Odile Decq | |
|---|---|
 Decq at GSAPP | |
| Born | 1955 (age 68–69) Laval, France |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Practice | Studio Odile Decq |
| Website | www.odiledecq.com |
Odile Decq (born 1955) is a French architect, urban planner and academic. She is the founder of the Paris firm, Studio Odile Decq [1] and the architecture school, Confluence Institute. [2] Decq is known for her self-described goth appearance and style. [3]
In the 1970s, Odile Decq first entered École Régionale d'Architecture de Rennes. She was told by the first year director that she would never become an architect because she did not possess the right spirit. She completed two years at Rennes, then moved to Paris, where she enrolled at La Villette (formerly called UP6). Because of the Protests of 1968, Decq spent a lot of time on strike, instead of in class.
In order to finance her education, she began to work for French writer, architect, and urban planner Philippe Boudon. Boudon was writing about theory of architecture at that time, and was interested in Decq because of her studies in literature and linguistics. Decq began reading for Boudon, and later went on writing for him. After four years, Decq resigned from her job with Boudon to pursue her diploma.
She graduated in 1978 from École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Paris-La Villette with a diploma in urban planning from the Paris Institute of Political Studies in 1979.
Decq opened her own firm in 1979. Her future partner in the firm and in life, Benoît Cornette, was studying medicine at the time. In 1985 Cornette earned a degree in architecture and the couple established the architecture firm ODBC. [4] The buildings they completed for the Banque Populaire de l’Ouest in Rennes with Peter Rice in 1990 brought them numerous awards and international recognition. It was the first metal-construction office building in France. [4]
Model building is especially important to her process. Decq and Benoît would create models with modular parts that could be moved in order to test the feasibility of various configurations. [4]
In 1998 Cornette died in a car accident at the age of 45. Decq continued to work under the firm ODBC, but in 2013 changed the name to Studio Odile Decq. The name change was prompted by her late husband still being credited with buildings that were solely her design. [5] Despite her husband's death, Decq began experimenting with her designs and ideas even more and trying to find herself again, and soon producing some of her most well-known and successful designs including the Banque Populaire de l'Ouest in Rennes, the Golden Lion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Macro Museum in Rome. Her projects have grown and continue to grow larger in size, complexity, and daring. [6]
Decq has stated that her philosophy on architecture is that a building " has to be a place where people can move, live in good conditions, forget the hardness of the life outside, so it has to have a kind of humanistic approach..." [7]
She has "been faithful to her fighting attitude while diversifying and radicalizing her research." [8] Being awarded the Golden Lion of Architecture during the Venice Biennale in 1996 acknowledged her early and unusual career. Other than just a style, an attitude or a process, Odile Decq's work materializes a complete universe that embraces urban planning, architecture, design and art. Her multidisciplinary approach was recently recognized with the Jane Drew Prize in 2016, and Architizer's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017. [8]
Since 1992, Odile Decq has been a professor at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris where she was elected head of the Department of Architecture in 2007. She left in 2012 and subsequently designed and opened her own school, Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, https://www.confluence.eu/ in Lyon, France [9] in 2014. [10] She describes her approach to education as forcing students to take a strong position to foster their independence and ability to "express themselves strongly and very clearly." [11] Since 2019, her school is based in Paris and was accredited by the "Royal Institute of British Architects" (RIBA) in 2017.
This school was a place where Decq was able to put her unique design philosophy into an educational context, fostering innovation and creative problem-solving in future architects. [12] This led to significant changes in the way people viewed architectural education. [13] It encouraged young architects to take risks and not to adhere to current conditions and ideas. [14]
More than 20 years ago, she entered the field of design by creating a series of furniture, armchairs and tables for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris with the Editors Domeau & Peres. Since then, each of her projects has been the subject of new creations, such as new lamps developed in the Luceplan catalog.
She has always been passionate about and a collector of contemporary art, and in 2007 she had her first exhibition at the Polaris gallery in Paris. She then seeks to reinvest her own research in architecture in art and gradually moves away from it while sometimes keeping a link. Thus, the portfolios of serigraphs produced for the publisher Bernard Chauveau on the occasion of the realization of the Macro, the Frac Bretagne or the restaurant Phantom at the Opéra Garnier are graphic deconstructions of the elements of the projects; the same is true of the series of ALOD plates made in 2016.
After creating the Oniris gallery stand for Art Paris in 2010, she exhibited at the Gallery in 2017 and produced photos and mobiles on this occasion. Finally, the Philippe Gravier gallery in Paris offered her to create a set of tables and lamps for Design Miami Art Basel in 2019 and for the FIAC the “Pavillon Noir” built Place de la Concorde in Paris in October of the same year and the “Green Pavilion” for Paris + Art Basel, built in the Tuileries Gardens in 2022.
