Palais de Tokyo en París. Intervención de los arquitectos Ann Lacaton y Jean Philippe Vassal en un edificio de 1937 para la creación del Centro de Creación Contemporánea. 2001 (primera fase) y 2012 (segunda fase). Palais de Tokyo in Paris. An intervention by architects Ann Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassal on a 1937 building for the establishment of the Center for Contemporary Creation, 2001 (first
phase) and 2012 (second phase).
- Raimundo Lira: What figures are beyond the star system? There are many less known architects who are developing a production of quality from very different positions. Marc Barani, the latest national architecture award recipient is an example. He cultivates a very low profile. Not too many works, but each one of remarkable quality. The tram terminal in Nice is a great project. There are also several disciples of the Cursus 1 by Henry Ciriani in France, interesting figures like Jacques Ripault who formed a studio with his wife, a daughter of Emilio Duhart. Of the same trend is Michel Kagan, now deceased, but who left a work of the highest standards continued by his wife, Nathalie Régnier. I would also like to mention Patrick Bouchain, whose work has a very personal imprint and is less related to high-tech and more to the reusing, conversion and recycling of materials, as part of a technical constructive research. Others, who have developed a very personal work with deep reflection on the evolution of the program, are Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal. They have such curious works as the restructuring of the Palais de Tokyo, an old building they converted into a museum and left in a brutalist state, as if an unfinished building for squatters, with crumbling walls and braced with steel rings. They are known for their social housing proposals such as the remodeling of the Tour Bois Le Petre, a tower in a very popular area north of Paris, for which they won the Équerre d’argent, the prize for the best work of the year in France. They form part of a broader discourse on heritage that I agree with. It is a position regarding interventions on the modern architectural heritage that refers to buildings left by the postwar period and that are part of the legacy of the architecture of the French landscape.
- Enrique Browne: French architecture seems to have lost the cultural influence it had in the era of Le Corbusier or the L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui magazine. In your opinion, what are the names that mark the way in France today? It is difficult to give names and define current French architecture because there is so much diversity. We live in a period of exploration and debate with different schools, trends and positions. There are architects of international stature, such as Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzamparc and perhaps Jean Michel Wilmotte ... but the need to be part of the star system has caused them much harm. Personally I had a great respect for Nouvel for his research and proposals, but he is losing himself in a frantic race to impress and maintain his status as a great figure. De Portzamparc has caved in to the need to make “artist’s works” to the point of falling into exaggerated mannerism. - Yves Besancon: You don’t include Dominique Perrault? No, I don’t include him. Remarkably, Perrault is much better known abroad than in France, where his thought and works have always been subject of debate. He is certainly a figure. I personally consider him a great builder with a fantastic level of detail, but with a very academic architecture. Architecture is a useful art, it is not the product of a whim, and Perrault’s architecture often ignores the needs of the project.
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