She has transformed auto showrooms into jewels, awoken an operetta theater from its slumber, and built impressive towers that engage with their surroundings. Manuelle Gautrand is not only France’s most exciting architecture export. The Paris-based architect and member of the Legion of Honor brings a sensual, sculptural quality to architecture from which not only her male colleagues could learn a thing or two.
A charming and motley collection of signs in the entrance drive to the Boulevard de la Bastille displays the firms that now occupy the onetime factory building, which dates from the turn of the century. There are many architects, graphic designers, press offices, two modeling agencies, and, at the very rear of the courtyard, the workshop of Hector Saxe. The highly-traditional factory still produces precious backgammon games by hand, and it is one of the last three of its kind. As Gautrand leads us around her office, she comments: “Many of our neighbors also work in the evening. That is good. It means you are never alone and you always see a light on somewhere else.”
Seventeen architects work in her office on two bright floors, with light streaming through windows into the space, which measures some 280 square meters total. A further detail immediately strikes you, which is a clear departure from the furnishing of other architect’s offices: rather than the almost obligatory Tolomeo desk lamps, dozens of Japanese paper lanterns hang from the ceiling and lend the room a pleasantly warm air. “We are always easy to track down at night. Everyone in the courtyard calls us the ‘studio of the Chinese lanterns,” says Gautrand, laughing. There is something cheeky when she says things like this, and her infectious grin spreads from one ear to the other.
On the lower level right next to the entrance and conference room there is a large workshop. “We work intensively with models to experiment with as many different scenarios as possible,” the architect says, explaining the importance of this room. As we continue walking, employees keep disappearing into the glazed box of the workshop and return holding colorful foam objects. Her comments about working processes are also corroborated by a glance over the tables in the office, crammed full of models.
Gautrand can look back on an impressive career. Born in Paris in 1961, she has remained remarkably free of professional callousness or even arrogance. Yet there are several things that would merit her having a sizeable ego: her C42 Citroën showroom, which opened in 2007, is the first new building on the Champs-Elysées in 32 years and the only one designed by a woman. With the Gaîté Lyrique, which opened in 2010, she transformed a run-down 19th-century operetta theater into a vibrant center for contemporary music, which can claim nothing less than being the most important cultural building on the Seine for ten years.
And while many high-rise projects in the La Défence financial district currently hang in the balance – or have been scrapped, like the Tour Signal designed by Jean Nouvel – her design for the 140-meter-tall Tour AVA will be completed in 2016. It is hardly surprising that this extremely busy Frenchwoman was made a member of the Legion of Honor in 2010.
Gautrand knows what she wants and what she does not want. She refuses point blank to reveal the names of the offices where she worked before setting up her own studio in January 1991. And we were only told the name of the university from which she graduated in 1985 – the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d‘Architecture de Montpellier – after asking several times. That sounds almost strange; she talks very openly about her projects and is not afraid to express her doubts. “I found studying a little frustrating,” she says; in those formative years she found her inspiration more in the sculpture studios than on the architecture floors. This affinity for sculptural design has remained with her, even though she now realizes it exclusively within the bounds of architecture.
Yet buildings designed by Gautrand are by no means exaggerated sculptures, but rather buildings with sculptural qualities – as expressed in the Citroën showroom (2007) with its ingeniously folded façade, the extension building to the Museum of Modern Art in Lille (2010) with its leaf-like windows, or the Cité des Affaires office complex with bright yellow accents in Saint-Etienne (2010). At the Cité des Affaires the façade is charged with being much more than the climatic divide between the inside and outside. Using folds, curves, and a strong feeling of relief, the façade becomes a specific communication tool. It is Gautrand’s conviction that “every building in a city is an orientation point and should play a role.” She draws a comparison with figures on a chessboard.
The kind of narrative qualities a building can embody is best demonstrated by Gautrand’s proposal for the new Munch Museum building in Oslo. “Edvard Munch is one of Norway’s national treasures as an artist. I liked the idea of creating a connection between the landscape and his painting. This is why the building draws heavily on nature and recalls the fjords, the mountains, and the dark colors of the sea,” says Gautrand while describing her design. She is still annoyed by the fact that her dark and meandering land- scape, which would have formed a striking contrast to the Opera House designed by Snøhetta, finally lost out to a neutral, almost run-of-the-mill design by Herreros Arquitectos from Madrid. A likeable reaction, as it reveals her passion for design. Her architecture does not evolve from working down spreadsheets or narrow planning grids, but from precise observation of the site and context. That makes it difficult for her to give up the solution she thinks is right.
“Competitions are difficult because we lose a great many of them. On the other hand you do know when you win a competition that the design was right,” admits Gautrand. She saw it as a challenge when, in summer 2011, she received a direct commission for the new building of the Conservatory for Contem- porary Music and Dance in Ashkelon, Israel (construction is supposed to start in 2013). She remarks, “Naturally, the planning is ea- sier when you can realize a project precisely the way you want to and there are no rivals. But at the same time you are unsure whether the client will like the proposal and whether it is right,” explaining her ambivalence. Five days before the project presentation, little would indicate a frantic mood. Numerous models and renderings spill over two large desks at the center of the room and give a sense of the design. Incidentally, the doubts she articulated prove to be unfounded: with its interlocking volumes and the façade per- forated by round windows, the proposal met with approval – and construction will start next year.
Where else is the journey taking her? The projects that Gautrand is currently working on with her team include the expansion of a department store in Paris from the 1960s, the modernization and rejuvenation of two cinemas in Paris, a hotel/residential building in Montpellier, a luxurious residential complex in the Caribbean, a boutique of Louis Vuitton in Seoul, and the extension of a theater in Béthune, northern France. There is a special reason why, above all, the theater is close to her heart. “The theater was one of the first competitions I won in 1994. I am very, very happy to be able to design the new rehearsal rooms ten years after the opening,” confesses Gautrand as she smiles broadly again. The light in the studio from the Chinese lanterns is sure to burn bright for some time to come.
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