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interview/forum aid awards 2009
Manuelle Gautrand
By far the most successful young female architect in France, Manuelle Gautrand was born in 1961, qualified as an architect in 1985, and set up her own practice in 1991. Her breakthrough came in 2007 with C42, the Citroën flagship showroom on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. This year has seen a number of projects including the Gaîté Lyrique (the conversion of a theatre into a contemporary music and digital arts centre), as well as ongoing studies for the AVA tower at La Défense. Having won several major prizes and awards, she also lectures and holds consultant positions. In 2005, she was elected a statutory member of the french architecture academy.
What was it like working with the Forum AID jury?
- We had two great days, immersing ourselves in Nordic architecture and design. Two rooms full of projects to discover and analyse, and much time to discuss them. I was very happy to be able to focus on the Nordic countries and get a deeper understanding of the inspirations and processes behind projects here. For example, the student work of Daniel Rybakken surprised me: in the beginning I was rather sceptic, but then I was very touched by the poetry of his work, which couldn't have been invented anywhere else in the world. The strongest and most memorable projects were those with an evident and innovative, clearly expressed concept.
What are your most interesting projects at the moment?
- I love the phase “under construction”. We're currently in that phase with the museum of modern art in Lille. It's a refurbishment of a Rolland Simounet building, and also an important extension that introduces a beautiful collection of “art brut”. It's a complex project, mixing a contemporary architecture with a famous existing building. The extension communicates the violence and the fragility of this exceptional collection.
- We are also working on a very special project: the creation of a luxury shopping mall in the la Défense district, where we're also working on a tower project. We're filling existing spaces with this program, underground spaces that have never really been used, hardly even known by people. We discovered them and read them as huge and completely deserted cathedrals of concrete. Now we're breathing life into them, and figuring out how to re-fertilise those deserted spaces into a amazing poetic place in which to shop.
You seem to enjoy drawing towers at the moment?
- Yes towers plays a large role in our portfolio, as I get invited to take part in more and more tower competitions. It's a very interesting area: how to densify, build vertical cities, mix functions, maintain a human scale through these huge projects. The AVA tower in La Défense is a 140 meter tall tower, but also a 200 meter long building; in the end, the project is longer than it is tall. We had a very raw site, with a motorway crossing through it. Instead of backing away from this constraint, the project flows around the motorway and embraces it, turning it into a monumental entrance that completely camouflages the context.
Do you think there is a signature Manuelle Gautrand style?
- A few years ago, I would have answered no. However, perhaps now there is something like a style in my architecture, even if I try to reinvent each project as if it were the first one, and even if I try to always be free of preconceptions. I prefer to have journalists analyse this style, but I'm always very inspired by the sites themselves. I can either slip into them in a very smooth way, or react against them, depending on the dialogue that needs to be established between the site and the program. Sometimes the latter is so powerful that it has to explode and flood the whole site, sometimes the site is so beautiful that the program can just fill it in a much calmer way.
From the Gaîté Lyrique through to the Citroën Flagship Store, vibrantly coloured elements are allowed to take a lot of space in your buildings. You're not afraid of colour.
- Colours enchant us. They transform spaces and our perception of them, and are a deep part of architecture. I always think about colours in parallel to volumes, functionalities, and flows. Architecture has to be expressive. I just love colours.
Magnus Larsson