Lecture date: 2014-01-30
To ‘re-enchant the city’ and thus reinvent, renew, innovate, propose the unexpected answers, bring emotion, to be bold and plural are the founding principles of the architecture of Manuelle Gautrand. At the core of her creative process is an approach that treats each new project as a ‘blank page’. Yet all of her projects express a specific relationship to the site: a desire to revive it and enchant; a deep commitment to working on the programmes entrusted to the firm, making them even more efficient, more malleable and more unexpected. The project must each time become a unique and symbolic encounter between the site and the programme.
Manuelle Gautrand founded her namesake studio in 1991 and serves as its principal architect and director. Her team of 15 architects develops projects for public contracting authorities as well as private firms in France and internationally. Among the firm’s recent works are the Origami office building in Paris; La Gaité Lyrique, an old Parisian theatre transformed into a centre for contemporary and digital arts and music; the Lille Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art; and La Cité des Affaires in Saint-Etienne, an administrative and office building.
