Paul Andreu (1938-2018), the architect of Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport (1967-1974), whose clean, resolutely innovative lines he designed, is one of the key figures in the architecture of the second half of the 20th century.e century.
"Whenever I conceive of a project, I don't create a box to organize movement within, but I design the walls according to the movement that people will perform inside." asserted this champion of the curved line.
Besides the concrete shells and fascinating spirals of airport terminals which he would specialize in, from Jakarta to Dubai via Shanghai, the large curved glass roof of the Beijing Opera House – a gigantic ellipsoidal dome of titanium and glass placed on the water in 2008 – or the glass sphere that seems to float on the ocean which constitutes the fantastic maritime museum of Osaka, to name only two of his master works, attest to this propensity for purity and undulating forms.
Coupled with a great economy of materials, this quest for the pure line drawn by the perfect geometry of the circle makes Paul Andreu the worthy heir of the great architects of Antiquity and the Renaissance, but also of another master of the curve and elasticity to whom he claimed to belong: the great Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto.
A line all in softness and fluidity inducing "ever-changing perspectives" to be discovered in the retrospective that the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine in Paris is dedicating to the architect who was also a painter and writer.
"Paul Andreu. Architecture is an art"
Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine
1, Place du Trocadéro, Paris 16e
Until June 2, 2024
France paris
