Architect as Goth: Odile Decq to lecture at SAIC/AIADO

Yes, I know it's the 19th, but it's never too late to be adding stuff to the November Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

click images for larger view

Specifically, on November 27th, the School of the Art Institute, Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects will be hosting a lecture by Odile Decq of Odile Decq Benoît Cornette, Architectes-Urbanistes, the French Goth architect who could be said to be the anti-Richard Meier.

what kind of clothes do you avoid wearing?
anything which is not black.

what I am very interested in when I design and conceive something, is thinking about the close relationship between body and space.

when you think about quentin tarantino, robert altman…the way the camera is in a space or the way the different sequences are organized, films don't explain how you pass from one place to another. you are just 'there' and then you are somewhere else. I like these kinds of transitions…

The above quotes come from interview with the architect in designboom, which has also published some views of her firm's Paris studio.


Odeq's design philosophy can seen in her new addition for MACRO , Museo D'arte Contemporanea Roma, inserted into what was originally a Peroni beer factory, and anchored by a blood-red auditorium structure floating within a larger lobby space.(Great photographs of the construction and finished product at SkyscraperCity here.)

This foyer has been painted in black.  I hesitated in the beginning.  I have to confess I hesitated to do it because I was thinking, do I have to apply to everyone the punishment that I give to me, to be black, but in a way, yes, because of this question of being neutral, with the white.  I was thinking that if I painted  in black, this is another neutral, another neutral color, but it's a stronger one. And this stronger one will have resistance, a stronger resistance for the art, and the art has to be stronger, to be in front. And now they hang art on these walls, and it works very well.

You can see the entire Columbia University lecture from which Decq's quote was taken here.   The Chicago lecture on November 27th will be 6:00 p.m. in SAIC's Columbus Auditorium, 280 South Columbus.

Elsewhere, we've also added an AIA/Chicago/Architect Magazine Arts Club event on the 29th with Chris Sullivan, Building Enclosure Trends: Design, Energy and Codes.

This is also the last week for the exhibition The Enduring Designs of Josef Frank at the Swedish American Museum in Andersonville.  The show closes on Sunday.

Things are sparse this holiday week, but today, Monday the 19th, there's An Te Liu at UIC, and a Chicago Makes Modern book launch with Ben Nicholson and Inigo Manglano-Ovalle at the Graham. Things pick up again next week, so check out the nearly dozen great items still to come on November 2012 Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.