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Internationally acclaimed Pritzker Prize winner |
Wow, that was one tough decision! Actually, it was many tough decisions, and by the time the Architect Selection Subcommittee whittled its list to five finalists, they could have used a dartboard to select an incredibly qualified architectural firm.
All the finalists had impressive portfolios and stellar, international reputations. All were enthusiastic, collaborative and fiscally responsible. In the end, it was a decision about “fit” – which firm seemed the best match for the Academy’s vision, process and personality. Christian de Portzamparc and his 100-person architectural firm have that fit, along with a proven ability to listen to clients’ needs and understand their vision. The firm demonstrated a strong desire to collaborate with the Academy – not just create for the Academy – to create a museum campus that will reverently showcase the rich history of the motion picture industry while providing unique spaces for exciting immersive experiences, right down to the red carpet.
Christian de Portzamparc has a track record of designing striking buildings all over the world. Over his 37-year career as an architect, he has earned many accolades. In 1994 he won the Pritzker Prize – often described as the Nobel Prize for architects. Selected from 500 nominees, he was the first French architect to receive this honor and is one of the youngest laureates ever selected.
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| LVMH Tower, New York City |
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| Philharmonie Luxembourg |
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| French Embassy, Berlin |
The citation from the Pritzker Jury called Portzamparc “a gifted composer using space, structure, texture, form, light and color all shaped by his personal vision.” Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable said that in his buildings “fragmentation and movement involves all the senses; it induces a profound sense of pleasure. This is a most sophisticated updating of the architecture of joy.”
In 2001, Atelier Christian de Portzamparc earned the Business Week/Architectural Record Award for the design of the Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) Tower in New York. Other notable projects include the Champs Libres in Rennes, France– a campus that houses a museum, a library and a science center with a planetarium; Philharmonie Luxembourg, considered one of the finest examples of modern architecture in that country; De Citadel block in Almere, the Netherlands, which includes a lawn that “floats” above a retail area; and the Cité de la Musique in Parc de la Villette, Paris, a large-scale cultural complex with two concert halls, a museum, offices and housing for students at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance. Portzamparc’s design of the National Conservatory features an elliptical concert hall and spiral lobby. The New York Times described the ceiling of a recital hall within the complex as a space that “holds players and listeners within one radiant embrace, conferring a sense of ritual at once familiar and urbane.”
Other major works include the French Embassy in Berlin, Café Beaubourg in Paris, the Dance School of the Paris Opera at Nanterre and plans for Paris’s Massena quarter. Portzamparc’s current projects include the Musée Hergé in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and Cidade da Música in Rio de Janeiro. Both are nearing completion.
The architect himself has been the subject of three biographies and is the author of two books, 1983’s La Spatialité n’est plus interdite (Spatiality is No Longer Prohibited) and 1997’s bilingual Généalogie des Formes/Genealogy of Forms. Portzamparc and Philippe Sollers co-authored Voir Écrire, published in French in 2003. The English version, Writing and Seeing Architecture, is set for release this spring.
For Portzamparc, creating the perfect design is about synergy. For his masterpieces, he meticulously studies the space and its surroundings, and is always careful to consider the people who will make use of the space. He has spent a lifetime perfecting this approach. He studied architecture at École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in the 1960s. Taking time away from his studies, he traveled to New York, where he spent almost a year living in Greenwich Village, enjoying the artist’s life, mingling with writers, poets and other artists. Eventually he went back to school and graduated, but rather than starting to work as an architect immediately, he took time to study how people interact with their neighborhoods and assessed why people liked to live in certain buildings and not others.
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| Les Champs Libres, Rennes | De Citadel, Almere, the Netherlands | Philharmonie, Luxembourg | Musée Hergé, Belgium (in progress) |
“I got a realistic idea of a concrete way to understand architecture as a social responsibility,” Portzamparc said of that period. “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.”
This is precisely what he has gone on to do. And do remarkably well. Academy President Sid Ganis says Portzamparc “studies how people interact with their environment, just like a good filmmaker. Then, he creates unique spaces to support that relationship. The thing is he’s not a cinematographer, a director or a writer, but he is an artist. And he has built an impressive architectural portfolio by using this skill.”
“I have a true passion for cinema and often link this art to architecture: the art of motion, art of light, editing, sequencing of time and life, celebration of living,” Portzamparc said. “The Academy Museum will play a unique role in transporting visitors into the universe of movies.”
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| Philharmonie, Luxembourg | Cité de la Musique, Paris | Extension of the Palais des Congrès, Paris | Cidade da Música, Rio de Janeiro (in progress) |
