Dominique Perrault

Emblematic figure of French architecture, Dominique Perrault gained international recognition after having won the competition for the National French library in 1989 at the age of 36. This project marked the starting point of many other public and private commissions abroad, such as The Velodrome and Olympic swimming pool of Berlin in 1992, the extension of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in 1996, the Olympic tennis centre in Madrid in 2002, the campus of EWHA’s University in Seoul in 2004. The most important ongoing projects include works as the Piazza Garibaldi in Naples, the Thermal Baths in San Pellegrino, Italy; the congress and exhibition hall of Leon in Spain, the Fukoku Tower in Osaka, Japan which will be completed in October 2010 and the Grand Theater in Albi and the Dobrée Museum in Nantes, France. Dominique Perrault has won in 2009 two great urban planning competitions: the new European district and city centre in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia and the new FSS train station district in Locarno, Switzerland. Dominique Perrault is the Curator of the French Pavilion, which theme is METROPOLIS?, of the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice (August 29th – November 21st 2010) So far, his projects have been remarkable for their conception anchored in an urban vision detached from historicist speech and their dynamic vision aiming to unify architecture and its environment. Dominique Perrault introduces an “abstract lecture of architecture” where constructive elements have their own autonomy. The relationship between them is only a matter of position and materiality. It is a process without contact. Thus, it assumes the principle of vanishing architecture, a state of representation of shape and object. The expression of this architecture reveals new and unexpected employment of materials. Dominique Perrault especially employs textiles and metallic meshes, in particular, that allow him to constantly play with opacity and transparency, revealing and concealing his architectural works. In fact, for over 15 years, in coalition with Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, architectural designer and artistic director of his studio in Paris, he has been investigating the application of industrial materials in architecture, being the pioneer of the architectural use of metallic meshes. Dominique Perrault’s work on furniture and lighting does not represent a parallel decoration activity but a true extension of his architecture. Firstly because it employs the same vocabulary of simple forms reduced to the minimum. In the other hand, because they pay the same attention to materials engineering. The result are simple, robust and functional objects, designed for the greatest manufacturers, like Sawaya and Moroni, Poltrona Frau, Fontana Arte, Alessi, Baccarat… Dominique Perrault received many prestigious prizes and awards, including the AFEX Award for the Ewha Womans University in Korea and the “Grande Médaille d’or d’Architecture” from the Académie d’Architecture in 2010, the Mies van der Rohe prize (1997), the French national Grand Prize for Architecture (1993). In 2008, he has been a member of the scientific council of the «Grand Paris». The body of his works has been showed at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2008 and at the ICO Foundation in Madrid in 2009, through the monographic exhibition “Dominique Perrault Architecture”. This exhibition will be showed at the Tokyo Opera City Gallery, from October 23rd to December 26th 2010.

• ARCHITECTURE
• Architectural Design