Christian de Portzamparc: The Architectural Poet of France

The Shanghai Conservatory of Music Opera House designed by Christian de Portzamparc

Some have described French architect Christian de Portzamparc as lacking the star quality of his designs, instead resembling "a traveler hurrying through bad weather." Meeting him in Shanghai, this impression seemed to hold true. Battling jet lag and an irregular heartbeat, the septuagenarian appeared somewhat weary. His somewhat unassuming suit, head of naturally curly chestnut hair, and a pair of seemingly melancholic eyes completed the picture. Yet, during his discussion of his work, the smiles that occasionally surfaced revealed a genuine joy born from creating unique architectural spaces.

Perhaps this is precisely why Portzamparc and his work resonate with our time.

In 1994, at the age of 50, he became the first French architect to receive the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. The architectural spaces he creates, nostalgic yet filled with romantic imagination, have earned him the moniker "the poet of space" within the industry. But this doesn't seem to be the peak of his career. A look at the portfolio of this French native born in North Africa reveals a startling fact: almost every one of his public buildings has won a major architectural award.

"No architect can bypass China. I haven't come too late; now is precisely when my creative drive is strongest," he said. Having been relatively inactive in China before, he has finally extended his reach to the Eastern continent in his seventies. This September, Portzamparc will hold a retrospective exhibition of his work in Shanghai and serve as a guest at the Shanghai Design & Innovation Week. Concurrently, planning for a project in Qinhuangdao and a major public building in Suzhou are also underway.

During an interview, Portzamparc notably set aside discussions of dramatic, undulating forms. The topic of "joyful architecture" alone was enough to animate him for an entire afternoon. "No matter the client, location, or type of building I create, I adhere to one principle. I am a joyful person, and the architect's duty is to bring joy to the city."

In fact, Portzamparc's early work attracted significant controversy. In the 1970s, drawing inspiration from the legend of the Tower of Babel, he designed a decagonal, spiral-shaped water tower in the French town of Marne-la-Vallée. This debut project, created with a friend—a structure cloaked in greenery, uniquely shaped yet functionally sound—quickly became a local landmark. Over a decade later, his design for the Éric Satie Music Conservatory incorporated elements of classical architecture like a square base, columns, attics, and large cornices, attempting to evoke memories of Renaissance architecture and an understanding of traditional neighbourhood culture. However, many critics argued that Portzamparc was superficially borrowing elegance by arbitrarily deconstructing and fragmenting traditional space, his work exuding a clever, theatrical sense. The construction of his "ski boot" office building in Lille brought such critiques to a boiling point.

"I rarely paid attention to these comments; it was only later when someone pointed them out that I realized how sharp some criticisms were. But for an architect, facing various critiques is inevitable, even today," Portzamparc recalled, his expression conveying a nonchalant detachment, as if these matters concerned him little.

However, a number of prominent architectural critics, including Ada Louise Huxtable, ultimately sided with Portzamparc. "People focused solely on the building's appearance, overlooking the architect's design logic, the effectiveness of his innovative solutions, his precise handling of scale, his sensitive intuition for the urban context, and his lyrical use of light and color," as Huxtable put it. She noted that Portzamparc possessed a unique ability to quietly transform sinuous curves, massive conical forms, and even surprising candy colors into poised, monumental presences. "The French taste generally prefers conventional reality," she suggested, "thus the refinement of French architecture is often superficial. Yet Portzamparc has creatively infused French architecture with both hedonistic joy and intellectual seriousness." At first glance, his work might appear stylistically French, but upon closer inspection, the resemblance isn't as straightforward as it initially seems.

Satisfying Body and Soul

The project that perhaps best reflects this duality is the Cité de la Musique in Paris, a complex he meticulously crafted over a decade. Part of this vast structure is located underground. To avoid the oppressive feeling of being in a basement, Portzamparc arranged stairs, corridors, entrances, and terraces in overlapping layers, allowing people on different floors to see one another. Natural light from outside freely penetrates this layered space through conical light wells. The color of the walls undergoes unexpected changes along the winding corridors. Intimate yet open spaces hide throughout, quietly unfolding along these understated, colorful, circular paths.

When asked how he managed to break from the traditional layout of a music complex, creating spaces full of dramatic variation without sacrificing functionality, Portzamparc half-joked, "I followed the traditional way of walking to experience the space where musical art exists—a kind of choreographed step based on theatricality and the mystery of movement." In truth, over ten years and numerous design revisions, he employed a completely new way of architectural thinking: considering the internal spaces first, and only secondly the enclosing structures. "For many years, people have grown accustomed to using architecture to shut themselves in, which deviates from the social significance architecture should possess," Portzamparc stated frankly. He acknowledged that his work is often described as theatrical, but insists this is not deliberate. Rather, it's a design approach that comes naturally to an architect observing life itself in Paris. "Allowing people to move poetically through space, where both body and soul find pleasure and satisfaction—that is the raison d'être of modern architecture."

Source: First Financial Daily