Aesthetics, of course, but also resilience and the common good are at the heart of Pierre Thibault’s reflection on buildings. In a second essay devoted to beauty, the architect dialogues with the host and musician Catherine Perrin on the relationship that unites humans to their environment.
Living in beauty – These places that do us good comes in the wake ofAnd if beauty made you happya dialogue exercise presented in 2016 by Pierre Thibault and François Cardinal, now vice-president and publisher of The Press. This time, it is Catherine Perrin that the architect leads in the discovery of inspiring and soothing places, her projects for the most part, but not only.
For a year, the tandem visited places designed in different contexts and met those who live and frequent them. After building his practice around residential architecture, Pierre Thibault devotes himself more and more, with his team, to projects that have collective benefits, such as the Lab-école, including the first establishment that emerged from it, the Stadacona school, is presented in the book.
The essay opens with the Grantham Foundation for Art and the Environment, an artists’ residence and exhibition venue, located in the heart of nature and built on stilts to preserve the trees that “stretch out their arms to us” , writes Catherine Perrin. “The form of a project dialogues with the sky and with the nature that surrounds it,” asserts Pierre Thibault. She maintains a soothing relationship with the body and must avoid unnecessary chatter, which trivializes everything. »
For the architect, the goal is not to disturb the landscape, but to complete it.
Jardins de Métis, Sainte-Anne college, Maison Resther, faculty of music at Laval University: the authors take us to various places which have in common the ability to arouse strong feelings. The feeling is what the story focuses on, which is not accompanied by photos, but by sketches evoking the buildings and musical interludes chosen by Catherine Perrin.
It is at the very end of the book, on the land of Laure Waridel and Bruce Johnston in Frelighsburg, where an intergenerational house signed Pierre Thibault is being erected, and in the streets of the transformed Parisian district Clichy-Batignolles, that thinking becomes more interesting.
How can we build and develop cities to meet the climate challenges that await us? The architect rejects “wall to wall” solutions and launches the idea of an urban laboratory where five municipalities in need of renewal would be offered an overall vision, created tailor-made for each by experts from different fields. According to Pierre Thibault, rethinking cities implies densification which makes room for nature, through the development of parks and interior courtyards. After the School Lab, the Urban Lab?
Extract
“What choices will we make for the future? Money and speed have long been the drivers of development in our cities, and everything shows that our quality of life has suffered consequences. By replacing money and speed with life and time, our way of building and living will make all the difference. »
Who are Pierre Thibault and Catherine Perrin?
Renowned architect, Pierre Thibault is the founder of Atelier Pierre Thibault and professor at the School of Architecture at Laval University. Over the course of his career, he has received nearly thirty awards and distinctions in Quebec, Canada, the United States and Europe, including the Ernest-Cormier Prize, awarded by the government of Quebec.
Host, writer and harpsichordist, Catherine Perrin is the author of a story (A discreet woman) and two novels (Three alarm clocks And The age of accidents). She hosts the show Green light at ICI Première.
Living in beauty
Editions La Presse
272 pages