Odile Decq on the Importance of Bold Design and Why "Architecture Is Still a Fight"

In the latest installment of PLANE—SITE’s short video series Time-Space-Existence, French architect Odile Decq gives this advice to young designers: be bold. “If you want to build and create the new century, you have to have people who have people who have specific personalities. I love when people express themselves strongly and very clearly.”

Odile Decq on the Importance of Bold Design and Why Architecture Is Still a Fight   - More Images+ 17

Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark Museum. Image © Roland Halbe

If there’s a word to describe Decq herself, it’s bold. When she won the Jane Drew Prize in 2016, The Architect’s Journal called her "a creative powerhouse, spirited breaker of rules and advocate of equality." Reflecting on her own work in the video, she says, “I’m sure that my buildings are spicy.” Their spice, she says, comes from their complexity; at her Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, for example, “you can travel the building at different times and at different levels and decide where you want to go.” "I'm not a static person. I'm a person in movement all the time, and I always go further. So I like when people in my buildings do the same," she says.

MACRO Contemporary Art Museum. Image © Roland Halbe
Phantom - Opera Garnier Restaurant. Image © Roland Halbe

The notion of decision-making is an important one at the Confluence Architecture School, which Delq founded. “The thematic of the semester,” she says, “is taking position. We force them to take position. To decide. To be independent. To know: this is what I believe in.”

Saint Agne Residency. Image © Roland Halbe
GL Events Headquarters. Image © Roland Halbe

Explore all of the videos in the Time-Space-Existence series here on ArchDaily.

News via: PLANE—SITE

Image gallery

See allShow less
About this author
Cite: Ella Comberg. "Odile Decq on the Importance of Bold Design and Why "Architecture Is Still a Fight" " 09 Jun 2018. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/895922/odile-decq-on-the-importance-of-bold-design-and-why-architecture-is-still-a-fight> ISSN 0719-8884

You've started following your first account!

Did you know?

You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.