Odile Decq
The Art of the Ricochet Rooted in political necessity and often diminished by the simplifying yet decisive synoptic effects of programming, architecture swings back and forth between convention, which doubtless involves a desire to satisfy or to please, and a duty to resolve increasingly complicated situations by dint of innovation, moving beyond cliché and familiar tropes in order to respond to a changing world and its paradigm shifts. The situation has become dangerous. The commission process, which underrates architects by using them as the makers of marketable but nonetheless useless packaging, and by trapping architecture in standardized organizational models that can supposedly be applied everywhere, irrespective of individual circumstances, is one of the worst traits of globalization. How can we not fume with rage at the global standardization of collective housing? Just a handful of apartment floor plans are enough to describe most housing built over the past sixty years. Our cities and living environments made us into clones long before the advent of genetics! When disaster looms, burning icons—rather than confronting our demons—is the easy way out: pillorying international architects who use the energy of their teams to brighten our lackluster cities, which without them would have only their past to cherish. How sad it is to allow ourselves to slip into the endless slumber of stifling nostalgia! History should whet our appetite for ideas, particularly if we are both mindful and engage passionately with its force, and by continuously correcting our mistakes, experimenting, and doing better. Signature architectural designs have unique features associated with their creators. Their differences, the ways they are made, and their potency arise from the teams and methods of each firm. Signature designs are instantly recognizable, wherever they are in the world, assigning both practitioner and building with a strong identity. While the same faces are always to be found behind every role, this is not what normalizes things; that which is always unique is not the source of standardization. The danger comes from what is made invisible by convention. It is what flattens our lives and invades our desires, which we inhabit with neither joy nor loathing. It is what turns architecture into the medium for accepted forms of despotism. Architecture is always subject to a whole range of different influences, and Odile Decq’s projects are no exception, resolving as they do, with acute precision, the countless problems and internal conflicts that every building represents. Naturally, building at a time when an increasing awareness of the Anthropocene means that contemporaries are no longer being driven by the powerful energy of revolt that allowed young architects of the 1980s to deconstruct the walls of convention. But it still means plotting a course towards a horizon of inventions that allow us to redefine ourselves and to constantly reinvent both the bonds that connect us and the ways we relate to matter, time, nature, the landscape, and the Earth. 11
What hasn’t changed at our firm is the way we approach our work. Each project goes beyond the production process and becomes a human adventure, with a new team structure and a new trajectory. And each designer feels complete autonomy, as if he or she alone is at the helm. They feel free. They are fully fledged creators. This aspect of the organization of the firm is not only a sign of its freedom and ambition, it is also a state of mind that exists beyond the teams themselves. And yet the body of work the studio has produced is so coherent, and its evolution so precisely identifiable, that it can only be the result of a highly determined, purpose-driven approach, which, in our view, constitutes the bedrock of Odile Decq’s work and makes it into a political endeavor, a vision of the future, and a ray of hope for the world. In these conditions, which form the basis of all artworks, Odile Decq has developed the meticulous logic of her production process. Of course, she is the originator of each project, and, of course, she is involved in all the decisionmaking. Yet this is not where her masterful approach is most fully implemented. Taking part in the work of the firm entails much more than adopting a role, a method, or a hierarchy. Because each of Odile’s colleagues is entrusted with access to her principles, her goals, her sense of the world, her way of shaping the darkness and of seeking out the infinite, each is able to draw from her amazing repository of images, stories, and obsessions. Each project thus becomes a series of ricochets which, every time contact is made with this fluctuating, multi-facetted world, draws from her methodical, single-minded approach and bounce-back, charged with the energy of relevance. This book is an attempt to open the doors to this Wunderkammer. It is not a scientific enterprise whose aim would be to reveal the firm’s method. The firm constantly reinvents its working processes. The idea of the book is to examine unpremeditated or deliberately constructed recurrences, and to provide an insight into their complexity. We invite the reader to adopt the kind of curiosity that was popular in the eighteenth century—a combination of thoroughness and wonder—in order to engage with a particular philosophy of architecture. We invite you to adopt three perspectives in turn. The first applies to scientific objects, experiments and formulae; the second concerns the endless inventory of natural creations, which we measure, compare, classify, and describe; and the third embodies our sense of wonder at what humans create: artistic or everyday objects where raw materials are transformed into tools, memories, and words. “Scientifica,” “Naturalia,” and “Artificialia” are three of the principal categories into which cabinets of curiosity are organized. We have made them into “territories” through which this book invites you to travel. Come with us into the chamber of wonders.
The Continent: Scientifica
Seeing projects as experiments, scientific materials, machines and protocols that constitute a complex reality. Explaining thinking by doing. Extending the idea of a diagram, the idea of a conceptual model, the invention of interrogative artistic objects, the notion of performance. Adopting an anatomical approach, the idea of an “autopsy,� the equations of equilibrium. Marking out the path that leads from idea to form, and from material to concept.
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The Wunderkammer of Odile Decq The Wunderkammer of Odile Decq invites you to take a voyage and explore Odile Decq’s unique and complete universe of architecture, urban planning, design and art, which celebrates the freedom of imagination and shines a light on her distinctive approach to what is conventionally defined as architecture. Perhaps nothing could set the tone for this book better than Odile Decq’s own poetic words, a credo that has become evident after 40 years of architectural and design practice: “The horizon line is a constant temptation, and gives the desire of beyond, the absence of limits blurs the perception, creates ambiguity, fusion, and illusion. The consciousness of elsewhere, the perception of the space beyond.” With intricate sketches and concept models, rich photography and an intimate and unique commentary, this concept monograph (aptly described as a cabinet of curiosities) showcases quintessential frameworks of Odile Decq’s multidisciplinary design approach; it illuminates her inspirational sources; and most importantly, demonstrates the coherence that is legible on every scale of her work. From her signature concept of dynamic space, setting body into tension and movement, to lifelong ideals of organic transformation of object, perception, and fluidity of things, there are within these pages as many realized and imaginary obsessions as there are aesthetic fascinations.
$55.00 [USA] £40.00 [GB]