Christian de Portzamparc

Christian de Portzamparc (French pronunciation: [kʁistjɑ̃ də pɔʁtzɑ̃paʁk]; born 5 May 1944) is a French architect and urbanist.
He graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1970. His projects reflect a sensibility to their environment and to urbanism that is a founding principle of his work.
In 1994, he was awarded the Pritzker Prize.
De Portzamparc was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1944, when it was a French protectorate to a family of Breton noble descent. He began studying architecture in 1962 at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he was influenced by professor Eugène Beaudouin, who "encouraged his taste for formal expressionism", and professor George Candilis, who "emphasized systematic work on grids and networks." In 1966, he traveled to New York during a nine-month academic hiatus that was rooted in his hesitations about continuing in architecture. He remarked, “Architecture seemed to me to be too bureaucratic, and not free enough compared to art; and the modernistic ideals which I worshiped before, seemed to me unable to reach the richness of real life. I also began to criticize my first influences like Le Corbusier". Nevertheless, he returned to his studies in the 1967 academic year and graduated from the Beaux-Arts in 1969. De Portzamparc created his agency in 1980, supported by Marie-Élisabeth Nicoleau, Étienne Pierrès and Bertrand Beau, and later welcomed Bruno Durbecq, Céline Barda, Léa Xu, André Terzibachian and Clovis Cunha. Based in Paris, the agency has 'satellite' offices near building sites, in addition to offices in New York and Rio de Janeiro. The office is made up of a team of 80 people, drawn from all corners of the globe.
As both an architect and urban planner, Christian de Portzamparc is implicated in the research of form and meaning, as well as being a constructer. His work focuses on research over speculation and concerns the quality of life; aesthetics are conditioned by ethics, and he maintains that we have too often dissociated one from the other. Christian de Portzamparc focuses on all scales of construction, from simple buildings to urban re-thinking. The town is a central principal of his work, developing in parallel and in crossover along three major lines: neighborhood or city pieces, individual buildings and sky-scrapers.
Christian de Portzamparc developed the "open block" as a new urban structure in the 1980s which can be seen today in projects such as the Quartier Masséna – Seine Rive Gauche (since 1995), an entire neighborhood of Paris, and at La Lironde (since 1991), in the south of France, both of which illustrate his master-planning and coordination techniques.
Christian de Portzamparc's buildings create environments wherein the interior and exterior spaces interpenetrate, working as catalysts in cityscape dynamics. This method of functioning came into play in major cultural programs, often dedicated to dance and music. The most recent examples of which include a 1,500-seat philharmonic hall, 300 seat chamber hall and 120 seat electro-acoustic hall in Luxembourg, completed in 2005, plus a unique 1,800-seat concert hall that transforms into a 1,300-seat opera house, which is under construction, amongst other music halls, as part of the project Cidade da Música in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The towers created by Christian de Portzamparc have, since the beginning, been a result of his studies of the vertical and sculptural dimension, concentrating on the prismatic form, the most recognized example of which is the LVMH Tower created in 1995 in New York, USA, for which Christian de Portzamparc received many accolades, soon to be accompanied by the residential tower at 400 Park avenue in Manhattan, whose construction commenced in 2010.
In 1994, Christian de Portzamparc became the first French architect to gain the prestigious "Pritzker Architectural Prize", at the age of 50.
In 1999, he created the twenty-three story LVMH Tower on East 57th Street in New York City and, later, the LVMH's corporate headquarters on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, France.
In 2006, the Collège de France created a 53rd chair dedicated 'artistic creation', and called on Christian de Portzamparc to be its first occupant.