About this talk

Running time: 54 minutes

The French architect Christian de Portzamparc, born 1944, studied at the Beaux Arts in Paris. Since 1971 he has won many competitions, like the Rue des Hautes Formes in 1975, the Opera Dance School in 1983 and the Cite de la Musique in 1984. His output has been prolific and he has received many awards including, in 1992, the National Award for Town Planning and Urban Art.

Charlotte Ellis, writing in the Architectural Review, refers to his "lasting preoccupations with fragmentation and space, transparency and light, plurality and tension". His work is unique in the panorama of French architecture

At the end of his talk, adding a few words in French, he says that his architecture's greatest achievement is that it gives people freedom and adds to their happiness, and it is this which spurs him on to do more building.

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