Elizabeth de Portzamparc
Elizabeth de Portzamparc is a French-Brazilian architect. Biography. Born in Rio de Janeiro, Elizabeth de Portzamparc developed a very early passion for art. While she was still a child, her father, who was from Belo Horizonte and was passionate about architecture, regularly took her to Pampulha and talked to her about the "genius Oscar Niemeyer," who he knew and admired. Motivated by Iberê Camargo, a friend of her parents, Elizabeth started to practice conceptual art in her youth. She studied in the schools Sacred Heart of Jesus, Santa Ursula, Brasileiro de Almeida, and then passed the  vestibular exams and entered the PUC (Pontifical Catholic University) faculty in Rio, which she had to abandon very soon because of the urge to leave the country. Later on, in France, simultaneously to her studies in anthropology, urban sociology (Paris V) and regional planning (IEDES-Paris I), she dedicated herself exclusively to urban themes: new towns, IAURIF, and particularly to the urbanism workshop of Antony. There, in 77/78, she set pioneer studies on the concepts of "neighborhoods/sub-neighborhoods", bringing the notions of "local life" and territorial links to the center of the founding principles of territorial planning policies. In  1980 she obtains the ability to teach in French architecture schools and teaches in the (UP9) between 1984 and 1988. In 1982, she works on a research named "Extension de la Démocratie Locale" for the French Ministry of Environment and Quality of life. In 1984, she carries an operational research for the French Ministry of the Equipment, by creating the first inter-communal urbanism structure for the project of the South Paris "". This research was later developed and completed by the IAURIF (called IAU nowadays). In 1986, she opens and manages the Mostra gallery in Paris. Surrounded by artists, designers  and architects such as Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, Christian de Portzamparc, François Rouan, Pierre Buraglio, Arata Isozaki, Bernar Venet and Peter Klasen, among others, she questioned the creative approach proper to architects, artists and contemporary furniture designers of that time. Consequently, through themed exhibitions, she developed a profusion of unique ideas showing very clearly the specificities of each creative field, which brought her to the headlines of many French and international magazines and put her gallery on the podium of the best Parisian galleries. In 1985 she designed the "24 hours" desk, which was exposed in the Decorator Artist's  Fair and in the Cartier Foundation during the exhibition called "MDF, des créateurs pour un matériau" (MDF, creators for a material - free translation). It witnessed a great success and was then acquired by the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain. In 1987 she created her own architecture agency, which is since then characterized by many projects touching different levels of development. Career. In 1989 she won the contest for the creation of the Information Center of the French National Assembly, and in 1992 she won the contest for the museography project of the Korean National Museum, to which she created a museographic  urban path, based on a circuit of interior streets that extend the exterior public spaces, going through the exhibition rooms. The rooms have big overtures, like window displays facing these interior streets and making it very alive, animated, and unquestionably bringing quality to the museum visitation. In 1995 she created the museography for the Museum of Brittany, in Rennes, for which she also designed a library, interior open squares and spaces for kids. This project brought consecration to Elizabeth de Portzamparc's style: through each one of her projects, her experience makes sense. She gets inspiration from the urban morphology  to create interior "urban spaces" that host the different historical cycles. The scenographies of the first sequences are installed in spaces that remind buildings and public squares; the following ones are organized in spaces organized as a street, and those of the two great wars are presented in a tunnel, a more dramatic space that reminds the darkness of this period of our history. The ongoing contemporary time is installed in an open, interactive and scalable forum. One of the rare women in architecture to win great international contests, Elizabeth won in 1997 the contest for the project of stations  and urban furniture designed for the Bordeaux metropolitan tramway network. She created the stations as public squares in the city, very accessible and appropriable, based on the ideas of transparency, lightering and velocity, but most of all aiming the creation of a metropolitan identity. A unique collection of urban furniture, arranged to reveal the proper features of each one of the places crossed by the tramway, creates an unequivocal identity. In her activity as an architect and urbanist, Elizabeth de Portzamparc plans her buildings as architectural symbols, carriers of new values, strong urban landmarks that structure and inhabit perfectly the  places where they are installed. Open to the city and to its inhabitants, her projects of the Musée de la Romanité de Nîmes, the Grand Documentary Equipment of the Condorcet Campus in Aubervilliers and the Le Bourget railway station of Le Bourget, one of the iconic stations of the Grand Paris, have been thought as places "to live in", which are easily appropriable. Much more than effective equipments, their porous and open architecture, crossed by the interior streets, makes them very open to all. Their atriums are real interior public squares, protected and luminous, creators of collective life, support of  local animation and quality of life their users. Thanks to her double sociological and architectural approach, she combines the imperatives of the social, urban and ecological significance with an optimum realization of the form, a coherent action visible in all aspects of her work. Her projects are characterized by their innovative proposals in terms of flexibility and good space management. Professional approach. Her academic and artistic education, combined with her multicultural vision, bring multiple facets and a complex dimension to her works. By means of the application of her reflexions on the identity of cities and metropolis, her projects respect  and reinforce the qualities of the context where they are put in. By fostering the crossing spaces and a strong relationship with nature, they create a special atmosphere, express easily identifiable collective values and initiate a dialogue with the environmental urban landscape and the local culture. Her sober architecture, with light and pure lines, based on the lightering of the masses and on the economy of forms and materials, shows that building in an economic way do not mean banalization or loss of architectural quality. Flexibility is an ongoing theme in her projects and one of the most important for  Elizabeth de Portzamparc, for it allows fighting the obsolescence of buildings, to assure their durability. A project must be capable of evolving throughout time and to adapt to different purposes and programs. As shown by the projects of the GED and the Le Bourget railway stations, by following this principle, she creates "total-flex" buildings, for mixed-use, with open plans and with the possibility of future extension without changing the original concept. Sustainable development is an ecosystem approach adopted by Elizabeth de Portzamparc at al levels of her work according to the different aspects and needs of each project , whether it concerns territory planning or buildings. She develops bioclimatic projects, energetically autonomous, which become active in this action in every dimension (environmental, economic and social). By recreating the local biodiversity in her projects, she embeds her buildings perfectly to the nature and to each context. Study and research themes. In the Atelier International du Grand Paris she pursuits her researches led since 30 years about the identity of the places, the local life and the territorial links, fundamental contributions to the reflexions on the construction of the metropolis. Still in this same context, she made various propositions for sustainable , flexible, mixed-use and prefab housing, with controlled cost and fast to build. These models on which Elizabeth de Portzamparc works since 2004 for fast housing of homeless and refugees is a suitable solution for housing the most fragile individuals, humanitarian issue of ever-growing importance. By placing Mankind and Nature in the center of her concerns, through her projects she tries to bring appropriate answers to our civilization's crisis.