I am pleased that you've been selected for this most prestigious award.
You've personified the dedication to cultural advancement for which the
Pritzker family has always stood, and I congratulate you for a job well
done. Hillary and I extend best wishes for continued success. Sincerely,
Bill Clinton."
Christian, if you would be good enough to step up here, I will try to put
this symbol around your neck without choking you.
Christian de
Portzamparc's Acceptance Speech
1994 Pritzker Prize Laureate
Today is a great day in my life, and I am an extremely happy man. To join
the list of architects this prize has honored, when only yesterday I still
felt personally that every project was for me a new experiment, has brought
me a strange mixture of excitement and serenity, while at the same time
facing me with a great responsibility: I can no longer afford to make any
mistakes. I have a duty of excellence towards you, and as we never know
where that lies, I shall never be able to stop.
I see the concern already on the face of Elizabeth, my wife, who, as well
as designing her own furniture, supports me so marvelously in my work.
It is a wonderful profession to be in, but it is often an uphill struggle.
Architecture is an art, but a public art. More often than not, the public
does not choose architecture as it would a museum to visit. Instead, architecture
is imposed on us, in our daily life, our homes and our places of work.
And for this reason, the architect-artist is accountable for his work;
he owes an explanation. We are asked to express ourselves all the time.
And it's normal.
And because architecture is a public art, architects, unlike other artists,
do not enjoy complete personal creative freedom. They are expected to impart
a sort of legitimacy to their work by providing the right answers to the
needs of a particular era.
I have often felt, in this respect, that I am following a very personal
path, and perhaps more than others, I have had my doubts at times. Of course,
there was always support from friends, clients, decision-makers and publications.
But until now, in the face of doubt, I have only known a few real moments
of truth, times when I felt my objective was truly at my fingertips; those
moments when the users, the inhabitants of the Hautes Formes, the teachers
and students at the Opera School of Dance or the National Music Conservatory
expressed their enthusiasm at living in the buildings I made.
But the honor of the Pritzker Prize is a confirmation of a different kind,
from people who have seen, experienced, felt and analyzed the best buildings
in the world, of our times.
So I should like to express my gratitude to the members of the jury, and
my pride at having been chosen by them, especially at a time when architecture
in France is so full of vitality.
I am proud to think that, through me, my country has been honored for twenty
years of effort in favor of architecture. I should like in particular to
thank Jacques Toubon, the French Minister of Culture, and Catherine Bersani,
Director of Architecture for the Ministry of Infrastructures, for being
here today at Columbus on this very special occasion. Jacques Toubon is
also the Mayor of a district in Paris where I built my first houses twenty
years ago, and together we are currently engaging in a very exciting new
project, to rehabilitate a complex of slabs built in the 1960s.
The numerous messages of joy and congratulations I have received from my
colleagues, and the numerous articles published recently in connection
with the prize, have shown us that the prestige of the Pritzker encourages
architecture through all the different partners involved; not only architects,
but also decision-makers, clients, builders. And in our world, architecture
is something, very frail. Tomorrow it could fall into oblivion. So I should
like to express my gratitude in the name of the joyous messages I have
received, to the Pritzker family, to Jay Pritzker, to The Hyatt Foundation,
for this tremendous boost, this burst of energy they give us every year
by attracting attention to architecture with their famous prize.
I should also like to thank all those who are at the origin of my work,
and who have helped me along the way. Some are here this evening. Friends
from the early days, stimulating colleagues, architects on my team, and
engineers who have worked on my buildings. I am moved that my parents are
here, my sister. And my parents, who without knowing it, steered me towards
this profession. My sons, too, who wisely look on from the sidelines. And
Elizabeth, who has shared the whole adventure with me.
I was thinking to myself only yesterday that it is always a special experience
to find myself back in the United States, even if getting through customs
takes longer than in other countries. A special experience because a certain
dream of America, with its multiple facets, marked our childhood, and to
a certain extent, helped to make us what we are today. Myths are made to
last, and the myth of the "new world" has made an indelible mark on history
and on our planet.
I remember it was only after a long stay in the United States, after the
joy of discovering the great cities of America, that I finally came to
understand Europe, and the treasures of its cities, stretched between the
past and the future. It was in 1966. I was a student then, beginning to
wonder about the legitimacy of the modern theory; and Louis Kahn and Robert
Venturi were sending out new glimmers of light from the United States.
It was then that, in this contrast between New York and Paris, when I forgot
for a while that I wanted to be an architect, the modern theory of city
planning that was spreading clumsily to every city in Europe suddenly struck
me as simplistic, even dangerous. The idea at that time was to destroy
two thirds of Paris and make it a clean, modern, homogenous city, and we
looked forward to it with relish.
In fact, one of the major events of this century was this sudden, unexpected
arrival of the theory of the modern movement in the history of architecture
and city planning in the 1920's, and its widespread dissemination after
the war. For centuries, indeed for thousands of years, cities had grown
slowly, gradually, in the same basic way with only one or two styles every
century, when suddenly everything was turned upside down, and all the habits
of the past were thrown out, lock, stock and barrel. There is no equivalent
to such a giant leap in any other field, and such a radical erasing of
history, except perhaps for the Russian Revolution!
My generation is the generation that inherited, when beginning to work,
the great problematical legacy of this Modern Movement:
On the one hand, it has been a humanist ethic of building, and an extraordinary
new architectural sensitivity, accorded to our time, that marked the century.
And on the other hand, a failure to comprehend the wealth of the urban
phenomenon, its history and its future.
So this was a great architectural vision in a way, which supported a poor
urban vision in another way. This is the way it appeared to us in Europe.
And I know it's probably very different here. The universal grid of all
American cities has been able to welcome easily every change in architectural
forms. But as you know, if you have been in Europe, it has been completely
different. Our cities are so marked by history. Each piece of the territory
has a special form, which is narrated from centuries, and the arrival in
the modern world has been a violent event.
I discovered architecture through the drawings of Le Corbusier with enthusiasm.
And ten years later, I remember, it was a time when our cities had been
surrounded by many new urban developments. As I was watching man's first
step on the moon in 1969, I felt that we were yet dreaming to live somewhere
else in the space, and I thought to myself that mankind no longer knew
how to build a city, or even a tiny part of a city, something that had
been always so natural.
I had the impression that this modern energy of our age, this technical
and economical logic, which seems to govern all human activity, was turning
the earth into one immense production unit, dictating everywhere the same
landscape of usefulness. Architecture seemed almost like something coming
from another era, for me at that moment.
This is facing all that, at this time, that I realized exactly why I wanted
to build. And forgetting lessons and theories, I began to experiment how
a modern architecture could drive to a new urban vision, accorded to our
time, not coming back to the past.
Ever since, my work has always considered buildings as providing outside
and inside places rather than as objects, even beautiful, providing places.
This is what everybody needs and feels. And everybody feels it sometime,
even if they are not prepared to appreciate architecture.
So it is a bit like if I was always working on interiors: outside interiors,
inside interiors. I wonder if this approach that I never expressed this
way before, is not another reason we understand so well with Elizabeth.
I see the outside, the city, as a vast collective interior, to be given
a rhythm, transformed, and lived in. I think that we, all architects, have
to answer to the crisis in urban thinking that characterized our day and
age. I am sure that this prize will help me a lot to be more convincing
on this subject. Thank you very much.
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