Recent exhibitions and installations: In 2018 Odile Decq was invited to create two installations "Pahtom's Phantom" and "Time-Space-Existence" during the 16th Venice Biennale and an ongoing traveling exhibition "Horizons" at the House of Arts in Ostrava. At the moment the exhibition is installed in Kosice.
Phyllis Barbara Lambert is a Canadian architect, philanthropist, and member of the Bronfman family.
Sir Peter Cook is an English architect, lecturer and writer on architectural subjects. He was a founder of Archigram, and was knighted in 2007 by the Queen for his services to architecture and teaching. He is also a Royal Academician and a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic. His achievements with Archigram were recognised by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2004, when the group was awarded the Royal Gold Medal.
Coop Himmelb(l)au is an architecture, urban planning, design and art firm founded in 1968 by Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky and Michael Holzer in Vienna, Austria.
Venice Biennale of Architecture is an international exhibition of architecture from nations around the world, held in Venice, Italy, every other year. It was held on even years until 2018, but 2020 was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, shifting the calendar to uneven years. It is the architecture section under the overall Venice Biennale and was officially established in 1980, even though architecture had been a part of the Venice Art Biennale since 1968.
The École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles commonly referred to as the ENSAV, is a leading French architectural school located at the ancient stables of the Versailles Palace. It is an associate member of the University Paris-Saclay. The pedagogical aim of the National Architecture School of Versailles is to provide an intense experience in the architectural arts while developing questions of architecture in the fields of building, city and regional planning. The school prepares students using diverse professional exercise methods and its specially known for its urban design teachings.
Benedetta Tagliabue is an Italian architect, who lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. With Enric Miralles, she co-founded the international studio EMBT Architects. She is the principal and director of EMBT Architects, and president of Fundació Enric Miralles.
David Serero is a multi award winning French architect who has had many international projects in France, United States and Italy.
Manuelle Gautrand is a French architect.
Yvonne Farrell is an Irish architect and academic. She is the co-founder, together with Shelley McNamara, of Grafton Architects, which won the World Building of the Year award in 2008 for their Bocconi University building in Milan. The practice won the inaugural RIBA International Prize in 2016 for their Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología building in Lima, Peru, and was awarded the 2020 Royal Gold Medal. In 2017 she was appointed, along with Shelley McNamara, as curator of the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2018. She won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2020, also with McNamara.
L'Opéra restaurant is a former restaurant in Paris, built into the east facade of the Palais Garnier opera house at Place Jacques Rouché, at the intersection of rue Gluck and rue Halévy in the 9th arrondissement. The restaurant premiered in 2011 and was replaced in 2019 by CoCo.
The Jane Drew Prize is an architecture award given annually by the Architects' Journal to a person showing innovation, diversity and inclusiveness in architecture. It is named after the English modernist architect Jane Drew.
Elizabeth de Portzamparc is a French-Brazilian architect.
HHF Architects is an architectural practice established in Basel, Switzerland by Tilo Herlach, Simon Hartmann, and Simon Frommenwiler, in 2003.
Louise Braverman is a New York City-based architect known for a design philosophy that aims to combine aesthetic design and social conscience. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA).
Jean-Pierre Pranlas-Descours is a French architect and urban planner associated with a minimalist aesthetic.
Iwona Buczkowska is a Polish-born French architect and urban planner. She designed the Cité Les Longs Sillons, where she also lives and works.
Jakob + MacFarlane is a French architecture firm founded in 1998 by Dominique Jakob and Brendan MacFarlane. It is headquartered in Paris.
Lina Ghotmeh is a Lebanese-born architect and founding principal of Lina Ghotmeh – Architecture based in Paris, France. Born and raised in Beirut, she introduces a distinctive architectural posture informed by concepts of rebirth and renewal with natural materials and traditional building techniques. Her work is celebrated for its sensitivity to history and materiality, linking communities past and present, ultimately seeking to create a sustainable, inclusive architecture.
Nzinga Biegueng Mboup is a Senegalese architect based in Dakar, known for her expertise in bioclimatic design and construction utilizing locally-sourced earth and biomaterials. She is also recognized for her significant contributions to architectural research, particularly in the study of Dakar's urban and cultural heritage.
The Confluence Institute, in full: Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, is an independent international school of architecture in Paris.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
Davidson, Cynthia C, and Odile Decq. “A Conversation with Odile Decq.” Log, no. 32 (January 1, 2014): 39–45. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bvh&AN=721730&site=ehost-live.
Foges, Chris. “A Steely Gaze: Odile Decq Draws from Lyon’s Industrial Context to Project the Waterfront’s New Identity.” Architectural Record, Building types study n.948. Office buildings, 202, no. 7 (July 1, 2014): 65–71. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bvh&AN=716082&site=ehost-live.
Schwitalla, Ursula, Itsuko Hasegawa, Nili Portugali, Donna Blagg, Alison Kirkland, and Steven Lindberg. Women in Architecture: Past, Present, and Future. Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2021.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
| Other | |
